PCC Participants' Meeting Summary

ALA Annual Conference
Atlanta, Georgia
June 16, 2002

Larry Alford, Chair of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) opened the Participant's Meeting by welcoming the audience to the 10^th anniversary celebration of the founding of the PCC, and extended an especially warm welcome to the panelists, Brian Schottlaender (University of California, San Diego), Sally Sinn (National Agricultural Library), and Sarah E. Thomas (Cornell University), referring to them as the founding "mothers" of the PCC.

Alford announced the election results of the PCC Policy Committee (PoCo). Slated to join the PCC October 1, 2002, are: Roxanne Sellberg (Northwestern) as the BIBCO representative, Carlen Ruschoff (Maryland) as the CONSER representative, and William Garrison (Colorado) as the NACO representative.

Alford presented an overview of the PCC program which began in 1992 with NCCP and CONSER participants were invited to LC for a discussion on the future of monographic cooperative cataloging. Using CONSER as the programmatic model for development of a rejuvenated cooperative effort, the mission and goals formulated at that meeting remain the PCC's bedrock. Alford highlighted the history and the achievements of the PCC during its decade of existence.

He presented a comprehensive list of "founding family" members in 1992, complete with institutional affiliation and reiterated the mission and goals of the PCC that were an outcome of the first meeting. Those goals were 1) to increase availability of cataloging records in a timely, more efficient, and cost effective manner; 2) to provide a forum for discussion and planning; 3) to develop mutually-acceptable standards for cataloging; 4) to explore international partnerships; and 5) to share expertise. Immediate results of the founding meeting included the development of task groups to determine how to accomplish the stated goals. NACO became the first official component of the PCC, and the training format which began as a two-week NACO workshop with one-to-one instruction at LC was transformed into a week-long classroom session onsite with group instruction. In addition, standardized NACO training materials were designed. SACO became the 2nd official component and CONSER was officially folded into the PCC organization in 1995.

The Program continued to flourish with a focus on communication, training, and documentation with an aim at diversification of membership to several specialized groups including public libraries, law libraries, and format-specific libraries. Diversification also focused on multi-library projects and component programs were expanded to include non-English speaking countries. The statistical highlights show the growth and diversity of the Program:

In summary, Alford offered his futuristic impression of cooperative cataloging and stated that "principles of access and organization that we provide as librarians are vital; skills of professional staff are needed more than ever, but librarians must focus their efforts on the user and not get lost in these debates of methodology for providing access." Alford drew attention to the need for exercising cataloger's judgment and maintained that it is prudent to create a culture in which catalogers look continuously at the cost benefit of their work and not allow that calculation of cataloging effort to be solely in the hands of library administrators.

After his presentation, Alford turned over the meeting to PCC Chair-Elect, Bob Wolven (Columbia) who moderated the panel presentations that focused on a retrospective of expectations and accomplishments and future prospects of the PCC.

First to speak was Brian Schottlaender (Chair of the PCC, 1998-1999). He began his presentation by paraphrasing Shakespeare proclaiming that he had "come to neither bury nor praise the PCC", but to give it a performance evaluation. The yardstick used to measure the success of the PCC was to pit the achievements of the program against the projected goals during the course of the past 10 years. Schottlaender quoted from the PCC Strategic Plan, 1997-2002 stepping through each of the goals, which outline how the program intends to implement its mission statement.

Citing Goal 1 (Databases) that speaks to the increasing the availability of bibliographic and authority records by cataloging more resources and cataloging in a cost-effective manner, Schottlaender quoted from program statistics which demonstrates that the Program has increased its production of bibliographic records 83% since 1997. He predicted that the CONSER database would reach the 1 million record mark within the next three years and noted the increase in international program participation that includes members from Argentina to Wales, virtually an A-to-Z panoply of foreign support. Schottlaender moved to Goal 2 (Standards) and cited the development of the core record standards, which are the vehicles developed by the PCC to carry out Goal 1. He listed the core standards that have been approved and noted that the standard itself can be used by any library, regardless of PCC participation. In pointing to objective 3 of goal 2 which calls on the PCC to "provide timely and high quality documentation" he cited the number of Program materials and FAQs available via the PCC web site.

Schottlaender gave the Program kudos for Goal 3 (Leadership). In his evaluation he especially lauded CONSER's Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program and noted that in this training program the actual training workshops are provided by library associations, networks, and individual institutions. Schottlaender gave high marks to the Program for not shying away from looking at itself and pointed to the Banush study: "BIBCO Core Record Study (June 11, 2001) and to the Letarte/Turvey study: "User Perspectives on The Program For Cooperative Cataloging BIBCO Core Record Standard (September 30, 2001) to demonstrate the high level of thought provoking findings and recommendations.

Of this leadership goal Schottlaender went on to state that this was the "weakest link" in the Program. The fact that the uptake of the core record concept is slow is problematic because the situation it was developed to address--namely, that there is considerably more material to catalog than there are people to catalog it --has not gone away. In the digital environment, the latter problem is more pressing now than it was ten years ago when the PCC was conceived. If ever there was a time for the PCC to "contribute to the identification and resolution of emerging issues related to bibliographic access," it is now. This is an issue for the PoCo to focus on in their November 2002 deliberations. Nevertheless, a very positive assessment of the Program from the former Chair who continues in the forefront of the global library community.

Next to speak was Sally Sinn (Chair of the PCC, 1999-2000) who focused her comments on a review of Program expectations. She praised the PCC for its successful consolidation of component programs but pointed out that the Program has a continued need to grow and expand and increase membership. Sinn focused much of her discourse on the core record. During her tenure as Chair she felt that the core record was a concept that couldn't lose and in retrospect finds it puzzling that use of the core standard was not embraced immediately. She postulated that it simply was the issue of concept vs. practice that stalled its use and noted that the recent Letarte study research suggested pulling back from the core record and looking at user needs. Sinn asserted that the core standard has been a success as a "practice" standard, but its real success is that of a catalyst for making librarians think about what we do and why. Sinn suggested that the catalog record is a paradigm, and cautioned the audience to beware of that paradigm, in much the same way that the 4-wheeled vehicle has become a paradigm of transportation, why should we look askance if we are presented with a 3-wheeled vehicle with the same capability? Another transportation analogy Sinn used was that of the horse-driven buggy and the use of the buggy whip. She maintained that perhaps the conveyance or how hard we drive it is not the issue, but it is the destination that is more important. Sinn reiterated the strength of the BIBCO program lies in its "values training," and maintained that cataloger judgment has done much to help alleviate backlogs.

The last speaker, Sarah Thomas (Cornell University, Chair of the PCC, 1996-1998), provided the audience a reminiscent look at the PCC's decade of existence. She delighted the audience with her opening comments by reciting the short poem "Resolve" by Archie Ammons. "We must work in the spirit of unity and cooperation: I'll supply the unity and you supply the cooperation." Thomas noted that the PCC is a true model of "unity and cooperation" and called the PCC a remarkable grassroots accomplishment. She stated that when the meeting to discuss the future of NCCP took place in 1992, she thought she heard the death knell for cooperative cataloging programs but instead, ten years later, there is now a stronger, more vibrant program than ever before. Thomas recalled the founding meeting of the Cooperative Cataloging Council (CCC) and named the individual member makeup of that initial meeting, calling them a powerful "sisterhood" (noting John D. Byrum (Library of Congress) as the only male member of the group). In looking to the future, Thomas rhetorically asked where are we as catalogers going? She expressed that there is a changing dynamic in the catalog and noted that it is growing increasingly difficult to integrate the different types of materials in any number of formats with the myriad number and types of institutions. Thomas challenged the audience to think about new metadata schemes that may be on the horizon to cause a shift yet again in our preconceived methodologies of knowledge organization. Thomas insisted that we as librarians must continue to work cooperatively. She predicted development of regional processing centers where cataloging for many institutions occurs with fewer catalogers to be found in individual institutions. She offered that these regional centers will facilitate the number of materials available to the users.

Wolven then opened the floor for questions and comments. Regina Reynolds (NSDP, Library of Congress) provided the first audience comment about the Letarte study. She suggested that there is an inherent danger in reacting to user studies and further pondered if users do really know what they want. In response, Sinn cautioned that if librarians avoid focusing on what users want, that we essentially are ignoring users' behavior. She added that reference librarians often try to supply users with what they want, and not what they ask for.

Duane Arenales (National Library of Medicine) commented to the panel on the fact that users are not homogeneous and that the variety of materials in a variety of formats require different levels of bibliographic control. Consequently, it is not desirable to "give everyone the same thing". Schottlaender reacted to the comment and agreed that just as users are not homogeneous, so too is the nature of materials increasingly heterogeneous.

Adam Schiff (University of Washington) commented that much of the Program's growth and expansion had been noted by each of the speakers, but questioned whether they felt there was a limit to the eventual size of the PCC. Sinn responded that there were no limits regarding the size to which the PCC could potentially grow; Thomas agreed. However, John Attig (Pennsylvania State University) theorized that a limit to the size of the PCC did exist and that the limit was based on the number of available catalogers. Schottlaender responded that the joint ALCTS (Association for Library and Information Science Education)/ALISE (Association for Library and Information Science Education) Task Force working on Item 5.1 in the LC Action Plan is developing a plan for increasing the number of available catalogers.

Wolven concluded the panel presentation by acknowledging two additional former PCC chairs among the audience members namely, Michael Kaplan, and Marjorie Bloss. Alford then took a brief moment to present certificates to Jennifer Bowen, who is rotating off the PCC Policy Committee and to Carol Hixson, outgoing Chair of the Standing Committee on Training. Before closing the meeting, Wolven recognized Alford as outgoing Chair of the PCC and presented Alford with gifts from the Steering Committee and Policy Committee members. Sincere appreciation was given to Solinet for its generous support of the PCC and for its sponsorship of the evening's event and the delicious 10^th anniversary celebration cake.