The Catalog Management Interest Group will meet Saturday January 16 from 1:30 to 3:30 at the Hyatt Regency Boston, Quincy Room. We have four great presentations lined up (see below). Hope you can join us.
-Philip Young, Chair
Cooperative Cataloging expertise: New Concepts and New Models
Presenter: Magda El-Sherbini (Ohio State University)
The author of this study will examine the current practice of processing and sharing of bibliographic records among libraries and will introduce ideas for changing the current practice of producing bibliographic records. The scenarios presented will focus on leveraging existing library expertise and reducing duplication of efforts, while at the same time enhancing cooperation among libraries and maintaining high cataloging standards that are a must in the new technology era. The proposed options call for the examination of the internal operations of libraries and suggest the possibility of creating more comprehensive cooperative cataloging ventures.
“It wasn't old when we bought it”: Techniques and Tips for Expanding Catalog Records with Elements of Descriptive Bibliography
Presenter: Allison O’Dell (Goucher College)
The James Wilson Bright Collection, a 4,000 volume teaching including Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, and Early Modern English texts, was purchased by the Goucher College Library in 1926. At the time of its acquisition, the 19th and early 20th century works in the collection were not regarded as particularly momentous; they were dispersed to and catalogued alongside the library’s main collection. Nearly a century later, the Goucher College Special Collections and Archives department has undertaken a project to reintegrate the Bright Collection as a unified whole, while expanding description of and access to the items contained in the collection.
Information repositories and cultural heritage institutions tend to find that their collections become more historically significant and gain in antiquarian value as time progresses. Consequently, we must re-evaluate, update, and enhance description of materials to reflect their current value and relevance to researchers. The conversion of existing catalog records to incorporate elements of descriptive bibliography can seem daunting, but well-planned strategies and concise policy assist in the expediency of the undertaking.
This presentation will cover the techniques, tools, and workflows developed by the Goucher College Library “Mapping Special Collections for Research and Teaching” team in expanding existing catalog records with DCRM(b) content standards, collation statements, copy-specific notes, and relevant vocabularies. The discussion will delve into discovering what is most interesting and topical about a collection, relating it to current trends in different academic studies, looking at the book as an artifact, creating instructional materials, and simple marketing of collections through information literacy.
Cataloging Staff Participation in Community Tagging
Presenter: Suzanne Graham (University of Georgia Law Library)
User-generated tags appear in our new discovery catalog interfaces, and cataloging staff should understand how tags can be used and should participate in their creation to enhance user access.
A quick overview of current research on folksonomies and community tagging will focus on trends in infometrics and library literatures, and a bibliography will highlight specific studies.
A frank assessment of the implementation of community tagging in VuFind and Innovative Interfaces' Encore, as well as the incorporation of PennTags in Voyager, will demonstrate why and when staff should participate actively in tag creation.
Batch Loading MARC Records for Electronic Resources
Presenters: Connie McGuire and Vicki Dillon (University of Michigan)
We describe our experience with batch loading MARC records at the University of Michigan Library as a starting point for discussing the issues associated with providing access to large collections of electronic resources. We recently implemented a standard validation process for the batch loading of MARC records for e-book collections purchased from a variety of sources with the goal of providing timely access to electronic resources via the catalog.
Key elements of this process include:
- Using Perl module error checking routines to identify potential problems and assign a severity label to the error.
- Creating a locally developed processing routine that supplies defaults for missing data or changes data to comply with local requirements.
- Adding local fields to the incoming records that describe the detected errors and the action that has been taken, such as loading the record but suppressing it from public view.
- Supporting the library’s single record policy by matching batch loaded records with existing catalog records and merging data from the incoming records with the existing records.
Discussion topics could include:
- Tools for retrieving and loading large record sets.
- Choosing to load the free publisher records that are included in the license for the e-resource collection or purchasing record sets from a vendor, such as OCLC or Serials Solutions.
- Maintaining the record sets after they have been loaded.
- Determining the type and level of staff expertise required to manage and monitor batch record loads from a variety of sources.
- Considerations associated with catalogs that represent the holdings of multiple institutions.
- The extensibility of sharing or migrating generic load routines among various integrated library systems.
- Monitoring the quality of the records in publisher and vendor sets.
- Exploring ways in which librarians can collaborate with publishers to produce quality record sets.