PCC Participants' Meeting

January 14, 2001 7:00-9:00 pm Hotel Washington Ballroom

Summary

Welcome and Opening Remarks

The regular members' meeting of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging was opened at 7:00 p.m. by chair Marjorie Bloss with nearly 100 people in attendance. Bloss quickly reviewed the numerous personnel changes in the composition of the Policy Committee, beginning with her own resignation and replacement by Larry Alford, effective with the close of this meeting. Robert Wolven will succeed Larry Alford as Chair-Elect.

Secondly, the large advances in training within the PCC were highlighted. CONSER has developed a highly popular program for serials training, SCCTP. Over fifty sessions have been offered at many locations over the past year. A "training the trainer" session for the new serials holding course was held at this ALA. A "Training the NACO trainer" course was also successfully conducted at this ALA, as were two SACO workshops in special topics for 64 participants from 30 institutions. BIBCO and NACO, too, had a wide-ranging year of training new institutions, and of in-house training as current members expand their participation to include more staff members.

Thirdly, Bloss stressed the growing presence of international members of the PCC. In the past year, training has taken place in Argentina, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, and Wales, with training planned in Mexico. All these new members are already active contributors to their respective PCC programs.

Finally, separate causes during the year had led to each of the PCC's primary programs, CONSER and BIBCO, to spend a portion of their ALA meetings in "visioning exercises". One was the Library of Congress Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control, and the other was the desire to produce wish lists for the utilities in view of the impending OCLC new system.

Standing Committee Reports

Standing Committee on Standards (SCS)

Ann Caldwell, chair, introduced the current members of her committee, and related their completed, ongoing, and future activities.

Business nearing completion includes the distribution of recommendations put forth by the Task Groups on Audiovisuals, on Cross References; and the Task Group on the 042. An interim report from the Task Group on Multiple Manifestations has been placed on the website, and the Core Record for Maps will soon follow.

New Task Groups in the process of formation include, a joint Task Group with the Standing Committee on Training, on PCC approaches to dealing with the AACR2 revisions on integrating resources; a Task Group on Conference Publications; a Task Group on the Function of the Authority File; and a Task Group on Earlier-Later Subject Heading Displays.

A particular duty the SCS is attending is the revision and harmonization of the already existing Core Standards. Caldwell made special note of the impending rotation of three committee members off the SCS, and asked for volunteers to contact her.

Standing Committee on Training (SCT)

Carol Hixson, chair, reviewed the reports of four Task Groups, all of which are mounted on the SCT website.

The Task Group on NACO Continuing Education is developing a curriculum. The SACO participants manual has nearly been completed, with hopes for its publication in time for ALA-Annual. The BIBCO participants manual will be loosely based on the CONSER editing guide (CEG), as far as organization goes, but will not go into the CEG's depth of detail. The joint Task Group on Implementing Integrating Resources (with the SCS) will operate on a short schedule, with a report due by April for discussion at the May CONSER and BIBCO operations committee meetings.

Also, joint interests in cataloger education with ALCTS have led to the appointment of Carol Hixson as the PCC liaison to that body.

Standing Committee on Automation (SCA)

Karen Calhoun, chair, took participants through the present hot spots of automation development in PCC activities.

The Task Group on Full Text Journals in Aggregator Databases announced that Bell and Howell has produced a MARC record set, based on CONSER records and produced according to the specifications prepared last year by the task group, for the titles in its ProQuest product. The Gale Group is also developing a record set for their InfoTrac Web periodical products.

The final report of the SCA Task Group on Automated Classification was reviewed and approved by the SCA at the Midwinter conference. The task group found that "substantial opportunities exist for library software vendors to enhance their products to assist with the generation of classification and call numbers." The SCA agreed that the next steps should be making integrated library system (ILS) vendors aware of the task group's recommendations. The next step is to seek the report's approval by the PCC Policy Committee.

A first meeting was held at Midwinter on the SCA's newest initiative: the Task Group on OCLC Batch Processing, chaired by Edward Weissman (Cornell University). The task group charge, which has now been approved by the PCC Policy Committee, will be available soon from the PCC SCA Web site. At its Midwinter meeting, the group agreed that its next step will be to conduct a brief survey to evaluate the batch loading needs of PCC libraries.

Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium

Beacher Wiggins, Director for Cataloging, Library of Congress, gave a short overview of the Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium. He went on to discuss the eleven recommendations of the conference, highlighting especially those which the PCC could most profitably participate in. The set of recommendations were meant to help LC in bringing bibliographic control to new types of material, which it has never before collected, and to set a tone for the profession as a whole. At this Midwinter ALA conference, LC management were discussing the recommendations in various fora to canvass support. By ALA Annual, in San Francisco, LC hopes to have sorted out which recommendations it will be able to fulfill solo; which recommendations will require partnership arrangements with other organizations; and which recommendations must be, regrettably, tabled.

The full list of recommendations can be found at the conference website.

Future Vision for the BIBCO and CONSER Programs

Beacher Wiggins' presentation led directly into the reports of the "visioning exercises" held earlier that day by CONSER-at-Large and BIBCO-at-Large. Sally Sinn, the leader of the CONSER discussion, and Jennifer Bowen, the facilitator of the BIBCO session, presented the results from each session. Both reports had remarkable similarities in their lists of program successes, challenges, and wish lists for the new OCLC relational database. Differences stemmed from the nature of the material each program focuses on (serials or monographs); treatment (single CONSER record or multiple bibliographic records); relations to utilities (CONSER participation is done entirely through OCLC while BIBCO work is done in both OCLC and RLG); and the age of the programs (CONSER well-established and BIBCO a relatively new program).

Strengths:

The BIBCO-at-Large meeting earlier that day listed as program strengths:

• Fostering of cooperation among producers of bibliographic records
• Production of ca. 400,000 bibliographic records to date
• More records of higher quality available for use
• Improved cataloger skills
• Attention has been re-focused on providing access to resources
• Increased communication among institutions and within institutions between technical and public services staff
• Acceptance of differences in non-essential areas of records
• Less LC-Centric
• Model of a successful, broad-based participatory, program

The CONSER-at-Large meeting on Sunday morning listed these strengths:

• Focus on serials
• Standards
• CONSER single database in one utility (OCLC)
• Stability and consistency: the CONSER coordinator at the Library of Congress, and the inclusive membership of the CONSER Operations Committee
• Leadership: the ability as a program to anticipate and respond to issues
• Trust and collegiality

In both programs, these lists continue to be refined as discussion continues at meetings, and among members. For details and fuller explanations, see the respective websites of each program.

Challenges:

The BIBCO-At-Large meeting identified the following challenges:

• Documentation needs to be improved: at present it is either scattered, sketchy, or non-existent
• Core record: misunderstood and under-utilized
• Expertise sharing: due to lack of communication; need to develop network so that participants can seek help from others in specialized areas.
• More SACO: both training and more contributions are needed
• Ongoing training needs to be made available
• Quality awareness needs to be strenghtened both within and outside the Program.
• Staffing to support BIBCO needs to be bolstered
• Stable funding source needs to be found to support training, documentation, staffing, etc.

CONSER's list of challenges included:

• Focus/scope: should it be broadened beyond English-language records for serials not cataloged according to AACR2 and MARC 21; or to other continuing resources?
• Standards: expanding contributions beyond current limits will require more work; at the same time, current standards are sometimes a roadblock to new members
• Database: the strength of a single CONSER database in OCLC also precludes participation by non-OCLC members
• Stability and consistency: with growth in membership, can an inclusive Operations Committee be sustained? The stability in personnel gives rise to questions about succession training
• Funding and institutional support

In both programs, these lists continue to be refined as discussion continues at meetings, and among members. For details and fuller explanations, see the respective websites of each program.

Utilities Wish Lists:

As a result of a presentation made by the OCLC representative at the November PCC Policy Committee meeting, both Operations Committees spent a part of their sessions compiling wish lists for functions not only for the new OCLC system but also for possible incorporation into the RLIN structure.

BIBCO:

1. Validation of headings on bibliographic records; linked authority control
2. Record distribution between OCLC and RLIN
3. Batch-loaded BIBCO records to overlay others
4. SACO and Classification workflow online in the utilities per the NACO model
5. BFM: Correction of bibliographic records in the utilities' databases
6. Series numbering should file/sort in the utilities as PCC Task Group has recommended for vendors of local systems
7. Ability to import records from remote databases into the utility database

CONSER:

1. External links to related records or databases
2. Internal links: make better use of linking fields
3. Automated creation of links
4. Batch loading of maintenance transactions
5. Ability to batch lock and replace groups of records
6. Ability to maintain URLs outside of bibliographic records

The CONSER and BIBCO lists, with further details, of successes, challenges, and wishes for the utilities are separately mounted on their web sites.

• A brief discussion from the floor ensued, adding these points to a wish list:
• More search capabilities of the MARC 21 tagging in the records in the utilities, including the 007 and 008 fields.
• The ability to see all in process authority records in OCLC, as members can do in RLIN
• Ability of RLIN members to do CONSER work
• OCLC credits for BIBCO members who provide a classification number to records that did not contain a number in that system
• ISSN records available in the utility databases

Certificates of Appreciation

A certificate of appreciation on behalf of the PCC was given by Marjorie Bloss to Maureen Finn, departing OCLC representative. The new OCLC representative, Glen Patton, accepted for her. Further certificates were given to institutions which had participated in follow up projects to the Pinyin conversion.

Closing remarks

John Byrum, chief, Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division, Library of Congress, on behalf of the PCC Steering Committee, presented Marjorie Bloss with a certificate of appreciation, an artisan pottery bowl and volume about the potter in thanks for her work over her term in office.