You are invited to attend the ALCTS Heads of Cataloging Departments Interest Group Meeting at ALA Midwinter in Seattle, Washington:
Monday, January 28, 2019, 9:00-10:00 a.m.
Hyatt Regency Seattle, Regency A (Upper Ballroom West)
Presentations and biographies:
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Jodene R. Pappas: Cataloging Services Librarian, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas (pappasj@sfasu.edu).
Jodene Pappas received her MLS from Emporia State University in Emporia, KS in 1990. Since then, she has worked in public and academic libraries, both in public services and technical services, and in libraries small and large. Her previous position was as the Head of Cataloging of the Book Section at the Wichita Public Library, Wichita, KS. In 2012, she made the jump from a public to an academic library, and quickly found many new opportunities available. Jodene has been the Cataloging Services Librarian at Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, TX since 2012.
Presentation: “One Record at a Time: Simply Starting Linked Data at a Mid-Sized University.” As a traditional cataloger with very limited knowledge of non-MARC metadata and other technologies, I learned the sooner my library starts implementing Linked Data, the more visible and discoverable our materials will be on the web for all our users. Other researchers have found many technical methods for accommodating large amounts of data. Mid-sized university libraries often do not have the resources that larger institutions have. Can mid-sized libraries, such as mine, participate on a smaller-scale to reap the benefits of Linked Data? With many physical collections dying a slow death and the need to make all resources discoverable from any search engine, linked data is key. To begin, we will look at the Linked Data Competency Framework and the Competency Index for Linked Data. Next, the data used is from an archive collection as well as books and a video of Charles Wilson, a U.S. representative from Texas, made popular by the movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War.” Using the bibliographic data we will attempt to implement Linked Data in a small, easily managed project. The purpose is to illustrate: 1) what knowledge and skills are needed to begin applying Linked Data, 2) the increased discoverability and usage that result from implementing Linked Data, and 3) an explanation of these factors to library administrators and staff. After linking the initial materials with each other as well as a Wikipedia article, the research method will compare overall usage rates of traditionally cataloged materials and finding aids to the same items having Linked Data applied.
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Erin Freas-Smith: Acquisitions and Metadata Librarian, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (efre@loc.gov):
Erin Freas-Smith has an MA in African-American History from Howard University in Washington, DC and a PhD in Modern African History from The School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Before coming to the Library of Congress as an Acquisitions and Cataloging Librarian in 2016, she taught undergraduate courses in African and US History at Howard University and the University of Sussex in the UK. Erin is an active member of the Africana Librarians Council and has presented on topics related to Africa, acquisitions and cataloging. Currently Erin works in the Africa Section of the African, Latin American & Western European Division at the Library of Congress, where she helps to build the national collection through the acquisition of items from the African continent, and catalogs monographs from South Africa and Nigeria. This is Erin’s first time attending and presenting at ALA.
Presentation: “African Academic Print Journal Project: Producing and Sharing Article-Level Metadata for Print-Only African Academic Journals.” The Library of Congress has one of the largest historical collections in the world of academic print journals from Africa. Despite this substantive collection, many academic researchers might not know of the primary source materials contained within these print journals, nor have time to delve fully into the Library’s vast collection. In order to conduct research, scholars would need to order entire runs of each publication with the hope that an individual issue has the information they seek. In an effort to bring this metadata to light and increase usage of these important resources, the Africa Section of the African, Latin American & Western European Division, Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate at the Library of Congress embarked upon a pilot project in 2018 to explore the value and practicality of creating article-level metadata for the Library’s vast collection of print-only African journals. The project has three aims: 1) electronically capture table of contents data from journal titles; 2) transcribe article-level metadata for maximum browsing and discoverability; and 3) upload the two components into a database that in future will be available to researchers across the globe. During this presentation, Freas-Smith will describe best practices established for the project, including the methodology used to display the metadata. She will also describe the challenges of navigating such a large amount of data, including making the metadata visible to researchers through the Library’s Integrated Library Management System, and will provide an overview of the technical processes of the pilot project.