Catalog Records from Metropolitan Museum of Art MetPublications

In late 2012, Dan Lipcan forwarded an exciting announcement to ARLIS/L: the launching of MetPublications, an online resource offering access to many of the Museum’s publications. It was a complement to the Museum Libraries’ project to digitize all known Museum publications from 1869 to 1963 within their Digital Collections.

I emailed Dan to see if bibliographic records (MARC records) for these publications would be made easily available so other libraries could load them into their catalogs. In the Fall of 2014, Dan Lipcan was able to offer files to ARLIS/L MARC record sets for online Metropolitan Museum of Art publications (both from the publications department and from the Libraries’ Digital collections). He separated into two downloads: those that offered full text and those that offered preview only.

Columbia University Libraries chose the full-text download only. I worked with both our head cataloger, Kate Harcourt and our systems analyst, Evelyn Ocken to create test records to review what elements in the record needed to be modified to meet with local practices. After some tweaks, happily performed by my technical services colleagues, we loaded the set into our local catalog.

In the end, we loaded all 1,395 records offered by Dan Lipcan which gave us full text online access. If you would like to see the records in our OPAC (http://clio.columbia.edu/catalog), a keyword search on 965MetPub will retrieve all 1,395 records. Thanks to Dan, Kate and Evelyn, we now have access to beautiful exhibition catalogs such as:

Art and love in renaissance Italy / edited by Andrea Bayer ; Andrea Bayer, Beverly Louise Brown, Nancy Edwards, Everett Fahy, Deborah L. Krohn, Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, Luke Syson, Dora Thornton, James Grantham Turner, and Linda Wolk-Simon ; with contributions by Sarah Cartwright, Andreas Henning, Jessie McNab, J. Kenneth Moore, Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, Wendy Thompson, and Jeremy Warren. New York : The Metropolitan Museum of Art ; New Haven : Yale University Press, 2008.
xv, 376 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 32 cm.
http://www.metmuseum.org/research/metpublications/Art_and_Love_in_Renaissance_Italy?Tag=&title=&author=&pt=&tc=&dept=&fmt=

Landscapes clear and radiant : the art of Wang Hui (1632-1717) / Wen C. Fong, Chin-Sung Chang, and Maxwell K. Hearn ; edited by Maxwell K. Hearn. New York : The Metropolitan Museum of Art ; New Haven : Yale University Press, 2008.
xii, 236 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 31 cm.
http://www.metmuseum.org/research/metpublications/Landscapes_Clear_and_Radiant_The_Art_of_Wang_Hui_1632_1717

Dan announced on ARLIS/L that he would annually reissue complete sets that will include updated and new records for online MMA publications.

I am thrilled to be able to add these records to our local catalog, giving easy access to this material for our research community.

Thank you Dan, Kate and Evelyn.