Library
of Congress
CONSER At Large ALA Midwinter
June 25, 2006, New Orleans
Summary of meeting
Agenda
(with links to documents related to the discussion of series)
E-serials project update
Glenn Patton (OCLC) gave an update on the e-Serials Holdings Pilot. The pilot has become a production service and is based on setting and maintaining holdings for e-serials. OCLC recently acquired Openly Informatics and is using its knowledge base to maintain the data. The record sets being added now are based on records that have ISSN, additional records are being added by OCLC’s contract cataloging services. The Openly Informatics knowledge base also identifies open access serials and these will be identified in the newly approved $f of the 506 field. OCLC is working with the “Google 5” libraries to identify gaps in coverage for e-serial collections.
A CONSER group reviewed a small sample of records that were authenticated by OCLC earlier this year. After the data from Openly Informatics is used to enhance holdings for e-serial records, another sample will be submitted to the group for review. Comment: is there a way for the group to identify particular packages to target for authentication?
UC Funnel update
Adolfo Tarango (UCSD), Valerie Bross (UCLA) and Melissa Beck (UCLA) gave an overview of the newly developed UC CONSER Funnel. The project was initiated by Pat French (UC Davis) and grew out of the Shared Cataloging Program in the UC system. There are many contributions that the UC libraries can make to CONSER among them East Asian materials. The funnel has a structure for coordination of decision making, training, and review.
LCSH enhance project
Julie Su of San Diego State University described a project to add LCSH to records in the CONSER file that have only MeSH. These titles are part of the Serials Solutions record set and the project is limited to 600 records. The project is the first enhance type of project CONSER has implemented since membership categories were revised several years ago.
SCCTP update on distance learning projects
Hien Nguyen gave an overview of recent SCCTP distance learning developments. The SCCTP Integrating Resources Cataloging Workshop has been converted for online learning by the workshop's original creator, Steven J. Miller, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries and School of Information Studies and with content redesigned and supplemented by Lisa Furubotten, Texas A&M University.
Four SCCTP trainers attended the online course “Teaching Courses in a Live Online Environment” taught by Christine Peterson, Continuing Education Librarian of Amigos Library Services, throughout the month of February. This training was aimed at teaching SCCTP trainers to repackage existing SCCTP materials and familiarize them with teaching in an online format.
Access level record for serials
The access level record for serials working group met at ALA and had a productive meeting. Details related to encoding levels, authentication codes and some other issues need to be settled. The final report will be completed in July and presented to the PCC Policy Committee (PoCo) for approval of CONSER implementation of the approach. Additional comments will be received from CONSER member institutions and sent on to PoCo as it considers approval. Training materials and documentation related to the access level record for serials will be in brief format. The midwinter 2007 meeting of the Continuing Resources Cataloging Committee will be devoted to training for the access level record.
Series panel discussion
The purpose of the session was to brainstorm on ideas for series simplification, documentation, and practices. BIBCO colleagues were invited to participate in this part of the meeting. Les Hawkins (LC), John Riemer (UCLA) and Diane Boehr (NLM) led the discussion.
Les began with a discussion of PCC core requirements for series tracing practices. Documentation for series practices in BIBCO and CONSER seem to differ in whether tracing and creation of series authority records are required. A document attached to the agenda http://www.loc.gov/acq/conser/LCserials.pdf quotes from the BIBCO core level requirements for 4XX fields, a statement that series statements can be traced or untraced, untraced series need not be supported by authority records. CONSER documentation states that series “headings” require series authority records and doesn’t address options for tracing or not. Clearly the standards in the two programs aren’t in synch and it would probably be good for PCC members to reconcile them. The decision made by LC to not include any of its original book records as PCC cataloging is something that would have a disastrous effect on subscribers to the CONSER file if it were decided not to authenticate any LC serial records. LC contributes 40% of all CONSER authenticated records each year, the authentication process is the means by which records are added to the CONSER file. Subscribers include several national cataloging agencies and companies that use the data for the knowledge bases of products that many libraries subscribe to.
John Riemer gave an overview of the University of California Shared Cataloging Program Advisory Committee Series Subgroup report available from http://www.loc.gov/acq/conser/UCseries-subgrp-report.pdf. John described two recommendations from the discussion, and a proposal to provide the option of not recording series in the 440 field entirely, of instead making use of the 8XX fields only. This approach takes advantage of OCLC’s “control headings feature” which provides links to controlled access points in authority records. Changes made in series authority record entries are automatically reflected in series added entries on bibliographic records with this feature. In order to help assure that there is a continuous source of series authority records, the UC group recommends that OCLC pursue a two-tiered approach to series authority record contributions, those contributed by PCC members in addition to skeletal records contributed through other OCLC members which could be upgraded by PCC members later.
Diane pointed out that not all items within series need series control and we need to develop a better understanding of what users need in order to make decisions about which series to control and what fields are needed in series authority records. She suggested that the section in LCRI 1.6 referring to series like phrases be eliminated. What would the requirements be for a base level series authority record, like the access level record and what are the required elements? With the program that Gary Strawn demonstrated at the PCC/ALCTS series forum, probably place of publication will be needed for matching headings. What role do vendors have in creating/maintaining series authority records?
Comments and questions:
Some of these suggestions depend on having series authority records in the first place and having them well maintained. The ideal situation is recording variations on the series authority record, rather than the bibliographic record.
Shouldn’t the PCC be careful to stay in synch with RDA developments when considering changes in its series practices?
We have a need now to deal with series treatment in PCC records, PCC “practices” are
documented in LCRIs and PCC program documentation. There is nothing in AACR2
or so far in RDA that requires tracing of series and creation of series authority
records.
The concept in RDA of defining minimal record requirements could be useful
for working with vendor records, and other bare bones types of records where
a minimal set of bibliographic elements is provided with no requirements
for tracing or associated authority records. This would be a citation level
description, a base level record and coded as such. Other records could be
coded full with fuller description and authorized access points. This approach
would be useful in downloading ONIX data from publishers, the basic description
being provided by publishers, vendors, other sources and later authority
work provided by libraries.
At the moment LC is still authenticating original records for serials with series statements. Though a small number of the serial records LC creates, these don’t appear to meet documented CONSER standards. What should be done about these? Suggestions: LC should do series authority work for this category of serial if it is such a small number. Alternatively, if no series work is done on these, can they be tagged with a different authentication code?
How many in the audience feel PCC can make series tracing and authority record creation optional vs. required? [not many felt it should be required.]
The idea of getting funding for user studies and studying reference transaction logs to pinpoint use of series access was raised. It was acknowledged that probably a large category of users of series access points are librarians, although certainly researchers make use of them and they provide important access to particular types of publications in certain subject areas. Perhaps this would be a good dissertation and library schools may be able to contribute to this effort.
Action: Les will summarize the points made at the meeting, collect the addresses of those willing to help work on efforts to simplify and change series PCC policies and practices. We will recommend to the PoCo that a group or groups be formed to consider the following in relation to PCC series practices:
1)
reconciling PCC program differences in series practices
2) examine existing user studies or explore ideas for commissioning studies
on use of series access points in bibliographic records
3) make recommendations for PCC series practice simplification and documentation,
including identification of priority categories of series that would most benefit
from authority control.
Overlapping considerations include the work that PCC members undertake to reconsider encoding levels and authentication codes in relation to the access level record for serials as a CONSER standard.
Recommendation on composition and coordination: PCC standards committee, members of the Access Level Working Group and BIBCO and CONSER volunteers and program coordinators.
Action: The UCLA proposal for providing the coding option will be further vetted by CONSER and BIBCO members, and the PCC Standards Committee. If members are comfortable with it, the PCC will consider this an option for members.
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