BIBCO-At-Large Meeting Summary

ALA Midwinter Conference
San Diego Convention Center
San Diego, CA.
January 11, 2004

BIBCO Coordinator Ana Cristán opened the BIBCO-At-Large meeting at the ALA Midwinter Conference in San Diego by welcoming the audience with a review of recent activities. The PCC Policy Committee (PoCo) supported the instituion of a 100 bibliographic records per year contribution goals for the BIBCO program that is expected to have minimal impact on BIBCO membership. She thanked Jackie Byrd (Indiana University, Chair, Task Group to Survey PCC Libraries on Cataloging of Remote Access Resources) and Jimmie Lundgren (University of Florida, Chair, Task Group on SACO Program Development) and the task group members for their excellent work on behalf of BIBCO. The final reports of both these task groups are available on the PCC website. The SACO TG is report still under consideration by the PoCo and the Steering Committee and indications are that BIBCO members may be asked to play a role in mentoring SACO contributions by non-PCC members. This and other options will be the focus of discussion at the BIBCO OpCo meeting in May 2004. The new members of the BIBCO OpCo were announced, these are Rebecca Uhl (Arizona State University) and Caroline Miller (UCLA).

Cristán also thanked Judy Kuhagen, Senior Policy Specialist in the Cataloging Policy and Support Office of the Library of Congress, for conducting the "Series Workshop for BIBCO catalogers" on Friday that was attended by 27 catalogers from various BIBCO institutions. Kuhagen was then invited to address the audience concerning the revision of AACR2 rule 1.6B1 that deletes the reference to AACR2 rule 12.1B in regard to spelling inconsistencies that was a concern raised by BIBCO catalogers at the BIBCO-At-Large meeting in Philadelphia in January 2003. In support of BIBCO cataloging, Kuhagen's series workshop materials will be made available for PCC trainers and BIBCO liasions upon request by sending an e-mail to <acri@loc.gov >.

David Banush, Chair of the PCC Standing Committee on Training announced that the BIBCO training manual will be updated this year and that the PCC Steering Committee approved the requested funds for the three revisors. September 2004 is target date for that work.

The remainder of the meeting was turned over to Robert Ellett, catalog librarian at the Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC) in Norfolk, Va. Ellett is the BIBCO liaison for JFSC, a PCC regional trainer, and currently a doctoral candidate at Nova Southeastern University's Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences.

In support of his doctoral dissertation, Ellett conducted a survey on the acceptance and use of PCC records by non-PCC libraries. This study analyzed the acceptability of PCC records by examining how 72 libraries including academic, special, and public libraries used them during a two-month period. The presentation focused on the preliminary findings based on information gleaned from pre- and post-edited versions of bibliographic records coded “pcc” in the MARC 21 042 field. Glenn Patton (OCLC) provided the sample records and Kay Guiles (LC-CPSO) provided assistance in interpreting when LC replaced records from an earlier sample.

Ellett described how his research involved two techniques, namely email and telephone surveys to elicit if the participating libraries had policies about PCC record treatment and also review of the participants’ OCLC archive tapes to determine what modifications, if any, were made to the PCC records.

Of the 340 initial survey responses, mostly from academic libraries, less than one-third (32%) performed direct editing online in OCLC. The other 68% edited records offline or locally. This meant that the changes that are made locally did not show up on the OCLC archival tape, thus these libraries were excluded from the sample because a record of their modifications could not be obtained. Ellett explained that the breakdown of responses from those 72 institutions surveyed included 33 (46%) academic, 14 (19%) public, and 25 (35%) special libraries, all of which were OCLC cataloging members.

Ellett's preliminary findings point to the lack of awareness of non-PCC libraries in identifying PCC records. There is also some indication that editing of notes and non-access fields continues to be a priority for some institutions, although the most frequent significant change to the PCC records appears to be the addition of Dewey classification numbers in public libraries and the addition of LC classification numbers in GPO and NLM PCC records for academic and special libraries. Some institutions deleted 856 fields citing they did not want to keep up with URLs, including those that used PURLS; one special library responded that their institution did not want Internet sources referenced in their catalog records because of links’ dynamic nature.

Overall, 63% of PCC records were used with no editing changes. The audience posed questions on the methodology and expressed much interest in reading the final report; however, Ellett did not commit to a date for finalizing the dissertation noting that his doctoral committee had not reviewed this draft of the report.