Cataloging the Bookhouse: Selected Twin Peaks Metadata (What it is, What it Could be)
Rob E. King October 27, 2017, 9:47 pm
The mysterious narrative of Twin Peaks is what keeps fans engaging with the material, even when they ask what does this mean for television. What is this show? Since the earliest water cooler chat to the weekly articles here, questions asked include what is going to happen, what is its nature, how does it affect all of the mediums it touches? I've decided to put my librarian skills to use and see what it could add to Twin Peaks analysis. In libraries and archives, we talk about metadata as data about data. Subject headings are metadata. When we talk about subject headings, we talk about the aboutness of an item. What it is about? ? Sometimes you do feel like you're doing a little bit of detective work. Those catalogers of us ask, "How might we best create access to an item," meaning that what we add to a record for a book, a DVD, or a Blu-ray might be the only way a patron will find it. Our current manual for standardization is literally titled Resource Description and Access (RDA). The rules in that manual keep us honest and ideally creating similar records across the field. It is true that there needs to be some constraint. Once upon a time, it all had to fit on a 2" x 5" card, all of these descriptions and access headings. Of course today, we have ample room to fill out an electronic record. What gets added to a record depends on a couple of factors: how much time is a cataloger is willing to spend on it, what does the cataloger understand about it, are there subject headings available to properly describe it, etc. All of that considered, I want to look at the metadata of Twin Peaks as a completely different approach to analyzing the series.
I combed through WorldCat, picking out seminal product releases that pertained to the Twin Peaks narrative throughout the years. It is not a complete bibliography. For the purposes of this article, I am mostly looking at United States issues and their records. By looking at these records and their Library of Congress subject headings, I believe we can accomplish a metadata analysis that can tell us how librarians and library patrons have read what Twin Peaks is from the 90's until now. For the sake of space and purposes of this article, I will stop with The Secret History as full records have yet to be created for The Final Dossier or The Return.
The first record I'm looking at is for the single cassette premiere, likely the international version. For my examples, I will list the format, title, publisher with published & copyright dates, and subject headings—basically, an abridged metadata record. I will also include the OCLC number, which is to librarians what ISBNs are for book retailers. You can use these numbers to look up these records directly in WorldCat for yourselves.
Burbank, CA : Warner Home Video, [1991], ©1989.
Detective films and programs.
Films for the hearing impaired.
In my experience, three to five subject headings is fairly common, but is that a complete enough picture for Twin Peaks? Is it misleading in any way? Are these headings worthy of a Bookhouse? What the above tells us is that we will be watching a detective and mystery film with closed captions. I think my analysis wants to ask if we as fans could improve upon these headings, while adhering to approved subject headings. This is absolutely exploratory on my part, but it is a fascinating element of Twin Peaks that would be easy to overlook. We know that the show intentionally contained satirical elements of the nighttime soap opera. Knowing that today, a cataloger could have added "Television soap operas – Humor." The authority file flips satire to humor. Yes, authorized headings are a thing, so we will go with it. By the end of this article, we might have a completed list of great headings. The following examples might improve upon this scheme.
New York : Pocket Books, ©1990.
Twin Peaks (Television program)
The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper : My Life, My Tapes
London : Penguin Books, 1991.
Diane : the Twin Peaks Tapes of Agent Cooper
New York : Simon & Schuster Audio, 2016.
Both novels listed above give a very concise heading in "Twin Peaks (Television program)." It explains to us that by 1990, the Library of Congress had an authorized heading for the series. Every succeeding record should at least include that one heading. In a perfect world, a person could use that one subject heading and pull up all pertinent materials related to it in an online catalog. Then with Diane: the Twin Peaks Tapes of Agent Cooper, we see the further distinction between film and a television program. I used the 2016 record, but I suspect the subject heading was adapted from the 1990 issue.
Twin Peaks, episodes 20-24
[New York?] : [Distributed by] Worldvision Home Video, 1993, ©1990.
Twin Peaks, Fire Walk with Me
New York : Showtime, [199-?]
In WorldCat it appears that some of the early VHS box sets were broken up. The above record reflects one of the sets representing episodes 20-24 and released in 1993. Each of these record sets contained only the "Detective and mystery films" heading. This is at
least a step back as this record would only show a patron that one heading, disregarding the more established series heading we saw reflected in the novels. Even worse than those examples is the heading from the master record for the VHS cassette of Fire Walk with Me telling a patron you found a "feature film." In this scenario, if you clicked on "feature film" in an online catalog, you would pull every item that was a feature film. Still, the leap is coming.
Twin Peaks : the First Season
[Los Angeles?] : Republic Pictures : Artisan Home Entertainment [distributor], ©2001.
Twin Peaks : The Second Season
[Australia] : Paramount Home Entertainment (Australasia), [2007]
United States. — Federal Bureau of Investigation — Drama.
United States. — Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Murder — Investigation — Washington (State) — Drama.
Government investigators — Washington (State) — Drama.
Washington (State) — Drama.
Government investigators.
Murder — Investigation.
Twin Peaks : Definitive Gold Box Edition
[S.l.] : Twin Peaks Prod., 2009.
None assigned
Time, apparently, allows for a deeper investment. At the very least, the cataloger creating the master record for WorldCat seems by all evidence to have been more engaged with the content. Starting with the Artisan Home Entertainment release of the first season in 2001, we see the addition of some genre/form headings in "television series," "science fiction television programs," and "mystery television programs." Finally, in 2007 we see some robust headings introducing headings that tell a person they will see a drama including the F.B.I. regarding a murder investigation in Washington State. Its genre and form headings include "Detective mystery and television programs" and again "drama." Surprisingly, each of these DVD records lack the most direct heading in "Twin Peaks (Television program)." By the time we get to the master record for the "Definitive Gold Box Edition," the initial cataloger did not even take the time to include subject headings. Again, that might be explained by a number of factors.
Twin Peaks : The Entire Mystery : and the Missing Pieces
Government investigators — Drama.
City and town life — Washington (State) — Drama.
City and town life.
Thrillers (Television programs)
Television pilot programs
The record for the Blu-ray of The Entire Mystery isn't bad but is almost a carbon copy of the more complete season two DVD set. It is the addition of its genre and form headings that make the record a very strong one. I still somewhat bemoan the lack of the "Twin Peaks (Television series)" heading.
New York : Flatiron Books, 2016.
Twin Peaks (Television program) — Fiction.
Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806) — Fiction.
Local history — Fiction.
Washington (State) — Fiction.
Television soap operas — Humor.
Television programs — United States — History.
Still, we save the best for last. The headings for The Secret History of Twin Peaks show some depth, including the work as including fiction for the Lewis and Clark expedition. It is that level of description that can tell people more about what an item is about. As I have written this chronologically, I was also surprised to see that my earlier suggested heading for "Television soap operas – Humor" was included with this book. You never know from one cataloger to the next how one might approach an item. Below is an example of some headings I might have added for The Secret History.
Joseph, Nez Percé Chief, 1840-1904 — Fiction.
Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994 — Fiction.
Unidentified flying objects — Sightings and encounters — Fiction.
Parsons, Jack, 1914-1952 – Fiction.
Hubbard, L. Ron (La Fayette Ron), 1911-1986 — Fiction.
One of the observations I have made is my surprise at a missing heading for "Horror films." Since 1990, it is one of the headings that never occurred to a cataloger for the series. That surprises me. Maybe it simply seemed like overkill to add that much granularity to the headings. Regardless of what one applies to a record or simply suggests, the evidence must be present. Horror as a heading might be debated. Regardless, I feel like there is room to explore Twin Peaks bibliographic metadata more completely in the future. I can only hope this begins the seeds of that approach to available details published about the mystifying series. In the next few weeks and months, let's all watch as records are completed for The Final Dossier and Twin Peaks: A Limited Series Event (2017). One thing is for sure. As of today, there is no currently established heading for "Tulpas." Surprisingly, I was able to find a heading reference for "Doppelgänger in motion pictures," the preferred usage of which is actually "Doubles in motion pictures."
Written by Rob E. King
I am a librarian, writer, and proud member of Twin Peaks and Robert E. Howard fandom. I've also somehow become the go-to writer for MTV's 90s animation series.
diane: the Twin Peaks Tapes of Agent Cooperlibrary sciencesmetadataThe Autobiography of Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life My TapesThe ReturnThe Secret Diary of Laura PalmerThe Secret History of Twin PeaksTwin Peaks
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