Monday, April 2, 2007
April 2, 2007 - Virgina
Welcome to the new and improved Typo of the Day for Librarians. Our first example, Virgina, started off as a news story. West Virginia won the NIT tournament last week. At the end of the game they started distributing the championship t-shirts. However, the company that had printed them the night before gave the fans a surprise by economizing on a letter. Surprisingly, this word did not appear on the list of library typos, so we checked it out in OhioLINK and did a double take. There were more than 200 hits - making it one of the worst typos that you could ever find in a library catalog. WorldCat showed more than 1000 hits for this. Run do not walk, to your OPAC and see how you fare.
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8 comments:
Sorry, am I being obtuse? What's the word and its incorrect spelling??
D'OH! SORRY!! Now I see it... (and my face is red)
Don't worry about it. Now you know how that got past more than 1000 catalogers.
I'm wondering if you can repeat the typo as a non-hyperlink in the text of the day's entry? It's just easier to copy and paste if there is no hyperlink. Thanks for considering this.
Marion - yes, usually we do that, and I've added such an entry to the second sentence. Thanks for pointing this out.
There were 5 occurrences in our catalog, some for "Virginia Madson" in "Sideways" and one for "Virginia Woolf." I live in Virginia, Minnesota, yet curiously, there were no typos for that in our catalog!
Now that the blog has done "Pittsburg(h)", where I grew up, and "(West) Virgin(i)a", where I live now, has anyone looked to see how many "Pennyslvania"'s there are out there? That's a very easy typo to make!
P.S. Since some of you don't know me: I'm not a cataloger anymore. I used to be, but now I'm a reference librarian, so I know from both directions how good cataloging can help find information.
Lois Fundis
Mary H. Weir Public Library
Weirton, WV 26062
Our catalog has a record with 3 instances of "Virgina". However, it is apparently the correct spelling of M. Virgina Geiger's name.
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