CONSER Member reports

2001/2002

Center for Research Libraries

This was another eventful year for CRL in general and the Cataloging Department in particular. In January 2002, Amy Wood, formerly of the Chicago Historical Society, became Head of Cataloging. Under her direction, we are reviewing the organization of our department, cataloging standards, workflow and technology as well as undergoing a major effort to catalog our backlog.

One success brought about by these changes is the training of students with language and subject expertise to do both minimal and full level cataloging. We have trained students for four major cataloging projectsCRL's foreign doctoral dissertations, Turkish material, Thai serials and Russian monographs. Under the supervision of Xiaojing Lei, students have cataloged over 50,000 dissertations from January to August 2002. Under the supervision of Sima Dukhan two students cataloged all of the Center's modern Turkish language material and will begin the Ottoman Turkish this fall. Under the supervision of Steve Early, one student has cataloged the Center's current Thai serials and will begin cataloging the backlog of cancelled serials and monographs this fall. Under the direction of Olga Fishman, several students cataloged over a thousand Russian language monographs.

In addition to these projects CRL's catalogers continue with their past specialties. Xiao-Jing has continued to catalog CJK newspapers, periodicals, and special projects and has completed reviewing 3000 records converted from Wade-Giles to Pinyin this summer. Sima Dukhan has cataloged and updated our holdings of Russian serial deposits on over 40 titles Sima also continued as CRL's BIBCO and NACO representative and has been training one of CRL's paraprofessionals to catalog according to PCC standards. Stephen Early continued to catalog "area studies" microfilm, serials deposits and newspapers. Olga Fishman began cataloging National Archives microfilm sets. Oleg Medvedev has cataloged over 100 Tibetan titles.
The department is looking forward to improving its CatME skills and implementing the new AACR2 changes.

Columbia

Following the previous year's high priority status for e-journal projects, CU has contracted with SerialsSolutions to handle the holdings for ejournal packages. CU is a beta site for loading MARC records based on the CONSER paper record. Our Test service included ACS, Annual Reviews, IDEAL, JSTOR, Kluwer, Lexis Nexis Academic Universe, Project Muse and Wiley Interscience. This August, we evaluated the service and declared the project a sucess. We have greatly expanded the number of packages in our contract. We are pleased with the quality of the records, the timeliness of updates and our public services staff are very happy to have accurate holdings information.

In addition to ejournal cataloging, RECON and offsite cataloging for serials have moved to the Serials Cataloging Unit. Another part-time Bibliographic Assistant will be hired to help handle the massive amount of work coming to the unit. CU has tried to recruit another Serials Cataloger twice, but has not filled the position yet. The position was posted again recently.

Serials Cataloger Charlene Chou was trained as an SCCTP trainer for Electronic Serials Cataloging last January. She had CONSER training for one week at LC this year, and is under review by an LC Cataloger. CU also participated in the CONSER PURL Pilot project for freely available web resources this year.

CU will migrate from NOTIS to Voyager next July. We anticipate that the coming year will be exciting and full of challenges.

Harvard University

This past year at Harvard was characterized by intense activity focused on our conversion to a new web-based HOLLIS Catalog.

The actual data migration to ExLibris' Aleph LMS began on June 5th when all technical services functions were "frozen." The OPAC and circulation continued to be available until early July-circulation through July 5th and the OPAC through the weekend of July 6th-7th. On July 8th the new catalog was successfully launched.

Preparation leading up to that date began in the fall, 2001, and included several different activities.

Functional areas, such as acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, serials, etc. were defined and Implementation Teams for each were set up. The Teams were responsible for identifying and addressing policy and workflow issues and for recommending "best practices" for each of their specialized areas.

At the same time, staff training needs tied to these functional areas were assessed by groups who wrote class scripts and learners' guides. These teams were responsible for providing hands-on training for library staff University- wide. For serials staff, this training included basic searching techniques, using the cataloging and acquisitions modules, as well as learning manual and predictive check-in functions, publication pattern creation on the holdings record, end-processing and receiving material on standing orders.

By Day 1, or shortly after, all staff had received the necessary training and documentation for a smooth transition to working in the new system.

In addition, an Aleph Project Liaisons group was brought together to provide a forum for communication with staff from across all the Harvard libraries. Monthly meetings gave staff the opportunity to voice concerns as well as report back to their libraries about current developments and progress towards our July target date.

An Aleph Steering Committee, made up of senior managers from across the University Library system provided oversight and coordination for all these activities.

More detailed project information is available on the web at: http://hul.harvard.edu/ois/projects/aip/

Our CONSER statistics for the year included 3,384 original and maintained CONSER records. 740 new name authority records were added to the National Authority File.

The Harvard Law School Library reports their cleanup of records for older, foreign material from Ames Basement continued, resulting in the creation/updating of CONSER records for some older titles, most notably Eastern European and Middle Eastern materials. Much of this work, however, was done in our local HOLLIS database. The push to complete this project, together with the impact of migrating to Aleph and the lack of a part-time serials cataloger, all took time away from cataloging new law titles in CONSER this year.

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

The year, July 2000 to June 2001, has been a good starting year for the serials team of the Cataloging Department at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology since we became an independent CONSER member last August. Our production of CONSER records well exceeded the CONSER requirement of 400 transactions per year for a full member. We contributed a total of 844 transactions in the past year, 342 of which were for newly authenticated bibliographic records. This is very encouraging relative to the small team of staff we have. We, the Serials Team alone, have also added 117 new name authority records to the national authority file through our NACO authorization.

We had a few staffing changes this year. A very experienced CJK serials staff member left the library last summer and she was replaced by half of a monograph staff, who is gradually picking up the cataloging of Chinese serials. Because of heavy workload from electronic serials, another monograph staff member was also assigned to work half-time in the serials team in June 2002. Many serials training sessions had been provided for them.

This year considerable progress has been made in the management and cataloging of our electronic journals. We have fully adopted the single record approach for serials issued in print and online format. Our Head of Cataloging and the serials cataloger worked closely with our Systems Department in loading vendor supplied records from Proquest into our ILS.The project was completed in June and we expect to start another similar e-journal project for the Academic Universe database. We have also just begun another project, which is to catalog the microform serials in our Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature collection. The serials team will continue to be very busy in the coming year.

Indiana University Libraries

After last year's implementation challenges, fiscal year 2001/2002 has been a year of retrenchment and recommitment for Indiana University Libraries. Now that the implementation of our Sirsi/Unicorn library system is finally behind us and our retrospective conversion is completed, we have returned to concentrate more fully on the issues that challenge the serials community in general. The most pressing issue for us is the cataloging of electronic serials that appear in aggregator databases. Indiana University has always maintained separate records for all of its electronic journals, so it was a logical step for us, when confronted by aggregators such as JSTOR, to continue in that manner. As the number of aggregator services multiplied, we struggled to keep pace with the sheer number of titles needing cataloging. The latest estimate is that we have more than 21,000 serial titles available electronically. We invented a workflow that permitted those arranging the licenses to input provisional, acquisitions-level records with hot links that provided interim, title-level access. We devised local methods for cloning records from print records and then applying templates of constant data to make steady progress on the arrearage. The process we devised worked well, especially for smaller aggregations that provided journal-level access to titles. When we then became aware that several titles were appearing in more than one aggregation, it seemed a natural step to catalog each electronic version separately with a suitable unique serial identifier. We then decided to extend the procedure to larger aggregations, including those that provide only article-level access. Because of the enormous number of titles contained in the larger article-level aggregations and because the journals contained in these large aggregations tend to change without notice, we sought the help of commercial vendors of records. We assumed that separate records would facilitate rather than hinder the updating of these vendor-supplied records. But then there were unsettling and swift changes in the aggregator marketplace itself. As aggregator companies began to merge, the records we had so laboriously created instantly became useless. Our excellent records, now shadowed from our database, became mere documents of the volatility of the marketplace. It was with relief that we greeted the proposal for using one record to catalog all electronic versions of an electronic journal. We now have hopes that this proposal will lead us to true serial control over both journal-level and article-level aggregations. It is also hoped that the new AACR chapter on integrating resources will settle the outstanding issues regarding how to create a catalog record for an aggregation as a whole.

As part of our year of retrenchment and recommitment, we have concentrated on clean-up resulting from the database load and on refining our workflows and procedures to make full use of our new system. The new system gives us desktop access to data that previously would have needed information technology staff to compile. It allows us to detect and control for errors much more efficiently than heretofore. We have streamlined work procedures where possible and found the time to return to the backlog of records that needed updating that inevitably developed during implementation for such reasons as cancellation, cessation, title change, frequency change, publication pattern change, and corporate body change. We also designed more uniform and more automated ways of gathering statistics for the Serials Cataloging Unit and the Cataloging Division as a whole.

Our Auxiliary Library Facility, a remote compact storage facility that will be expandable through the addition of future modules, is scheduled to open in the fall of 2002. We are therefore in the process of selecting and preparing for transfer about a half a million volumes from our collections. One of the categories in the selection criteria is older serial runs. Most of these have not been barcoded or inventoried recently. The library has responded to the tasks at hand by reassigning staff and creating new and temporary positions. The Auxiliary Library Facility will also house a state of the art preservation unit.

We continue to work on a CIC preservation grant for microfilming Latin American periodicals. We also continue to participate in the CONSER Publication Pattern Initiative, creating approximately 100 patterns a month, and plan to make our first contributions to the CONSER PURL Project.

Library of Congress

Fiscal year 2002 was a time of great tension and difficulties in the Library. We saw dramatic changes in work patterns due to security measures, tension and lost time from anthrax concerns, and changes and interruptions to operations due to ILS updates and other software upgrades. Despite all of this, the sections succeeded in instituting new efficiencies, greatly increasing production, and accomplishing their assigned duties in a timely and effective manner.

Fiscal year 2001/2002 was the most industrious year for Serial Record staff since conversion to the ILS system. Staff changes, including details, reassignments, and resignations as well as the week-long library closing during the anthrax scare created some disruption in the normal workflow activities; but, these disruptions notwithstanding, staff still managed to increase total production over last year's figures.

Cataloging staff made impressive production gains of close to 49% and a 16% gain in productivity. The total number of items cleared went from 7873 in FY01 to 11,701 in FY02. Among the positive factors contributing to the Division's increase in cataloging statistics this year was the staff's continued mastery of the ILS system as directly pertaining to their work environment. Fiscal year 2002 saw the continuation of a dramatic trend for Serial Record Division in completing whole serial treatment within the Division rather than forwarding the materials to other divisions for subject work. Both the total number as well as the percentage of whole serials handled within the Division grew. The number of items receiving whole serials treatment reached 5952 vs 3903 in FY01 representing a 35% gain. The percentage of materials handled as whole serials, 58% of the total output, grew significantly due to several catalogers being successfully cross-trained. Over 25% of the catalogers are now performing subject work independently and doing either whole serials cataloging or subject only cataloging for serials cataloged either in their own section or forwarded from another section within SRD. Of note was the expansion of subject cataloging of legal materials. Two senior catalogers began training with Law team late last year. Our goal is to have SRD assume more responsibility in whole serials cataloging of legal material which comprises a significant body of material, and by end of FY03, to perform 75% of all work as whole serials.

Gains were also made in the area of copy cataloging as the division strives to move the majority of that workload to senior cataloging technicians. In July, two cataloging heads planned and began a pilot to explore expansion of copy cataloging to two additional categories: CONSER copy with LC subject headings but lacking LC class numbers; and state documents with LC subject headings. The pilot evaluation is expected to be completed in fall 2002.

The Cairo Overseas Field Office received training in the cataloging of Arabic language newspapers and the Office is now creating CONSER records for these directly in OCLC.

Several staff in the division continued to participate in the Publication Patterns Pilot Initiative and it is anticipated more people will be trained in the coming fiscal year.

The National Library of Wales received cataloging training and support throughout a major part of the year. In April, Dr. Huw Walters of the National Library of Wales came to LC for two weeks training in CONSER cataloging. Catalogers provided significant ongoing support to other CONSER members including serving as a resource for series questions from Harvard University and New York Public Library.

The newspaper cataloger completed cataloging the entire newspaper microfilm collection of the Hebraic Section. He is now working in concert with the Arabic cataloging specialist to catalog the Arabic newspapers in the Middle East Section.With the retirement of one of two newspaper catalogers the division has made the decision to "mainstream" the cataloging of this format and several staff are being cross trained to perform this cataloging.

Library of Congress

National Serials Data Program

The good news for the year 2001-2002 was that NSDP was fully staffed for the first time in many years. However, one cataloger was the recipient of a Kluge fellowship and will be on an extended detail for all of FY 2003. Another piece of good news was that NSDP began a new workflow which eliminates duplicate processing of LC titles for ISSN assignment and LC cataloging. NSDP was grateful for help from other LC cataloging sections who provided training during the transition to the new workflow. However, both the intensive training efforts of the past year and the disruptions caused by September 11 and the anthrax contamination had a serious effect on the processing of ISSN requests.

During the fiscal year, 4837 new ISSN were assigned, a number somewhat lower than in the past few years. This can be attributed to most catalogers being in training: learning LC cataloging, ISSN assignment, or both. Catalogers were also learning a new workflow and had additional responsibilities connected with LC cataloging. Building closure and year-long mail disruptions resulting from the anthrax attacks were also reasons for the decreased production.

NSDP assigned approximately 700 ISSN to electronic serials in the period covered by this report. NSDP has continued to face challenges posed by electronic resources, especially those distributed through various aggregations.

NSDP also struggled with the challenge of determining the place of publication for online serials and deciding which ISSN center should be responsible for assignment of ISSN to online serials. Several large publishers, e.g., Blackwell's, requested large numbers of ISSN be assigned to the online versions of their serials.

In 2001 the Library of Congress and the Bowker Company signed a contract that would allow one of their employees to work at LC. In January 2002 Vanessa Mitchell, a former temporary LC technician, was hired by Bowker. Her official duties include making ISSN assignments and creating U.S. ISSN records as well as creating records for the Ulrich's database. Ms. Mitchell has been able to assign many ISSN to U.S. serial records, in particular, electronic serials, and to add many ISSN to the Ulrich's database.

The section head gave several presentations during the year which highlighted potential uses of the ISSN and developments in the ISSN Network.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Implementation of ExLibris Aleph dominated the activities of the Serials Cataloging Section for most of this past year. The Libraries went live on July 9, 2001, with many of the public functions, but it was early October before most of the cataloging, acquisitions, and serials control functions were operational. During the summer and fall Serials Cataloging staff participated in the development and testing of workflows and procedures, and helped design and conduct training programs for cataloging, acquisitions, and public services staff. In February, a MARC Holdings Format Workshop, developed by CONSER SCCTP, was conducted for MIT serials catalogers, serials acquisitions staff, and processing staff by two librarians from Yale.

The management of digital resources was a major focus again this year, resulting in a shift of responsibility to include more database management activities by catalogers, a trend that will likely continue in the future. A serials copy cataloger filled in for the digital acquisitions assistant during a three-month leave, adding new titles to Vera, the Libraries' web-based listing tool for electronic journals and databases (http://libraries.mit.edu/vera), maintaining existing records, setting up access to titles, and working with vendors to solve problems. Upon the assistant's return, the copy cataloger continued to work half time on Vera record maintenance and development, including changes related to products, and is now part of the team that resolves access problems as reported by Libraries' staff and users.

The section continued to monitor or "babysit" packages of electronic journals for new titles, title changes, and holdings changes, both manually and through the Web service Mind-It (which ceased operation in June 2002). This summer, in preparation for the upcoming SFX implementation, one of the catalogers worked with other librarians to develop workflows and procedures that will ultimately coordinate electronic resource discovery and maintenance in the SFX local database, Vera, and the Libraries' catalog. We hope that relying on the reports of new resources from SFX will alleviate some of the manual monitoring of packages.

This year we saw the completion of the retrospective conversion project for unclassified journals, which began in 1998. We also continued to work on converting DDC-classed serials and journals in preparation for remote storage.

David Van Hoy, MIT's representative on the Operations Committee, continued to serve as a member of CONSER's group of e-serials specialists and as a member of the Steering Group for the Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program. He also continued as chair of the PCC Standing Committee on Standards' Task Group on Conference Publications.

Jennifer L. Edwards continued as Acting Head of the Serials Cataloging Section. Craig Thomas, a copy cataloger, resigned in September 2002. His position will be filled as a local computer support position.

National Library of Canada

CONSER Records Loaded
NLC loaded 3,789 Canadiana serial records describing various formats to CONSER. Electronic serials comprised 747 records of this total.

SCOCA (Serials Control, OPAC, Circulation and Acquisitions)
The design phase for this new Amicus module was completed and was implemented on 6 May 2002. It gives Acquisitions staff the capability to create records in Amicus that will be used for ordering new publications and be the basis for NLC cataloguing records. This module also allows the Serials Record Section to check in and record incoming issues, and claim outstanding issues.

Serials Training
NLC is preparing its training packages in preparation for the implementation in Dec. of the new and revised AACR2 rules.

Amicus and Canadiana
The National Library's bibliographic database Access AMICUS on the Web is currently available free of charge. The Library's Website is at http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ehome.htm.
In addition, the 5th edition of Canadiana, the national bibliography on CD ROM is now available, bringing the bibliographic and authority data base up-to-date as of Dec. 31st, 2001. Canadiana CD ROM also includes the MARC 21 bibliographic and authority formats in English and French. Purchasing details are available at the Website.

Acquisitions
The National Library recently acquired an original print version of the first newspaper ever published in Canada. It is the Monday Mar. 23rd, 1752 issue of the Halifax gazette. The issue was purchased from the Massachusetts Historical Society.

ISSN Canada
During the year July 2001 to June 2002, ISSN Canada provided 1,414 pre-publication ISSNs to requesting Canadian serial publishers, and registered 4,516 serials in the international ISSN database in FY 2000.

Meetings
John Clark attended the CONSER Operations meeting and Liz McKeen attended the PCC Policy Committee meeting.

National Library of Medicine

NLM catalogers are now directly updating and editing serial records on OCLC and then importing the records into the Voyager system. Prior to 2002, catalogers edited records in NLM's Voyager database and the corresponding record in the OCLC database was later updated using contract personnel. A consequence of this workflow change is that NLM's data are immediately available to catalogers of biomedical serials. All original and non-CONSER cataloging continues to be done directly in Voyager and FTP'd weekly to OCLC and other subscribers to NLM's records as in the past.

After an analysis of the materials in NLM's serials backlog, it was agreed that no significant attempt to tackle the existing serials backlog will begin until after the AACR2 Chapter 12 changes are implemented. However, we were able to identify approximately 350 titles in the backlog that had existing CONSER copy, and have been able to provide expedited cataloging for these titles.

The Cataloging Section will be working with the History of Medicine Division and providing cataloging for approximately 50-100 historical serial titles from the 19th century and earlier.

Hien Nguyen, Cataloging Section, and Gene Dickerson, Serial Records Section, led an SCCTP Workshop on Electronic Serials Cataloging, on Friday, May 17, 2002. The workshop was cosponsored by the Library of Congress and the Potomac Technical Processing Librarians (PTPL).

Long-time CONSER member, Kevin McShane, retired from NLM on May 31, 2002.

A new module for the CEG on the cataloging of Integrating Resources is being prepared by Diane Boehr, NLM CONSER rep, and Alice Jacobs, Assistant Head of Cataloging, with Regina Wallen and Kathleen Winzer of Robert Crown Law Library, Stanford University. This document will be included in the BIBCO Manual as well and may also be made available as a stand-alone document.

National Library of Wales

Several changes have taken place at the National Library of Wales within the last year, the most significant of which was the restructuring of the Library's three main Departments early in January 2002. As a result, CONSER is now located in the Bibliography of Wales Unit in the Bibliographic Data Section of the Department of Collections Services.

There have also been a number of staff changes. Alwyn Owen, who had been responsible for the CONSER programme was transferred to the newly created Systems and Development Section, and his post was filled by Huw Walters who had been on Fellowship leave until 1 April 2002. Gareth England, CONSER cataloguer left the Library for another post in February 2002 and his responsibilities were taken over by Galen Jones. Huw Walters attended the CONSER operations meeting at LC in May where he also spent a period of training with Maryvonne Mavroukakis. Both Huw Walters and Galen Jones are new to CONSER, and are grateful to Maryvonne for her guidance and patience. We have a lot to learn. NLW prepares CONSER records for yearbooks and new Welsh periodical titles,and titles of Welsh association. The total number of records submitted by NLW from October 2001 to September 2002 is 154.

New York Public Library

The Serials and Electronic Resource Cataloging Section consists of 8 catalogers and 1 supervisor.

During Oct. 2001 through August 2002, we created 490 original CONSER serial records, and authenticated 94 existing records. We performed maintenance on 676 records.

The New York Public Library is in the second year of a three year serials recon project. About 150,000 serials encompassing Roman alphabet serials on almost any subject in humanities, business and natural sciences will be converted to machine-readable form. Shelflist cards are sent to OCLC for retrospective conversion, and once converted the records are ftp'd and loaded by us into our local OPAC. OCLC will finish its part of the processing in September 2002. The in-house component of this project is to verify holdings, ensure correct linkage, and to create item records for our circulation system. Serial catalogers are involved in this verification.

The library began barcoding its collection for the fist time in its history. The impetus was the building of a remote storage facility called RECAP. RECAP is the remote storage facility built jointly by and for Columbia University, Princeton University and NYPL. Being a non-circulating and closed-stack library, we have never barcoded our material. We had a vendor barcode about 700,000 volumes and create item level records, but we have much more to barcode. Serial catalogers are creating bibliographic records for materials to be sent offsite to RECAP, because, in some instances, we have volumes in the stacks, but lack bibliographic records to which to attach item level records. In other situations, we have a bibliographic record, but must investigate the material in the stacks. Therefore, the cataloging staff is very busy in resolving problems. We are considering having another million volumes barcoded with smart barcodes. Also, all newly received material is now barcoded and item level records are created upon receipt.

As this report is being written, all serials catalogers are packing. Yes, we are moving! We are leaving our second floor home for a new structure in the same building. For the first time in over thirty years, serial catalogers and acquisition staff will be together in one premise. We will occupy the second floor of South Court, a modern glass structure built within one of the courtyards of the Humanities Center. It is a bright and sparkling place. We look forward to joining with our colleagues in acquisition and processing.

United States Government Printing Office

Two new section chiefs, Jennifer Davis (Section 1) and Mike Levinson (Section 2), were appointed to the cataloging Branch. They have spent considerable time and effort with recruiting personnel to bring GPO up to minimum serials staffing levels. GPO has hired four serials catalogers, and they are currently being trained. One more position is open, hopefully to be filled by October.

Training for our new catalogers, given that AACR2 chapter 12 continuing resources is scheduled for implementation this December, has necessarily focused on existing cataloging rules. We anticipate the need to train all serials catalogers in the application of revised rules and expect to begin this activity in late October of this year.

This has been an active year for GPO's efforts to maintain online access via PURLs. The number of federal government serials titles that are exclusively disseminated via the Internet continues to increase and now approximates 2,000. In addition to cataloging, and assigning PURLs to online serials, we are also engaged with archiving these resources to provide permanent public access within the Federal Depository Library Program's Electronic Collection. While the number of serial documents distributed to depository libraries in microfiche, paper, and tangible electronic formats continues to decrease an ever increasing number are available in the Electronic Collection.

Lastly, this was a growth year for CONSER work. GPO authenticated 283 original full level records, performed maintenance on 984 authenticated records, and authenticated 139 full level records during the year. The Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications Serials Supplement for 2002 contained 3129 active titles. This was a 15% increase over the prior year.

University of California, Los Angeles

Statistics: Between October 2001 and August 2002, UCLA contributed to CONSER 447 original records and authenticated another 256 records. UCLA completed subsequent authentication of 17 records and maintenance of 801 authenticated records. These figures represent a substantial increase from 2001/2002.

More CONSER catalogers: UCLA's increased contribution to CONSER is attributable in part to expansion of the program. Beginning in April 2002, Ron Watson spearheaded efforts to introduce East Asian Library catalogers Sarah Elman, Toshie Marra, and Mikyung Kang to the joys of CONSER cataloging. These efforts succeeded thanks to the generous support of Gary Bush and Karl Green of LC's Serial Record Division, and with much-appreciated help from Nancy Yu, Peter Kwon, and Takako Whitwood, also of the Division. Regrettably, at the end of August, Sarah Elman left UCLA for a more eastern state. But our hope is that CONSER cataloging for CJK materials will continue.

Other CONSER activities: Rhonda Lawrence has been working with Steven Miller on a segment of the SCCTP Integrating Resources Workshop. Valerie Bross served on the Integrating Resources Task Group, which finished its work at the beginning of this last CONSER year (Oct. 2001); she is now a member of the FRBR Task Force (May 2002-).

Valerie Bross and Angela Riggio participated in a PURL Project to test cooperative maintenance of links to freely-available e-resources through an OCLC-hosted PURL server. Several non-CONSER catalogers at UCLA also contributed to the Project, notably Luiz Mendes and Rita Stumps. With the assistance of Susan Walker from OCLC, the PURL Pilot Project reached a successful conclusion in time for the annual CONSER meeting in May. Since then, UCLA has continued to create and maintain OCLC PURLs. As of Sept. 12, 2002, UCLA had created over 2,000 OCLC PURLs.

University of Chicago Library

The University of Chicago Library was made an independent CONSER member in October, 2001, and we have had a very productive year. Our CONSER statistics for fiscal year 2002 (July 2001-June 2002) are as follows:

Authenticated Original Records--Full/Core - 139
Authenticated Original Records--Minimal - 2
Authentications of Existing Records--Full/Core - 93
Authentications of Existing Records--Minimal - 0
Subsequent Record Authentications--Full/Core - 11
Subsequent Authentications--Minimal - 2
Maintenance of Authenticated Records - 334
Maintenance of Non-CONSER Records - 96
TOTAL - 677

We expect there will be some changes in our productivity next year, however, because we have lost a professional serials cataloger and will not be able to replace him, due to budget problems. We have made some changes to our local CONSER policies. Initially, we were upgrading everything that we could to CONSER. That added to our local processing costs, though, because our policy had been to accept much non-CONSER copy as is.

Therefore, we have decided that if the non-CONSER copy is good enough for us to use as is, we will not upgrade it to CONSER. If we have to make minor changes to the copy, we will do it in OCLC (so others can benefit from our work) but we will not upgrade it to CONSER. If we have to make major changes to the copy, which usually involves a professional cataloger anyway, we will upgrade the record to CONSER.

We will continue to create a CONSER record for all original cataloging, unless there is a specific reason not to do so, such as we do not have the language expertise to establish headings, we are using latest entry for some reason, or we are very unsure about our choice of entry or other access points. We will also continue to close out the CONSER record for the old title of a title change if it hasn't already been done.

We have also decided to change our policy for cataloging of free Internet resources (as an alternative to not cataloging them at all because of budget problems). Instead of creating full AACR2 records, we are deriving Dublin Core like records in Connexion and bringing them into our local catalog without upgrading them to AACR2. Those records will not be CONSER. They will, however, have PURLs.

We have been active in the CONSER PURL Pilot this year. I wrote some procedures for my staff, which have been posted on the CONSER PURL Pilot website. From Jan.-June 2002 we created 32 PURLs for serials, 19 for monographs, and 13 for integrating resources, making a total of 64 PURLs created.

University of Florida

CONSER projects, committees and task forces.

UF participated in the PURL pilot project, contributing about 12 PURLs, and we have found it to be very helpful in providing better, easier access and maintenance for our free online resources. We hope to add several more PURLs in the year ahead, now that our staff position dealing with electronic journals has been restored (see "Staff issues" below).

Naomi Young helped draft a proposal regarding a "Single Record for Multiple Distributors of an Electronic Journal." The proposal was received with interest at the OpCo meeting in May, and has since been revised and submitted to the larger serials community.

Naomi is also serving on the CONSER task force on FRBR and Continuing Resources, and created a mailing list to make it easier for the group to communicate.

CONSER contributions

Our statistics for the reporting year to date are only slightly lower than last year (249 vs. 266); by the time the year officially ends we should have bested last year's total. We've been able to increase the number and timeliness of our maintenance contributions through increased communication with our branch and acquisitions staff.

Our original and upgraded records have been concentrated in core collection areas of Floridiana (including many titles as part of a SOLINET preservation project) and Latin American/Caribbean Studies. We've been somewhat hampered in our ability to contribute in the area of electronic resources, because our use of the single-record approach makes maintenance of the online record on OCLC added work with no local benefit.

Staff issues

We began the year with the hiring of a new staff member in Serials Cataloging, Jessica York, who was promoted as the year came to a close. She has an aptitude for seeing the complexities of serials, and has been a marvelous addition to the unit. Her new job will have a significant focus on web serials, and she has already started maintenance work on one of our large packages.

Local issues

We continue to move toward implementation of Aleph, examining our work flows and doing various local cleanup projects. We will be implementing predictive check-in with the advent of Aleph, and so hope to revitalize our participation in the Pattern Initiative.

University of Georgia

Between October 2001 and August 2002 the University of Georgia contributed to CONSER 82 original records, authenticated 107 records, andcompleted subsequent authentication on 25 records. UGA performed maintenance on 641 authenticated records. This will amount to a slight overall increase from 2000/2001.

UGA continues to input publication patterns. Between October 2001 and August 2002 UGA input 1217 new patterns, 95 subsequent patterns, and modified 741 existing patterns. The bulk of pattern input was performed by Renee Blakey, who devoted much time and energy to participation in thePublication Pattern Initiative. In April 2002 Beth Jedlicka became a member of the Publication Pattern Initiative Workflow Task Group and helped work on a workflow questionnaire and a FAQ.

Beth Jedlicka contributed time this year to SCCTP training. In January she attended the train-the^Vtrainer sessions for the advanced and e-serial workshops. Beth taught two SCCTP basic workshops. The first wasSeptember 25/26 2001 in Ft. Lauderdale, and the second was a delightful workshop at Milsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi April 11-12, 2002.

University of Maryland

Carlen Ruschoff, UM's Director of Technical Services, is the new Chair of the CONSER Task Force on Publication Patterns and Holdings. Carlen's term as one of two CONSER rotating members to the Program for Cooperative Cataloging's Policy Committee ends in September 2002. Jeanne Baker, UM's representative to the CONSER Operations Committee, was accepted as a trainer for CONSER's Serial Cataloging Cooperative Training Program's two new courses, the Advanced Serials Cataloging Workshop and the Electronic Serials Cataloging Workshop. Jeanne will be teaching her first Electronic Serials Cataloging Workshop, sponsored by the Maryland Library Association, on September 27. Jeanne is a member of the Workflow Task Group of CONSER's Task Force on Publication Patterns and Holdings. Jeanne continues until Oct. 2002 as a member of the PCC's Standing Committee on Automation.

University of Michigan

In Sept. 2001, Constance McGuire joined the Serials Cataloging Unit. Connie had most recently worked at ProQuest Information and Learning Company, and had spearheaded ProQuest's involvement in providing aggregator records for the various ProQuest databases; her primary area of focus will be overseeing the cataloging of the Labadie Collection serials. In Dec. 2001, the unit achieved full staffing for the first time in four years with the hiring of a paraprofessional cataloging assistant, James Latchney: Jim is in the final year of earning his Master's degree in library science from Wayne State University and is making quite a contribution to the unit in the short time he has been a member of our staff. Due to the demands of training and lack of fully-trained personnel, our CONSER contributions were a bit limited this year: With the ongoing training of these two new staff members, and the continuing training of the paraprofessional electronic serials cataloger, Mars deRitis, there have been only two people in the Unit to do the CONSER cataloging, Tom Champagne, Head of the Serials Cataloging Unit, and a long-term Unit staff member, Catherine McKillop, a paraprofessional serials cataloging assistant.

Two Serials Cataloging staff were heavily involved in efforts to help the Library explore options for migrating to a new library management system. Both Tom Champagne and Jim Latchney served on functional teams for a new library management system: Tom on the Bibliographic and Metadata team; Jim on the Acquisitions/Serials/Fund Accounting team. Jim served as the point person for developing the bindery functional requirements and for evaluating each of the demonstrated systems relative to binding. In May 2002, after a 15-month process to identify functional requirements for a new library management system, develop an RFP, evaluate vendor responses to the RFP, develop demo scenarios, and evaluate vendor demonstrations, the University Library System selected Ex Libris for its next library system vendor. The Library is planning on implementing Ex Libris' Aleph, SFX and MetaLib systems to replace the current NOTIS (used for the catalog and all "public" services) and Innovative Interfaces (used for monograph and serials acquisitions) systems we are currently using. Our planned implementation date is now May/June 2004. (For more information, visit http://www.lib.umich.edu/staff/committees/lms/ ). In preparation for our future migration, Acquisitions/Serials Division staff have already begun a number of pre-migration cleanup projects: Serial Records staff of the Central Serial Record (manual card file), and Serials Cataloging staff of NOTIS records.

The majority of the University of Michigan's CONSER contributions continue to be electronic resource records, primarily for JSTOR. During the year, Serials Cataloging staff also cataloged CIC consortially-licensed titles from Kluwer and Synergy, as well as cataloging additional licensed content from BioOne, Ingenta, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, the Nature Publishing Group, SourceOECD, and Stat!Ref. Additional aggregators cataloged locally during the year include WilsonSelectPlus, Chadwyck-Healey's International Index to Black Periodicals Full Text, Eastviews' Database of Social Sciences and Humanities and Universal Database of CIS & Baltic Periodicals, and the American Psychological Association's PsycArticles service.

The Library is undertaking a project to "map" Library of Congress classification numbers to broad subject topics as an aid to creating browse lists for the public display of electronic journals, new books, and potentially for other services as well, offered via the Library's World Wide Web site. We hope that this mapping process will replace the manual serials cataloging work of inputting a static local topical heading to each electronic serial record, as well as making it possible to make topical browse lists possible for resources that are not currently getting local topical headings assigned (e.g., online monographs). (For more information, visit http://www.lib.umich.edu/staff/browse/

University of Texas at Austin

CONSER productivity jumped substantially during this year, as a result of an NEH grant-funded project. The project microfilmed and cataloged some 550 Mexican newspapers from the early 20th century; full-level CONSER authenticated records were provided for all the original newspapers as well as for the three generations of microfilm produced. One new twist to UT's CONSER activity was that some of the newspapers do not belong to us, but were borrowed for filming, primarily from Tulane University in New Orleans. Those were cataloged as well, marking the first time Texas has cataloged serials belonging to another institution.

Other CONSER work continued, as always, to be almost exclusively for Latin American serials. A special group of materials in this year's workflow was a collection of serials published primarily in Bahia, Brazil in the 1970's and 80's, mostly from labor organizations and student political groups. Work also continued on the usual assortment of new receipts, materials from the backlog, and title or format changes. Non-commercial Latin American serials are increasingly becoming available free on the Web, either instead of or in addition to paper format, so the necessary re-cataloging and maintenance of URLs occupies an increasing amount of cataloger time.

University of Washington

Renovation work for seismic upgrades and program improvements continued to impact the University of Washington Libraries and the Serials Cataloging Section during 2001-2002. The Section was housed off-campus at Sand Point, a former U.S. military base. It made work more complicated, as we still had meetings and needed to consult serial titles housed on campus.

The Serials Cataloging Section had a staffing change this year. Kristynn Johnson filled a copy cataloger vacancy in August 2001; Stephanie Sheppard continued as a temporary serials cataloger in the section. We worked on the usual tasks related to cataloging of new serial titles, title changes, and maintenance work, and also serials retrospective conversion. Print, microfilm and electronic serial titles remained the foci of our cataloging work and, for retrospective conversion, recon of the Periodicals Collection was completed and work begun on remaining currently received titles.

The UW Libraries, as a member of the International Coalition of Newspapers (ICON) project, had received an NEH grant last year for inventorying, microfilming and cataloging foreign newspapers. Serials catalogers continued work on cataloging our foreign newspaper collection.

CONSER statistics from the Serials Cataloging Section and the East Asia Library for 2001-2002 totaled 3305, with 1081 titles authenticated (down from 1387 in 2000-2001) and 2224 titles maintained (up from 1939 the previous year). We continued to authenticate some of our catalog records at minimal (68 titles) or core level (91 titles). We also maintained 252 non-CONSER records in OCLC as part of our CONSER work.

Several related efforts are underway within the Libraries to develop and/or implement better systems for accessing and managing electronic resources. Staff within the Serials Services Division has contributed to these efforts, including the acquisition, from an outside source, of holdings data for our electronic resources. This data will be integrated into our local catalog records and maintained through periodic updates.

Kristin Lindlan, Steve Shadle and Jim Stickman contributed to CONSER- and PCC-related activities. Jim served on the PCC Policy Committee and Kristin on the CONSER Operations Committee. With Meg Mering, University of Nebraska, Kristin completed work on the SCCTP "Advanced Serials Cataloging Workshop" trainee and instructor manuals to be used for a two-day workshop. She helped "train the trainers" in New Orleans January 16 and 17, 2002. Steve Shadle continued to serve on the CONSER Electronic Serials Expert Group and the SCCTP Advisory Group. With Les Hawkins, Library of Congress, he completed work on the manuals for trainees and instructors for the SCCTP's one-day workshop on "Electronic Serials Cataloging" and "trained the trainers" in Toronto, January 30.

Return to the CONSER Annual Report

Library of Congress