I Wish I Worked in CV, So I Could be a @#$%ing Idiot, Too.

Cataloging a book called Doing our own thing : the degradation of language and music and why we should, like, care. Pulled up the record in our consortial database, to which only one library had attached an item - Cherrie Valley. It had only one subject heading: "English language--United States". That seemed really weird, given the topic of the book. Wouldn't it, I thought, be more...um...contentious than that? Perhaps more opinionated, argumentative, pointed? Yet it was an OCLC record (and for anyone reading this who doesn't understand librarian-talk, an "OCLC record" means that it's kosher - as good as it's getting, the "right" record, the way it's supposed to be). So I was even more curious. Pulled up FirstSearch and looked at the original OCLC record.

There were SEVEN subject headings. All of them were useful, lovely, interesting, and more complex than "English language--United States". Want to see?

English language -- Variation -- United States.
Popular music -- United States -- History and criticism.
English language -- Written English -- United States.
English language -- Spoken English -- United States.
English language -- Social aspects -- United States.
English language -- United States -- Usage.
Language and culture -- United States.

That's what they took out. Why would they take that out? Because it did too good a job of describing the book? Because specificity is "bad"? Because the average Cherrie Valley patron has an I.Q. of 3?

And isn't it painfully ironic to rip the useful subject headings out of a book about the degradation of our language by lazy-assed people?

So I replaced the bastardized record with the one containing all of the above subjects, and I'm still chock-full of righteous indignation and anger. I want to call E, the library director in Cherrie Valley, and just scream at her. Not to say anything, in particular, but just scream. She wouldn't understand the multi-syllable words I'd want to use anyway, so a prolonged shriek would suffice, yes?

This job sucks the life out of me, truly.