The Library of Congress
>> Program for Cooperative Cataloging
1995/1996 Annual Report of the CONSER Program
Compiled by the Library of Congress Serial Record Division
November 1996
Contents
General Report
- Membership and Governance
- Format Integration
- Electronic Serials
- CONSER Documentation
- National Register of Microform Masters
- CONSER and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging
- Task Force on Cataloging Conference Publications
- Task Force on Electronic Resources
- Task Force on AACR Review
- Batch-loading
Member Reports
Report Appendices
This annual report of the CONSER (Cooperative Online Serials) Program covers the fiscal year, July 1995 through June 1996. The report contains two sections that follow the introduction: "General Report" of the collective activities of the Program, and "Member Reports" that highlight activities of individual CONSER participants relating to serial cataloging. The "General Report" is further divided into "Achievements"--significant accomplishments for the year--and "Activities"--ongoing efforts.
Sue Phillips (University of Texas at Austin) served her final year as chair of the Policy and Executive Committees. The Policy Committee meeting was held at LC in November 1995; the Executive Committee met in November, February and May. The CONSER Operations Committee met in May and celebrated the twentieth anniversary since the first record was input in 1976. CONSER At-Large meetings were held at the ALA conventions and continued to serve as a popular forum for the discussion of issues. Jean Hirons served as Acting CONSER Coordinator and Bill Anderson continued in his role as CONSER Specialist.
CONSER experienced another year of growth, welcoming four new members. The University of Maryland at College Park joined at the full level, and Saint Louis University Law Library joined at the associate level, strengthening CONSER's coverage of legal serials. The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) became CONSER's first project-based associate member with a focus on electronic serials. And the University of Cincinnati Medical Center Libraries became an affiliate member in order to enhance records for medical titles by adding Medical Subject Headings subject headings. At the end of FY96, membership stood at four national members, 16 full members, four associate members, and three affiliate members--a record number for CONSER.
Early in 1996, Anderson completed work on a CONSER home page on the LC World Wide Web site. Additional CONSER Web pages include the CONSERline newsletter, CCM Module 31 (electronic serials), CONSER record requirements (from CEG B6), this annual report, and other program information in HTML format. Also included on the home page are links to online catalogs, Internet resources, and a list of CONSER contacts with email addresses. Separate Listserv discussion lists were set up for the CONSER Executive and Policy committees, and the original CONSER discussion list, CONSERlist, was expanded to include all CONSER and USNP catalogers with a new focus on CONSER cataloging issues.
CONSER was honored this year as Jean Hirons received the ALA ALCTS Bowker Award for her work on the CONSER Cataloging Manual and other CONSER-related contributions to serials cataloging. Ms. Hirons also gave a presentation on electronic versions of print journals at the ALA 1996 convention. Steve Shadle (Washington), Tom Champaign (Michigan), and Bill Anderson participated in a panel discussion on electronic serials cataloging at the North American Serials Interest Group annual conference. Hirons authored two articles: "Revisions to Library of Congress Rule Interpretations for Serials and Series" in Serials Librarian (coauthored with Judith Kuhagen, LC), and "One Record or Two? The Online Discussion and the CONSER Interim Approach" in the Journal of Internet Cataloging (inaugural issue). Anderson coauthored with Les Hawkins (LC) "Development of CONSER Cataloging Policies for Remote Access Computer File Serials" in The Public-Access Computer Systems Review.
GENERAL REPORT
ACHIEVEMENTS
Membership and Governance
The November 1995 Policy Committee meeting focused on the Program's membership and governance structure, addressing recommendations from two ad hoc groups. Martha Hruska (Florida) chaired the Ad Hoc Task Group on Membership. A number of agreements resulted from the discussion, including the acceptance of CONSER Enhance and a project-based membership.
The new membership level--CONSER Enhance--was established to allow more institutions to participate in maintaining and enriching the CONSER database. Enhance members will add information to CONSER and non-CONSER records, including data for record maintenance. New CONSER Enhance members will work initially with a full-level CONSER institution in a mentoring environment. The University of Cincinnati Medical Center (previously an affiliate member) and participants in CONSER's maintenance experiment became the first CONSER Enhance members.
The Policy Committee defined project-based membership at the associate level, and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) became an associate CONSER member through their project to catalog the CICNet Electronic Journals Collection (managed). Records for CICNet titles will be created by the University of Michigan, Indiana University, University of Wisconsin, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Minnesota, and Ohio State University. Leighann Ayers (Michigan) is coordinating the project and their participation in CONSER.
Duane Arenales (NLM) chaired the governance task group and led the discussion, during which Policy members agreed that the current structure should be retained with the following changes.
- The term of the Policy Committee chair will be three years with the first as chair-elect;
- An Operations Committee representative will be added to the Policy Committee to serve a two-year term;
- The status of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging representative will now be that of an ex-officio member of the Policy Committee;
- The CONSER Councilors will continue to function in their current role, but their name will be changed to "CONSER Liaisons."
The Format Integration Task Force, chaired by Ruth Haas (Harvard),
completed many years of service with the full implementation of format
integration. The task force assisted with numerous meeting presentations
and with the development of documentation relating to format integration.
The final phase was implemented by OCLC on March 3, 1996 and was the
most difficult phase to complete since fixed field data is crucial
for the retrieval, display, distribution, and identification of records.
The major change for serials catalogers is in the coding of non-print
serials. Prior to format integration, non-print serials were input
in the serials format or the relevant non-print workform, although
CONSER catalogers only used the serials format. OCLC merged duplicate
records in different formats soon after the implementation of format
integration, and all catalogers now follow the same guidelines for
choosing the appropriate format for inputting records. Update 3 of the CONSER Editing Guide (CEG) was
issued in spring 1996 to incorporate the changes to the fixed fields.
The "Fixed Length Fields" section was greatly expanded to include information
on the new fixed fields available to CONSER catalogers, while the listing
of the elements was rearranged to better accommodate the full range
of serial formats. Many new non-print 006/008 fixed field elements
were added along with six new 007 fields. In addition, Appendix N, "Special
Physical Formats," was expanded including sample records for all serially
issued non-print formats.
The cataloging of Internet resources was the focus of discussion at
the Operations Committee 1996 meeting. The committee examined issues
relating to the cataloging of online versions of print journals, and
how to handle online supplemental information. During the summer, additional
comments and reactions from the serials cataloging community were solicited
at meetings and over Internet discussion lists. CONSER established interim
guidelines for treating online versions of serials in print, allowing
either separate records or a single record to represent both versions. CCM Module
31 and the CEG are both being updated to include these guidelines
with plans to review them in 1997. CONSER also relayed comments to the International Standard Bibliographic
Description for Computer Files (ISBD(CF)) Review Group on the draft
revision of the standard. Comments focused on several key aspects of
the document including expanding the scope of the standard to include
serial publications, defining computer file editions, and assuring
consistency between standards (e.g., ISBD(CF) and ISBD(S)). CONSER
also recommended that area 3 (field 256) be made obsolete and that
area 5 (field 300) be defined to align the cataloging of these materials
with other media.
The timing of format integration required an additional CEG update
resulting in three updates for FY96. (See also the above discussion
of format integration.) A summer 1996 update focused on management
and governance changes resulting from the 1995 Policy meeting, including
revised application forms. (A fall 1996 update is currently in preparation.) Update 4 of the CONSER Cataloging Manual (CCM) was published
in FY96, reflecting changes to LC Rule Interpretations for AACR2 Chapter
12, "Serials." Also included in Update 4 was a major revision of Module
30, "Direct Access Computer File Serials," prepared by Kristin Lindlan
(Washington). CCM Update 5-6 was in preparation at the end
of the fiscal year and included the new Module 33, "Newspapers." Module
33 includes contributions from four CONSER members and updates the Newspaper
Cataloging and Union Listing Manual, documenting CONSER and USNP
policies and practices. Also included in Update 5-6 is a major revision
of Module 31, "Remote Access Computer
File Serials."
From January 1994 to February 1996, the Association of Research Libraries
managed a cooperative project to create serial records in the CONSER
database for the NRMM. Staff from OCLC's Retrospective Conversion Services
were trained by CONSER and created more than 22,000 records for three
major research libraries: Harvard University, the Library of Congress,
and the New York Public Library. This continued a multi-year effort
to provide online access to more than half a million bibliographic
records for preservation microform masters. In May 1996, members of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging and
CONSER Executive Committees met at LC to discuss ways in which the
programs might merge certain functions. Proposals to merge the policy
and executive committees and create a new BIBCO operations group were
endorsed, with the plan to hold a joint CONSER/PCC meeting in November
to further the discussion. A joint meeting of the PCC Executive Committee
and the CONSER Policy Committee is scheduled to be held in November
1996.
The CONSER Task Force on the Cataloging of Conference Publications,
chaired by Mechael Gago (Indiana), focused on the issue of "monograph
versus serial treatment," considering both the needs of the user and
the library. After conducting research in the library literature, a
sub-group categorized and defined ongoing conference publications,
and analyzed options for cataloging. The task force rejected current
cataloging practice as the best solution and focused on a revision
of LCRI 12.0A, Section 4b, "Conference and exhibition publications." The
goal's of the revision are to improve access for users, reduce recataloging,
and provide clearer guidelines to the cataloger. The draft was distributed
over several Internet discussion lists in spring 1996 and further discussed
at the 1996 Operations Committee meeting. Comments from the library
community were fully considered, along with those from CONSER members,
and the final draft will be distributed for comment by LC's Cataloging
Policy and Support Office in late 1996. The task force is continuing its work with plans to examine cataloging
policies relating to conference titles and headings. Some of these issues were discussed further with the library community,
and several were addressed by the Operations Committee in May 1996.
(See Achievements section on "Electronic Serials.") Another
report will be submitted to the Policy Committee in November 1996 for
their consideration of the status of the task force.
The AACR Review Task Force, first chaired by Jo Lynne
Byrd (MIT) and later by Sara Shatford Layne (UCLA), is charged with
identifying aspects of the cataloging code that do not work well for
serials, in anticipation of an international conference in 1997. The
task force discussed their activities at the Operations Committee meeting
in 1996 by first addressing the issue of what constitutes a "serial
work." Members examined when a successive entry should be created
due to a change in title, heading, or numbering. The task force met at the ALA convention in New York and identified
several issues to be addressed in papers submitted for presentation
at the 1997 JSC conference on the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. Members
agreed that the papers should focus on a theoretical framework for
cataloging serials rather than specific revisions of the rules. The
definition and treatment of seriality in the rules, what constitutes
a serial work, and the impact on successive entry cataloging are key
issues to be addressed. Further discussion will take place at a day-long
meeting prior to the ALA 1997 midwinter convention. The long-standing task force on batch-loading, led by Duane Arenales
(NLM), was disbanded in November 1995 in favor of a working group led
by Ruth Haas (Harvard). OCLC has begun to examine the process to identify
the programming that would be needed to support the batch-loading of
new CONSER records. The Center for Research Libraries continues to participate actively
in both the CONSER and NACO projects as part of its routine cataloging
activities. The Department responded to the CONSER draft proposal for
cataloging conference proceedings, and was instrumental in its contributions
to the CONSER Cataloging Manual's module on cataloging foreign newspapers.
Staff also contributed to CONSER policy discussions and the resulting
draft on CONSER membership categories. In discussions similar to those of many of its member libraries,
the Cataloging Department held a number of sessions on the cataloging
of electronic serials, especially in conjunction with the Mellon/Brazilian
Presidential Papers Project. The Foreign Newspaper grant, funded by the U.S. Department of Education
Title II-C, concluded in March 1996. The focus of the project was to
catalog the nearly 6,100 foreign newspapers from 156 different countries
in 93 different languages housed at the Center. During the 18-month
project period, 3,734 titles were brought under bibliographic control.
Of these, 1,924 were originally cataloged, and 1,422 were submitted
to CONSER. Staff are now in the process of converting titles in PCFile
to HTML, grouping them by country and then by title within that country.
Titles are also grouped together by Area Studies Microform Project
(i.e., CAMP, LAMP, MEMP, SAMP, and SEAM). As an RLIN library, at Cornell we catalog on our local NOTIS system
and upload to RLIN by tape. We have been getting our records into CONSER
by sending printouts of our original cataloging and printouts of updates
to the Serial Record Division for authentication and input into OCLC. Efforts are being made to find a way to streamline this process and
eliminate the need for LC's keying Cornell records into OCLC. CONSER
is able to telnet to Cornell's catalog and import new serial records,
but these records must be heavily edited to change the NOTIS fixed
fields etc. to add these records to OCLC. In the long run, a procedure
should be developed by which Cornell and other RLIN libraries should
be able to contribute easily to CONSER. One solution might be for CONSER
to write a program to convert RLIN records to OCLC-compatible records.
Although Cornell does export records in RLIN-MARC format, at this time
we export by tape only. When we finally implement FTP capability we
should be able to send our original serial records to CONSER where
a conversion program could convert them to OCLC-MARC and load them
into the CONSER database. This might be a way for other RLIN libraries
to participate in CONSER as well. On another front, Cornell has become a tape-loading member of OCLC
and is in the process of loading its retrospective records in all formats.
At some future point we will be FTPing all of our current cataloging
to OCLC. When this point is reached, we could develop procedures for
adding CONSER fields and authenticating the serial records. During 1995/1996, we submitted 391 printouts of original cataloging
records, and 202 updates for records already on OCLC. With experimentation
going on for alternatives to input, we have stopped submitting updates
since our greatest contribution is with original records. With respect to NACO, we no longer keep separate statistics for CONSER
and non-CONSER NACO records. Authority records are contributed to NACO
for all headings on Cornell serials not already represented in the
national authority file. In our local procedures, Cornell is eliminating any distinction between
serials and monographs in cataloging assignments. All original catalogers
and some copy catalogers will be trained in serials cataloging during
1996-1997. During the past fiscal year Harvard created, upgraded, or modified
approximately 5,301 CONSER records. 1199 associated name authority
records were also created or modified. Harvard's Retrospective Conversion Project, directed by Karen Carlson-Young,
is winding down and scheduled for completion by the end of 1996. The
bulk of the serial retrospective conversion was completed by the end
of June. The Project searched approximately 141,271 serial titles in
HOLLIS and converted those which matched an existing record. Those
not converted in-house, were sent to OCLC where 72,799 records were
claimed and the remaining 41,784 were keyed as a part of OCLC's Harvard
Resource File. This past fall, a Task Force was put in place to review the organization
and operations of Harvard's CONSER participation. Its charge included
analyzing the present workflow, eliminating duplicate processing, maximizing
the use of technological advances, assessing our long-standing "mandatory" participation
policy, and, recommending possible further decentralization. The Task Force reaffirmed the University's commitment to CONSER participation
for all currently received serials and laid out a three-tier approach.
Level 1 libraries will participate independently. Level 2 libraries
will be independent for copy cataloging but record authentication and
maintenance will be done through the central CONSER Office. Level 3
libraries will continue to have all serial cataloging provided by the
central Office. The Task Force members reviewed levels of staffing and documentation
available at individual libraries and consulted with each about a preference.
With the exception of Widener and Law who will participate at a Level
1, the professional school libraries chose to participate at a Level
2. Most centralized libraries will continue to contribute at a Level
3. Record quality will be maintained by an enhanced training program
and record review process coordinated by the CONSER Office and the
University Library's Standing Subcommittee on Serials, Series, and
Continuations. Workflow will be streamlined by using, when available, multiple sessions
in a windows environment, macro capabilities, cut and paste, direct
batch loading of bibliographic and name authority records, and allowing
non-CONSER records to be brought directly into HOLLIS from OCLC. To access the full text of the Task Force's report choose the Subcommittee's
entry on the Harvard University Library home page at: http://hul.harvard.edu/cmtes/haas/conser.html During July 1995-June 1996, the Serials Cataloging Unit of the Serials
Department, Indiana University Libraries once again participated in
numerous activities within the CONSER Program. Indiana University Libraries
was responsible for creating 350 new original serial bibliographic
records in the CONSER database and performed maintenance and/or further
authenticated 3,857 existing serial bibliographic records. In the course
of normal cataloging activities, the Serials Cataloging (SerCat) Unit
also added or updated a total of 703 name and series authorities records
in the national authority file through our participation in NACO. These
figures represent an overall increase in the Unit's CONSER cataloging
activities from the previous year. The SerCat Unit remained at its
full level of staffing during the fiscal year with two librarians and
7.5 FTE paraprofessional staff. Of particular note during 1995/1996 was the inauguration of the Libraries'
Electronic Journals Collection Home Page for the Bloomington campus.
The Serials Department met the challenge posed by the latest electronic
journal format (remote access computer files) available via the Internet
from both the serials control and cataloging perspective. Each title
listed on the Electronic Journals Collection Home Page has a fully
cataloged serial bibliographic record in the CONSER database and in
Indiana University's local online catalog, IUCAT. OPAC users are provided
with the Bloomington campus "location" and access information in addition
to complete descriptive and subject access -- including the specific URL
for each title on subscription. The Serials Cataloging Unit also continued its participation as one
of two CONSER participants in the CICNet Electronic Journal Cataloging
Project. In addition, Mechael Gago, Indiana University's CONSER Operations
Committee representative, chaired the CONSER Task Force on the Cataloging
of Conference Publications. Indiana University Libraries continues
to participate in a partnership with Ameritech and the University of
Chicago Libraries in the development of HORIZON, a client-server based
library system for large research libraries. As work proceeds in this
joint development effort, it is anticipated that involvement with local
implementation of the new system may temporarily affect productivity
within the Serials Department. The Cataloging sections dealt with technology on dual fronts during
the past year, as the remaining Bibliographic Work Stations (BWS) designated
for the Division were delivered, and as the number of serials published
in electronic form presents challenges to long-held concepts of description
and access. Four new technician-level MARC verifiers were added to the staff
in Oct. 1995 but no new catalogers were hired. In preparation for adapting "whole
serials cataloging" to the division workflow, two senior catalogers
continued with subject cataloging cross-training and a third began
the process in November. The three full-level cataloging sections continued to give assistance
to CONSER members and two senior catalogers worked with new participants,
providing training and ongoing review and assistance. Catalogers also
serve as liaisons to serials catalogers in the Library's overseas offices
in Cairo, Jakarta, Nairobi, and New Delhi. The training and continued
review carried out in previous years is evidence by quality improvements
during the past year. A retired monograph cataloger was contracted to process the Hebraic
serial arrearage, processing 739 pieces. The Division also contracted
with OCLC, Inc. to create CONSER minimal-level records for 420 Japanese-language
serials. Quality control and review were done by division staff. Work
continued on other arrearages and collections: microfilm from the Soviet
and Russian Emigre Periodicals, 1917-1948, comic books, Amharic and
Vietnamese titles, and Pulp Fiction. The National Register of Microfilm Masters - Serials (NRMM) conversion
project was completed in early 1996, creating more than 22,000 records.
Staff in the CONSER Minimal Level Cataloging Section worked with the
Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the contractor (OCLC) in
resolving problems and providing quality control monitoring and review
to the project. Division staff also completed a project associated
with the Business and Economics Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team
(BEAT) effort, updating approximately 2500 records to assure that the
online display provides accurate information about LC holdings.
NSDP's staff was reduced by attrition to seven during the year. At
this staffing level, only the most critical sources of International
Standard Serial Number (ISSN) requests can be attended to. During much
of FY1996, NSDP answered requests only from publishers, the U.S. Postal
Service, and LC's cataloging workflow. NSDP is building significant
arrearages of unanswered ISSN requests from ISSN Network centers and
abstracting and indexing services, as well as ISSN requests and modification
requests from the ISSN International Centre. ISSN assigned to online electronic serials totalled 217 during the
first nine months of calendar year 1996; double the number assigned
(111) during all of calendar year 1995. ISSN for 53 titles were requested
using NSDP's interactive application form on the World Wide Web, which
became available in May of 1996. With help from several LC staffers,
a program was developed to convert data on the application form into
a skeleton OCLC record for editing by a cataloger. NSDP's World Wide Web page has generated an increased number of queries,
and an increased number of ISSN requests for online serials. NSDP has
used its Web page to provide fuller information to publishers about
electronic serials and about presentation of their serials. This latter
topic is covered in the brochure, "What's in a Name?" developed by
ALA's ALCTS Serials Section. NSDP is mounting and maintaining this
brochure in conjunction with ALA. NSDP also distributes this brochure
with prepublication ISSN.
During FY1996, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced
new USNP implementation awards to the final two states to join the
program, Oregon and Vermont, and to the District of Columbia. Awards
were also made to continuing projects in Alaska, Arizona, California,
Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode
Island, and South Dakota. Work was completed during the fiscal year
in Indiana, New Mexico, Ohio, and Rhode Island. Thirty states and two
territories have now completed all work within the USNP guidelines.
With recent funding reductions, and the resultant down-sizing of some
projects, it is expected that work in the remaining states will now
continue well beyond the planned project ending date of 2004. USNP project staff once again met for a series of workshops and presentations
during their three-day annual meeting at the Library of Congress in
April. Eighty-five participants from throughout the country participated.
The final draft of the USNP Preservation Microfilming Manual has been
completed, and work continues on the draft of a thesaurus of genre
terms for newspapers. Newspaper catalogers in the Serial Record Division continue to make
progress in cataloging the estimated 15000 foreign newspapers in the
Library's collection, and have assisted the Serial and Government Publications
Division (S&GP) in their efforts to process the bound volumes arrearage.
The USNP Coordinator worked with the Collections Policy Office (CPO)
and others to prepare a revised Collections Policy Statement for U.S.
newspapers, which is currently under broader CPO-coordinated review.
Work was also completed on a detailed inventory of the Library's collection
of Eighteenth Century foreign newspapers. MIT Libraries is happy to report continued growth in its CONSER contribution.
Our 95/96 statistics reflect a twenty-eight percent increase over those
of 94/95 (which in turn reflected a forty-seven percent increase over
93/94). This was a particularly noteworthy achievement given the fact that
it was also the year the Libraries migrated to a new system, GEAC Advance,
and implemented automated serials control. In a five-month intensive
project the serials cataloging staff (and volunteers from other departments)
updated "copyset records"
which were generated by the input of order records for all of our active
subscriptions and standing orders. Summary holdings statements were
input and individual item records were linked, resulting in visible
serials holdings in the Libraries' public catalog fro the first time. It was also a year of significant staff changes in Serials Cataloging.
In January, Jennifer Edwards, formerly of Kansas State University,
joined the staff as a full time serials cataloger. At the end of May,
Jo Lynne Byrd, Head of Serials Cataloging, left MIT. A search is currently
underway for a replacement. Jo Lynne completed her service as Chair of the Task Force on AACR Review
at the CONSER Operations meeting in May. David Van Hoy continued to
serve on the Task Force on the Cataloging of Conference Publications. In December 1995, Michael Esman was selected as head of the Cataloging
Branch. NAL Technical Services Division focused on integrating the cataloging
of electronic publications into the workflow. An Electronic Resources
Selection Committee began routinely selecting electronic publications
for cataloging. Collection development policies were revised to include
electronic publications. The policy is now available at http://www.nal.usda.gov/acq/cdatnal.htm on
the NAL's Web site. The Technical Services Division held a series of
staff meetings during the year to discuss the issues surrounding the
processing of electronic materials. Preliminary examination was begun
into issues that may affect our journal article indexing practices
for electronic publications. The Cataloging Branch continued its participation in the OCLC Intercat
Project contributing 110 records for agricultural related electronic
publications. NAL's public access catalog, ISIS, was made available in March 1996
at http://www.nal.usda.gov/isis/ on
the NAL web site. ISIS provides access to NAL's bibliographic records,
its serial holdings and its journal article database. During the past year, the Serials Cataloging Section added 538 original
and/or newly authenticated bibliographic records to the CONSER database
and performed maintenance on 830 additional authenticated records.
The authenticated records included 32 electronic serials. Between July 1995 and June 1996, the National Library of Canada (NLC)
authenticated online 48 records and modified 1,192 records. These records
included Canadian government and non-government serials in all formats. As stated in last year s report, NLC s new online system AMICUS began
12 June 1995. Because of difficulties in the transition to the new
system, we have not been able to off-line load any new Canadiana serial
records into CONSER since that time. There is a backlog of over 3,000
new records waiting to be loaded. We have now produced tapes from AMICUS
and are working with OCLC to iron out a few remaining anomalies in
the records. NLC understands when these records are loaded, this will result in
duplicate record situations because of the length of time that our
new records have not been loaded. NLC will do our best to clean up
these duplicate record situations. On the positive side, NLC proposed the removal of most restrictions
on what CONSER participants could do to NLC records in CONSER. This
reduced the amount of work needed to be done by NLC s CONSER unit and
allowed other CONSER participants to make required changes immediately.
This change was beneficial to everyone and was very favorably received. NLC changed the method of access to the OCLC database this past year
from a dedicated line to the Internet. This change reduced costs and
streamlined operations. NLC, as with many other libraries posting comments
to the CONSER list and AUTOCAT, has found no difference in the reliability
of service between the Internet and dedicated line method of connection.
During the period July 1995-June 1996, ISSN Canada registered 3,016
Canadiana serials, revised 1,409 ISSN records and assigned pre-publication
ISSNs to 1,492 not-yet-published Canadian serials. NLC continues to serve on CONSER Operations, Policy and Executive
Committees. The National Library of Medicine continues to function with a staff
of 2.5 full time serials catalogers and continues to supplement in-house
cataloging with contract cataloging. In the past year, NLM contracted
for cataloging services for serials in Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese,
Italian, and for the first time, English. Approximately 500 lower priority
English language serials were cataloged through services purchased
from a contractor. NLM is opting to use one record for print serials which are also
issued as remote access computer files. By the end of June 1996, only
two such records with NLM data were in the CONSER database, but NLM
will continue with this practice. In its second year (1995/96) of participation in the CONSER program,
NYPL produced 630 original and authenticated records, compared to last
year's 394 and did maintenance on 223 records, compared to 79 of last
year. These records were all for Roman-alphabet publications. The Library's
cataloging of CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), Hebrew and Arabic
vernacular titles continues to be on RLIN. Because OCLC does not yet
have the Hebrew and Arabic modules, the cataloging of these materials
will remain in RLIN. However, we plan to train the CJK cataloging staff
in OCLC cataloging and move them over to CONSER sometime next year. In May of 1996, NYPL opened to the public its fourth Research Center,
the Science, Industry, and Business Library (SIBL), which is situated
in a splendidly renovated building in Midtown Manhattan. SIBL was formed
by the merger of two former divisions of the Library, the Science and
Technology Division and the Economic and Public Affairs Division. Many
of the old serials held by these two divisions were cataloged prior
to 1972 when NYPL began its automation in cataloging, and, therefore,
those records were in manual form. In order to make SIBL a truly online
library, a decision was made to convert those manual serials records
into machine readable form. The inactive and the dead titles (close
to 16,000) were converted by OCLC, while active titles were processed
by an in-house staff because ongoing holdings information needed special
attention. In total, around 45,000 records were converted. Most of
the converted records have a full level of cataloging, but are not
of AACR2 standard of course; and some of the subject headings included
came from NYPL's own subject headings list, which was used by the Library
until 1971. This past year, a re-engineering effort was launched by the Library
to redesign its technical services. Budget constraints were the main
culprit for this happening. New services and products offered by vendors
have also prompted us to rethink our processing procedures and workflows.
The planning phase of the re-engineering task continues and the implementation
phase will soon begin. Changes will definitely be made in all areas
of bibliographic control. Staffing will be reduced and priorities in
processing will be affected. However, CONSER, NACO, and BIBCO remain
on top of our operational list. In times like these, cooperation in
cataloging has become even more important, and simplification of cataloging
is now an imperative and a task that we must all take on seriously
and aggressively. The New York State Library contributed full level CONSER records for
the following categories of serial material: New York State documents,
new subscriptions, title changes, and newspapers. As administrator of the New York State Depository Program, the State
Library places highest priority on the acquisition and cataloging of
New York State documents. The majority of newspaper titles acquired
and catalogued during the 95/96 FY came from the New York State Newspaper
Project. Titles filmed for participants of this Project were duplicated
for addition to the State Library's collections. Additionally, our
Director initiated a project to process our older uncataloged collections.
New serial records were added to OCLC for many of these older titles.
In many instances, existing OCLC serial records were modified to reflect
the existence of our earlier issues. For the twelve-month interval, July 1995 - June 1996, 219 original
records were contributed to the CONSER database, while 422 titles were
matched and upgraded and 158 authenticated. 604 maintenance transactions
were performed; 38 records were reported for deletion. A NACO core group, led by a senior staff member, met weekly to discuss
new headings, review proposed name authority records, and answer questions.
Peer review has been very helpful in training. 465 name authority records
were created in the 1995/96 CONSER FY. Professional staff fluctuated between 1.8 and 2.8 FTE catalogers,
while support staffing remained constant at 3.0 FTE Library Technical
Assistants. In June, Helen Smirensky, our lead cataloger and liaison
at the CONSER operations level, retired. Miriam Bogen agreed to accept
the responsibilities of CONSER operations liaison. Miriam was shifted
from monographic to serials cataloging and received six months of training
under Helen's tutelage prior to her retirement. After months of apprehension,
our three Library Technical Assistants were made permanent employees,
scoring the highest in the state on the open competitive Civil Service
exam. Because of staffing shortages in other technical service areas,
one of the LTA's spent 40 hours this summer assisting in Acquisitions. Considerable time was spent by Cathy Sagendorf in the preparation
of a draft of Module 33 [i.e., Newspapers] for the CONSER Cataloging
Manual. Publications on discs are being received from various New York State
agencies and loaded onto our ftp server. The majority, though not all,
of the discs consisted of pre-publication working copies, which often
lacked the graphics and appendices found in the final print publications.
Our processing procedures were established after close monitoring of
CONSER e-serials discussions on the Internet. The State Library will
be providing access to our ftp version through the paper record, adding
530 and 856 fields as prescribed by Jean Hiron's August 26, 1996 memo.
A few state agencies discontinued the print version of their publications,
opting for electronic version only. In these instances, we deferred
to CONSER module 31, creating records utilizing computer file format
with seriality shown in the 006 field. A major effort is underway to scan and digitize all print New York
State documents, beginning with material from the January 1996 Checklist
of NYS Documents. A Ricoh model IS520 duplex scanner and an AT&T
Pentium PC were recently installed. Currently we are in the testing/development
stage of this document imaging. Since this material will be an exact
reproduction of the print, CONSER staff will be providing 530/856 access
through the paper record. The Cataloging Branch of the Government Printing Office, Library Programs
Service continues to identify, catalog, and authenticate serial publications
issued by the U.S. government for the CONSER database. With three full-time
catalogers devoted to serials, the GPO serial staff continued their
efforts to reflect the current bibliographic status of Government serials
in a timely manner. During the 12 month reporting period of July 1995-June 1996, GPO
serials staff produced original CONSER-level cataloging for 360 titles.
We also authenticated 140 titles already present in OCLC for addition
to the CONSER database. Thus, GPO added a total of 500 records to CONSER
during the 1995-1996 reporting year. Also during the reporting year, GPO performed maintenance on 2320
existing CONSER records. This work included the addition of 353 URLs
to existing records. The serials cataloging staff continues to create series authority
records for the NACO Program. 160 records were contributed to the authority
files and 222 maintenance transactions were made during the report
year. With continued migration to an increasingly electronic Federal Depository
Library (FDLP), we anticipate a significant increase in the number
of records representing electronic serials and physical forms with
electronic versions. Lee Morey, serials cataloger and GPO representative to the CONSER
Operations Committee, has been reassigned to the LPS Electronic Transition
Staff (ETS). The ETS is charged with making the FDLP conversion to
electronic documents run smoothly. Tony Ford, a monograph cataloger
who formerly cataloged serials is being retrained. Steve Uthoff will
replace Lee on the Operations Committee. The focus of local CONSER activities was again on maintenance efforts,
as it was last year. During the last half of the fiscal year, Melissa
Beck again agreed to serve as Interim Head of the University Research
Library Cataloging Department, as Sherry Kelley departed UCLA for the
Smithsonian. [N.B. Melissa herself departed UCLA in August, with Jain
Fletcher assuming her Interim Head responsibilities. Carol Hixson,
currently of Indiana University, will start as the new Head of URL
Cataloging in January 1997. Rhonda Lawrence, Head of Cataloging at the Law Library, and Brian
Schottlaender, AUL/Collections
& Technical Services, joined Jean Hirons, Maureen Landry, and Regina
Reynolds from the Library of Congress, Crystal Graham of UC San Diego,
and Kristin Lindlan from the University of Washington on the faculty
of "Serials Cataloging in the Age of Format Integration," an institute
sponsored by the Association for Library Collection & Technical
Services held in San Francisco October 6-7, 1995. Rhonda presented
the concurrent session on "Cataloging Legal Serials," which included
information on AACR2, LCRIs, and CONSER guidelines for cataloging these
special materials. Brian made a presentation on "The Core Record Concept:
Its History and Development, Its Application to Serials, and Its Implications
for Access." Sara Shatford Layne, Head of Cataloging for the Science and Engineering
Libraries, served as a member of the CONSER Task Force on Conference
Publications, and as a member (and currently, Chair) of the CONSER
Task Force on AACR Review. The University of Florida's 1995/96 CONSER contributions were again
augmented by our continued participation in the NEH-funded US Newspaper
Grant. This year, of our total 2440 submissions, 1771 were contributed
as part of the Florida USNP; 669 were contributions from our regular
workflow. This latter figure is a decrease over last year, and we are
concerned that it reflects our stagnating rate of acquisitions of printed
serial publications. Indeed, the University of Florida projects that our future contributions
to the CONSER database will continue to be primarily project-based.
As has been the case over the last two years, most of what we will
be cataloging will be from various of our collections which have previously
not been well cataloged. Following the newspaper project, we have targeted
documents and special collections as priorities which have long been
in need of better bibliographic coverage. In addition to materials
from these collections, we anticipate that electronic serials (especially
electronic versions of what we have owned in print) will figure in
the types of contributions UF will be able to make. To date, however,
our contributions of electronic serials have been constrained by limited
selections. As in other libraries, the integration of electronic serials
has challenged many of our local assumptions about the singular effectiveness
of a catalog record to provide access to this type of material. Here,
after all, the potential exists to send the user directly to the item
itself. And significantly, the 'item itself' can easily be the journal
article, not just the journal title. In addition to cataloging previously uncataloged titles in our collections,
we anticipate that many of our unique materials would benefit by article
level analysis. In the process of digitizing two Caribbean newspapers,
we have experimented with imbedding indexing terms and abstracts of
selective articles. This experience, and that with the commercial index
databases linked to our library catalog, have underscored the value
of common indexing standards, issue and article level identifiers.
The experience has also underscored the labor intensiveness of providing
this type of analysis. During this past year, the serials cataloging and serials acquisitions
units were merged to form one Serials Unit within the Resource Services
Department. This was done in order to reduce redundancy and increase
efficiency. As a result of the merge, the Serials Unit has been able
to take over the cataloging of all materials received through the Unit.
Previously monographic series received through Serials Acquisitions
were cataloged by the Monograph cataloging section. It is still too
early to tell, but we wonder if access to title changes, frequency
changes, etc. at the point of acquisitions will allow us to increase
our CONSER maintenance contributions. Finally, we have been focusing on reviewing and improving the consistency
and quality of our contributions over the latter part of the year. For the first time in several years, the number of titles received
declined because canceled or ceased titles exceeded the number of new
titles received. 590 new titles were established while 788 were canceled
or ceased during the year. The Libraries began the cataloging of electronic serials during the
year as several dozen were newly authenticated or upgraded. There were 1,278 overall contributions to CONSER for an 8% increase
over last year and the eighth consecutive year that our contribution
has increased. The Libraries hired Beth Jedlicka as a Serials Cataloger. She will
start in October and comes to us from the Nebraska Newspaper Project. John Riemer collaborated with Vanderbilt's serials cataloging unit
on 141 records as part of the Maintenance Project. John Riemer is also serving on the CONSER Task Force on AACR Review. The University of Maryland at College Park was accepted into the CONSER
program in December, 1995. Training for two serial catalogers, Jeanne
Baker and Bobbie Mallett, began in February, 1996. Records for review
were submitted by all serial cataloging staff in the Serial Cataloging
Unit. Original, newly authenticated, and most maintenance records were
prepared by UMCPs professional cataloging staff. Some maintenance records were
prepared by the paraprofessional catalogers. The Chinese and Japanese
language catalogers prepared non-CJK serial cataloging records under
the review of the Head of the Serial Cataloging Unit. All CONSER serials
work was submitted for review to Nancy Yu in Section 1 of the Serial
Record Division of the Library of Congress. The review period ended
for non-CJK cataloging in October, 1996. Production of Chinese and
Japanese CONSER serial records is a goal for FY 97. The UMCP libraries made considerable progress in collecting and making
accessible various electronic resources this year. Some of the notable
acquisitions include access to electronic journals in MathSciNet, Project
Muse, and the Institute of Physics journals online. Access to many
CD-ROM serials is provided in the Electronic Reading Room which opened
in spring 1996. Some of these resources are also available on a UMCP
libraries local area network. The Serial Cataloging Unit is facing
the many challenges of providing cataloging records and proper location
and access information in UMCPs online catalog, VICTOR, for these electronic
resources. The UMCP libraries received large gifts of materials in
Hebrew, Yiddish, and Greek in FY 96, but does not have staff with the
language ability to contribute authenticated serial records. The Serials Cataloging Unit continued to experience personnel changes
this year. One of our most experienced catalogers retired in December
and another cataloger left in February on maternity leave. Two paraprofessional
cataloger positions were reclassed. This enabled additional staff to
participate in CONSER cataloging and NACO authority work under supervision. The effort to catalog the CICNet archive of electronic journals continued.
On site training was provided to staff from Ohio State and Minnesota. As usual, most CONSER activity at Texas involved Latin American serials.
In addition to the regular flow of new titles and title changes, two
grant-funded projects added to Latin American receipts. The first,
funded by the DOE Foreign Periodicals Program, brought serials in the
field of Mexican economics; this project completed its third and final
year in December 1995. The second, funded by the Center for the Study
of Western Hemispheric Trade, was used to purchase serials on commerce,
trade, and international economic cooperation from countries participating
in NAFTA and Mercosur; that project began June 1, 1995, and is ongoing. A special event in early 1996 was an internship by Sever Bordeianu
of the University of New Mexico Libraries. Sever spent two months in
the Latin American Serials Unit at Texas, doing original CONSER-level
cataloging, while on sabbatical leave from his regular job. In March 1996 CONSER operations expanded to include creation of minimal-level
authenticated records for selected items. To date, only about 50 such
records have been created. CONSER cataloging of electronic serials
has also continued in 95/96, though on a small scale, pending official
acceptance of providing access to the online version through the paper
record. Now that has occurred, it may be possible to edit those paper
records nationally rather than locally as we have been doing. The Serials Cataloging Section enjoyed stable staffing during the
year and increased its level of CONSER and related NACO activity. The
section authenticated or maintained 2,497 serial records, an increase
of 10% from the previous year. NACO contributions increased by 23%,
with 397 new headings or changed authority records contributed. Although print materials were the focus of serials cataloging activities,
staff from the monographic and serials cataloging units participated
in the OCLC Internet Cataloging Project. Steve Shadle of the Serials
Cataloging Section served as the project's in-house coordinator. Retrospective
conversion continues on a limited basis as staff upgrade records for
materials to be moved to an off-site storage facility and also convert
and update serial bibliographic records for titles from locally loaded
databases which lack ISSN's in our online catalog. In November 1995,
all serials catalogers received a week of in-house NACO training. Serials information in locally mounted abstracting and indexing databases
was linked to summary holdings statements in the public catalog using
the ISSN as the linking element. This service will soon be available
for seven of the locally mounted A&I databases. A multi-year project to convert manual checkin records was completed
in January. Approximately 50,000 manual records from the central serials
division and over 20 service units were converted. Within the central
serials division, about 98% of current receipts are now checked in
online using Innovative Interfaces software. Kris Lindlan completed a major revision of Module 30: "Direct Access
Computer File Serials," for inclusion in Update 4 (fall 1995) of the CONSER
Cataloging Manual. She also gave two sessions, in October 1995,
on the cataloging of CD-ROMs and floppy disks at the ALCTS-sponsored
institute in San Francisco, "Serials Cataloging in the Age of Format
Integration." Steve Shadle gave presentations on the cataloging of
electronic serials at a Washington Library Association Workshop Cataloging
on the Internet November 2, 1995, and a CAPCON workshop in Washington,
D.C., May 17, 1996. He also organized and participated in a panel discussion
on cataloging electronic serials at the NASIG Annual Conference in
Albuquerque, June 1996. Harriet Selkowitz, the Policy representative,
left for a two-year stay in Hong Kong where her husband will be working.
Jim Stickman is the new Policy Committee representative. 1995/1996 CONSER Annual Report--Appendices Format Integration
Electronic Serials
CONSER Documentation
National Register of Microform Masters (NRMM)
ACTIVITIES
CONSER and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging--Restructuring
and Realignment
Task Force on Cataloging Conference Publications
Task Force on AACR Review
Batch-loading
MEMBER REPORTS
Center for Research Libraries
Cornell University
Harvard University
Indiana University
Library of Congress
Cataloging Sections
National Serials Data Program
United States Newspaper Program
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
National Agricultural Library
National Library of Canada
ISSN CANADA
National Library of Medicine
New York Public Library
New York State Library
U.S. Government Printing Office
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Florida
University of Georgia Libraries
University of Maryland at College Park
University of Michigan
University of Texas at Austin
University of Washington
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December 11, 2006