Summit on Serials in the Digital Environment

The CONSER Program

Prepared by Jean Hirons

CONSER began 30 years ago as a cooperative project for conversion of catalog cards into machine-readable form (CONversion of SERials). In 1986 it became the Cooperative Online Serials Program with an emphasis on creating and maintaining records for new serials. All records are entered or loaded into the OCLC database and distributed to others by the Library of Congress.

Today, CONSER is synonymous with quality cataloging. Over forty institutions, organizations, and companies work within CONSER to build and maintain the CONSER database. In recent years, many companies have purchased the database and its update service in order to provide records for electronic journals to their customers.

CONSER expanded its scope in the late 1990’s to include two related programs. Building on its documentation—the CONSER Editing Guide and CONSER Cataloging Manual—CONSER began the Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program (SCCTP) in 1998. The program has five courses which are taught by over a hundred trained catalogers and instructors throughout the North America. SCCTP courses are sponsored by training organizations rather than by the Library of Congress. All courses to date are workshops but online courses may be developed in the future. www.loc.gov/acq/conser/scctp.html

CONSER began working with the MARC Format for Holdings (MFHD) and the need for publication patterns in 1999. A program was begun to add publication patterns to CONSER records and further investigations have been undertaken (see related background summaries). www.loc.gov/acq/conser/patthold.html.

In 1996, CONSER introduced the “single record approach” for electronic journals, allowing its members to add notes and URLs to existing records for the print. This method has become very popular among libraries throughout the country. With the rise of aggregations, however, the need to add and replace large sets of records was introduced. CONSER members in 2003 agreed on the “aggregator-neutral record”, a CONSER record that represents all aggregations of an electronic journal that can be used by libraries and vendors to suit the needs of individual libraries.

CONSER members also agreed in 2003 to find ways to create as many records as possible for e-journals in sets and aggregations for the CONSER database, including machine-generating records. In this way, the CONSER database will become even more valuable as a rich source of records that will fit the needs of libraries.

For general information on CONSER, see: www.loc.gov/acq/conser/.

For more information on the aggregator-neutral record, see: http://www.loc.gov/acq/conser/agg-neutral-recs.html