Grosse Freude

That is German for "great joy". That (in a slightly sarcastic way) describes the cataloging experiences I've had over the past couple of days. I am working on a project to catalog some periodicals that are currently a part of our collection but have not been cataloged for some reason or another. With the help of two student workers, most all the titles have been identified and I am now working toward cataloging them all. There are over 1300 titles to be cataloged; a task that I anticipate will take me until the end of 2006 to complete.

Of the titles that need to be cataloged, about 1/3 of them do not have bibliographic records readily available and therefore I have to create a record from scratch. Not all of our materials are English, and this provides me with ample opportunities to hone my linguistic skills as I encounter languages like French and German, which are easy enough compared to Korean, Afrikaans, and Xitshwa (an aboriginal language from Mozambique).

Yesterday I had the pleasure of cataloging a publication from Bibelschule Beatenberg, located in Switzerland. The publication, in German, was actually issued in three parts, all of which needed seperate records. I went from needing to create one original record to three original records in a matter of minutes. One of the parts
was a supplement called "Grosse Freude" which has become my new sarcastic catch phrase when I find that something needs to be done that I know I would rather not think about. The publication I was working with today appeared to be a yearbook of sorts from a school in Namibia. With Afrikaans-English dictionary in hand, I spent the better part of two hours trying to identify where the school was located and what type of school it was.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love working with different languages. I find linguistics terribly fascinating and intriguing. At the same time, however, I find it quite disorienting. It is difficult to describe, but it is almost as if the written word loses some of its value and significance when swtiching back and forth between so many different languages. And I almost always come away with a huge
headache and gibberish for thoughts. But I do love my job. Where else would I have such exposure to a wide variety of worlds and cultures?