PCC Participants’ Meeting Summary
ALA 2005 Annual Conference

Roxanne Sellberg, chair of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), opened the PCC Participants’ Meeting at the 2005 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago by describing the purpose and organization of the PCC. She introduced the evening’s speakers and acknowledged members of the Library of Congress (LC) Cooperative Cataloging Team, the past chair and chair-elect of PCC, the guest speaker, members of the Policy Committee (PoCo), the PCC secretariat, chairs and members of the standing committees, and the Cooperative Online Serials (CONSER) and Monographic Bibliographic Record Program (BIBCO) coordinators.

State of the Program

Sellberg described the PCC’s vital signs as strong. From her perspective the organization is stable, but restless. She highlighted accomplishments for the first half of Fiscal Year 2005 to underscore the program’s stability. She said that PCC members produced nearly 80,000 name authority records during this period. The Program welcomed new BIBCO member Harvard Yenching Library and new CONSER member Michigan State University as well as six new Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO) members—National Indian Law Library, Dartmouth College, University of Iowa, University of Iowa Law Library, School of Visual Arts in New York City, and Brooklyn Museum. New funnel projects include the National Library of Australia and funnels in Canada, Tennessee, Montana, and Virginia. Westminster College and Idaho State University joined existing funnels. Sellberg noted that there were three new PoCo members—Mechael Charbonneau (Indiana University), Rebecca Mugridge (Pennsylvania State University), and Carlen Ruschoff (University of Maryland). She also commended David Banush (Cornell University) for his term as chair of the Standing Committee on Training and announced that Caroline Miller will succeed him as chair. Sellberg frequently mentioned other statistics; for an indepth report, please visit Midyear FY05 statistics

The second part of Sellberg’s remarks were directed toward the development and maintenance of documentation in support of programs and training. She mentioned the fall 2004 release of a new edition of the BIBCO training manual, current work on the revision of the NACO Participants’ Manual, and plans for a Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program (SCCTP) workshop manual. She announced that reports of the Task Group on Linking Entries, Task Group on Monographic Aggregators, and Publications History Records Task Force could be found on the PCC Web site. New task groups recently charged or in the process of being charged are the Task Group on Normalization; a group to evaluate LC’s policy on access-level records for Internet resources; and a group to evaluate LC’s initiative on copy cataloging of serials. She also mentioned efforts to improve cooperation with the vendor community; to provide series training, online training, and continuing education for catalogers; and to partner with the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services on training programs and LC’s Cataloging Distribution Service on providing online access to training resources. She reported that training activities expanded measurably with NACO training at the British Library, series training at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, training events at ALA conferences, and 33 SCCTP workshops planned for 2005.

She concluded by remarking that there is ample evidence that PCC is alive and functioning. However, it is restless because an organization powered by cataloging professionals and directed by library administrators cannot be otherwise. It is not clear what the future holds, but she is certain there has never been a time when the potential for change has been greater. The new tactical plan for the next two years reflects the compromise that is needed during this period of transition. However, the focus remains on training, automation support, partnership with information providers, improving community awareness of program, and developing policy-level leadership. It is the PoCo’s job to develop the strategic plan that will set the course for the long-term. An unprecedented number of PCC leaders were consulted by the PoCo about their vision for the future. The next step was to form a task group to compose a draft vision statement. At this conference, PoCo held a special meeting to talk about the various views and focus on reaching consensus about the mission statement. Sellberg noted that her time as chair has been one marked by a period of churning that is unrelated to these plans. Issues surrounding LC’s initiative on copy cataloging of serials and Resource Description and Access (RDA) have consumed much collective energy. The concerns about these and other issues remind her that some of the PCC’s core values such as efficiency, high quality, adherence to standards, and flexibility share an uneasy relationship with one another. She is also reminded of the different perspectives held by those representing the policy level of the organization and those representing working catalogers. The struggle over what the PCC’s role should be in the implementation of RDA highlights the need to work together and to continue to build on the organization’s positive achievements as it looks to the future.

Keynote Address:

Reading Alphabet Soup: RDA, the JSC, the PCC, and the Future of Cataloging

Matthew Beacom (former ALA representative to and past chair of the Joint Steering Committee (JSC) for Revision of AACR as well as current chair of the JSC Working Group on AACR3 Outreach) spoke about the relationship between the ongoing changes to the cataloging rules and the PCC. He contrasted the purpose of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR)--to describe and organize library resources to support their discovery and use--with the purpose of the PCC--to cooperatively increase quality and quantity of library cataloging (or more, better, faster, cheaper). He stressed the importance of remembering that AACR is part of the larger activity of cataloging library materials and that the PCC is a group concerned with the whole of that larger activity. Although the PCC is not responsible for the rules, standards, and protocols that shape cataloging work, it can influence changes in these guidelines through feedback.

To predict the future, Beacom drew on the writings of Dale Flecker (Harvard University Library), Lorcan Dempsey (OCLC), Deanna Marcum (LC), and Roy Tennant (California Digital Library—all of whom have described the emerging information environment of which libraries and catalogs are a part. According to Beacom, the environment they comment on is the domain of RDA and the PCC.

Flecker described the impact on online public access catalogs (OPACs) as they become one tool among many. He noted that OPACs must become adaptive and integrative tools to survive in the larger information environment and to avoid being marginalized.

In a June 20, 2005 weblog Dempsey stated, "We need to find better ways of putting the library in the user environment, and not expect the user always to find his or her way to the library environment." Beacom’s interpretation of this statement is that the library—not just the catalog—must be projected into the workflows and behaviors of information users. He explained that the idea of the catalog as an ideal tool for research is moot in the fluid information “multiverse.” The metadata for objects in collections--whether tangible or digital, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Resources (FRBR) work or FRBR item--must be organized in ways that support the use and reuse of data in a variety of tools and services. Beacom said that in the information multiverse, improved catalogs are just one tool for finding and using resources; one that libraries and their host institutions will continue to need in order to manage their resources because Google is insufficient.

Marcum questioned whether the library community should proceed with AACR3 in light of this much-changed environment. Beacom believes her argument leads one to question why resources should be cataloged at all if full text is available online to search engines and their customers. He noted that this argument could be extended to ask why collect resources in the first place if they are available, findable, and useable online.

In a 2004 Library Journal article Tennant described his metadata woes after harvesting 100,000 records using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, which resulted in "a complete mess." The unsatisfactory result was caused, in part, because common guidelines and practices were not applied during creation of the content of the harvested metadata. Tennant reported on a level of chaos that counterpoints the promise of an "Age of Google."

Beacom described the multiple information universes in which RDA and PCC exist as the “information multiverse,” which includes Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) 21, and Google. He contrasted the bibliographic universe that focuses on books with the larger information environment encompassing cultural and information objects. Beacom stressed the importance of existing and thriving within multiple universes. To assure the value to users of certain tools such as metadata content standards (AACR and RDA), libraries’ services must be adaptive and integrative so that they blend with other information services. Furthermore, the services have to be built on some bedrock of knowledge or know how. Catalogers’ knowledge of content standards and of sharing effort, or cooperative cataloging, belongs within that bedrock and is firm ground on which cataloging professionals can build.

Beacom said that the critical difference between the past and the future is the expansion of domain from access to library materials through library catalogs to the creation of services in the information multiverse. The future role of RDA goes beyond AACR’s role as a content standard for describing and organizing library resources to support their discovery and use. He described RDA as a content standard for describing information resources, and for relating these resources to one another (and to other entities). RDA is designed for a digital networked environment that integrates with analog resources. He predicts that PCC’s future lies in promoting shared work in providing information services based on good quality metadata and cooperatively increasing the quality of information services by increasing production of good quality metadata.

Beacom concluded by suggesting that RDA gives the PCC opportunities to rethink its policies, practices, and plans. PCC can respond to RDA’s emphasis on simplifying rules and cataloger’s judgment by making changes to its documentation practices, and focusing on an educational role that includes retraining catalogers to function effectively in a diverse information environment. Other ideas include changing the name from Program for Cooperative Cataloging to Program for Cooperative Metadata; restructuring and unifying the organization by eliminating individual programs such as BIBCO and CONSER; expanding membership to include publishers, vendors, and users; expanding the domain from bibliographic control to metadata support for information services; and changing the culture to eliminate "us versus them" thinking.

Questions and Answers following Keynote Address

One audience member questioned whether discovery and use are two separate functions. He wondered if there would be further separation between the catalog (and related services) and discovery. He added that catalogs are promoted not only for discovery but also for a variety of operations that they support; some are user tasks and some are management tasks. He remarked that as new systems evolve the trend might be away from designing content standards that integrate all functions and toward developing ones that treat discovery as one aspect and managing Web services as another.

Beacom replied that there are multiple responsibilities. One responsibility is to expose resources to users so that they can locate and use them. Another responsibility is to manage physical collections. He suggested that thinking of the OPAC as a single way of finding and using collections keeps one from considering the alternatives. He noted that it is possible to separate the notion that the database supports the OPAC from the idea that the database supports all management activities. This makes it possible to imagine moving records into another environment more suitable for Internet resources discovery, e.g., one that feeds into a learning environment for students or another that provides an updating Web service that sends bulletins about new resources. Data could be extracted to form a third database designed specifically for management control.

Another participant asked about considering standards other than those used by PCC. Beacom said that using a guide such as Cataloging Cultural Objects instead of AACR or Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) instead of MARC is exactly what he is suggesting. He remarked that it is important for the PCC to broaden its horizons and expand its vision to explore standards such as those used by archives.

One participant noted that by being provocative, Beacom is helping PCC to move forward. The audience member’s institution had changed its name from Catalog Department to Data Services Department, and he noted that Beacom’s organization changed its name to Metadata Services Department. The participant said that the process of thinking about the PCC’s identity might be more important than the result of that thought process and suggested that it dovetails with the PCC’s new mission statement.

Sellberg suggested that instead of asking what RDA can do for the PCC, one should ask what the PCC can do for RDA. Both RDA and the PCC emphasize cataloger’s judgment. However, she thinks it will be difficult to do this in the context of the four PCC programs and their adherence to standards and rules. Beacom replied that the goal is to maximize the role of cataloger’s judgment and do it in a way that affects training materials.

An audience member asked if under RDA adherence to International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) is optional. Beacom responded that he thought this would be an area where the cataloging agency or group such as PCC would make a policy decision that catalogers would follow.

PCC Mission Statement

Carlen Ruschoff, chair of the Task Group on the PCC Mission Statement, spoke about the work of the Task Group that led to formulation of the new mission statement. Members of the committee are Cynthia Shelton (UCLA), Mark Watson (University of Oregon), Beacher Wiggins (LC), and Robert Wolven (Columbia University). The Task Group identified trends and issues that will impact the cataloging environment over the next five to seven years. Twelve basic assumptions were made about the future. Ruschoff noted that the resulting vision of the future was one in which catalogers did not create cataloging records for every resource. She also stated that the OPAC probably would not be the primary source for discovering resources. Based on these assumptions, the group identified nine roles for the PCC. The new mission statement was reviewed for comment at the spring Operations Committee’s meetings and revised based on comments received at that meeting. Ruschoff noted that one important addition was to include the end users’ perspective. The revised mission statement follows.

The Program for Cooperative Cataloging supports access to information resources, with a focus on the changing needs and expectations of the end user. The Program achieves its goals through cooperative efforts to increase cost-effective use and timely availability of authoritative records. These records are created via the traditional cataloging standards (currently AACR/MARC based) or derived from other bibliographic files and resources according to accepted standards. The Program assists with the promulgation of standards, develops education opportunities and training for catalogers, and influences the development of discovery tools in its support of record creation activity.

The full Task Group Report of the PCC Mission Statement is now available on the PCC Website.

Presentation of the PCC Certificates of Appreciation

Mark Watson, PCC Chair-Elect, closed the evening by presenting a PCC Certificate of Appreciation to four members of the Program. David Banush (Cornell University) was recognized for his contributions and leadership as chair of the Standing Committee on Training from October 2001 to the present. Arno Kastner (New York University) received a certificate for his contributions to the Policy Committee as a representative of the member NACO institutions. Roxanne Sellberg (Northwestern University Library) was cited for her leadership of the PCC Policy Committee and significant contributions as both a member and chair of the PCC. A certificate was presented to Rachel Wadham (Brigham Young University) for her many contributions and leadership as a member of the Standing Committee on Training in the areas of developing authorities and series training materials, and chairing the Task Group on Distance Learning.