Cooperative Cataloging Council

Foreign MARC Task Group

Final Report

Task Group Members: John Byrum (LC-Regional & Cooperative Cataloging Div.), chair, Marda Johnson (OCLC), Sally McCallum (LC-Network Development/MARC Standards Office), Ingrid Parent (National Library of Canada), Karen Smith-Yoshimura (RLG), Susan Tarr (LC-Cataloging Distribution Service)

GOAL: Increase the sharing and use of foreign bibliographic and authority records.

OBJECTIVE 1: Identify the sources of and increase the availability of foreign authority and bibliographic records.

RECOMMENDATION 1.1:

The Task Group recommends that an informal "Foreign MARC Coalition" be established to provide a mechanism for exchanging information related to the acquisition, analysis, conversion, and distribution of foreign MARC records. The Coalition will initially be comprised of representatives from the Library of Congress, National Library of Canada, OCLC, RLG, and ISM, and may be expanded to include other organizations which acquire foreign MARC records and express an interest in joining.

The Coalition will communicate primarily via an Internet mail reflector list, but will also use conference calls or meetings during other conferences as appropriate. The objectives of the coalition include (but are not be limited to):

1. Share information about large foreign bibliographic and authority files available in a MARC-compatible format.
2. Communicate coalition members' respective institutional priorities among prospective foreign MARC files using established criteria (see also Recommendation 1.3).
3. Indicate travel plans of officers from coalition member institutions to increase amount of direct contact with officials responsible for foreign MARC files (i.e., LC's or NLC's exchange partners or data distribution sources).
4. Help LC and NLC evaluate and respond to terms proposed by prospective exchange or data distribution partners.
5. Provide marketing information to LC and prospective partner to encourage the partners to expedite preparations for distribution.
6. Provide feedback on established foreign MARC services from LC.
7. Serve as a review group for standards issues that are not treated in other forums or that have special significance for use of foreign MARC data.
8. Identify opportunities to coordinate, share resources, and collaborate in the development and maintenance of foreign MARC conversion programs.
9. Urge major suppliers of foreign MARC records to adopt and use standard methods of entering data, including:
   1. The ISBDs as a framework for consistently entering needed bibliographic data elements, in the prescribed order, with the required punctuation.
   2. Character sets and transliteration schemes following published standards.
   3. An agreed-upon coding structure for access points so that each bibliographic agency can identify and manipulate the information appropriate to their individual catalogs.
   4. Standard methods of applying name and subject authorities allowing for multilingual indexing. This will entail use of standard romanization systems for languages written in non-Latin scripts.
10. Continue to encourage networking capabilities amongst agencies supplying bibliographic information (e.g., common formats, FTP, Z39.50).

RECOMMENDATION 1.2:

The Task Group recommends that LC-CDS investigate expanding current exchange or acquisition agreements to include non-book formats, initially placing emphasis on the serial and music formats.

RECOMMENDATION 1.3:

The Task Group recommends that the Coalition adopt criteria for evaluating the priorities assigned to the acquisition of foreign MARC records based on analysis of the records to be made available. Although the Task Group recognizes that all files would have some degree of value-- at the least as a resource file for reference or inter-library loan use-- the resources necessary for acquiring, converting and distributing these files should be focussed on expanding the availability of cataloging source copy. The following four priorities were established, assuming careful analysis of sample records by interested Coalition members:

1. Priority 1: Files which contain records which are currently unavailable for sharing in North America and are usable as cataloging source copy.
2. Priority 2: Files which contain records which are currently available from other sources (e.g., telnet via the Internet or CD-ROM products) and are usable as cataloging source copy.
3. Priority 3: Files which contain records currently unavailable for sharing in North America but are not usable as cataloging source copy without considerable additional effort.
4. Priority 4: Files which contain records which are currently available from other sources and are not easily used as cataloging source copy.

Elements which could increase the value of the files as cataloging source copy might include:

• timeliness
• lack of restriction on third-party use
• inclusion of non-book formats
• completeness, especially for the key matching fields which are used in matching programs at the utilities, and adheres to published bibliographic and character set standards.

Other important factors to be considered include: size of files (with priority given to large files for a greater cost- benefit ratio), price, availability of authority records, existence of romanized data which would have to be romanized locally, standardized access points, and the need or extent of demand for a particular file.

RECOMMENDATION 1.4:

The Task Group recommends that LC-CDS investigate making test files of new foreign MARC files available in advance of general distribution to potential subscribers.

OBJECTIVE 2: Enable and encourage the use of authority and bibliographic information created outside the U.S.

RECOMMENDATION 2.1:

The Task Group recommends that wherever use of USMARC is not practical, LC urge major suppliers and users of records to adopt and use UNIMARC for exchange purposes, thus limiting the number of programs necessary to convert records from other countries to two instead of many.

RECOMMENDATION 2.2:

The Task Group recommends that LC and NLC re-examine the possibility of aligning the USMARC and CAN/MARC formats during the next 18 months (coinciding with format integration implementation).

RECOMMENDATION 2.3:

The Task Group recommends that LC initiate and/or encourage efforts to promote development of international name authority files in which national variants or different cataloging standards could somehow be reflected and that LC investigate the possibility of an "Anglo-American" authority file with the National Library of Canada and British Library as a first step.

RECOMMENDATION 2.4:

In order to encourage more countries to adopt LCSH as a standard for subject analysis and thereby facilitate the exchange and use of bibliographic records amongst countries which use LCSH, the Task Group recommends that:

• The Library of Congress abandon its current policy of "literary warrant based on collections held at LC" and facilitate the addition of LCSH-compatible subject authorities to LCSH and make special efforts to accommodate subject heading proposals submitted by other national bibliographic services. As an immediate step, the Task Group further recommends adding English language terms from the Canadian Supplement to LCSH.
• The Coalition investigate future opportunities to develop and apply programs for machine conversion of access points from non-English languages. Realizing that such thesauri links would be an expensive undertaking, it is recommended that the initial efforts should make use of existing French language programs (Repertoire de vedettes-matiere produced by Universite Laval), and then broaden to other languages (most likely Spanish). In addition, other machine translation applications should be explored for such purposes as converting standard print constants into English.
• English to English incompatibilities (such as differing direct/indirect geographic subdivision practices used by LC and Australia) should be resolved whenever possible by negotiation to arrive at common cataloging standards, resorting to machine conversions only if agreements can not be reached.

RECOMMENDATION 2.5:

In order to facilitate the use of record matching programs used when loading foreign MARC records, the Task Group recommends that Coalition members identify and compile a list of key matching fields used which could be shared among Coalition members.

October 29, 1993.