Standing Committee on Automation

Notes of SCA Meeting at ALA Midwinter, New Orleans, LA

January 20, 2002

The Midwinter 2002 meeting of the PCC-SCA convened at 4:00 PM, Sunday, January 20, 2002.

Members present: Jeanne Baker, Kyle Banerjee, Ruth Bogan, Gary Charbonneau (chair), Helen Gbala (vendor representative), Ed Glazier, John Riemer, Gary Strawn, David Whitehair, David Williamson

New business: Gary Charbonneau introduced a discussion on the SCA's role as lead organization for Item 4.1 of the LC Action Plan for Bibliographic Control of Web Resources.

Item 4.1
Develop specifications for addressing issues related to record supply and maintenance for aggregated resources to provide mechanisms for: detecting and reporting changes in resource content; changing records; and notifying libraries when changes are made. Communicate the specifications to the vendor community and encourage their adoption.

Discussion followed relative to:

1. How much of the action item had already been accomplished by the Aggregator Task Forces
2. What still needs to be done to supply records for aggregators
3. How the SCA should address the problem of record maintenance
4. If there is a place for formal education of vendors or libraries, and
5. Who should participate in the action item activity

Kyle Banerjee explained why Lexis-Nexis, for example, has more trouble delivering MARC records for its titles than Ebsco. L-N does not have a ready supply of records from which to derive record sets.

It was suggested that we should educate both potential users of record sets and the vendor community about the value of the sets. Specific suggestions included emphasis on increased usage statistics, the necessity of record sets for access, and the value of record sets as a marketing tool to libraries. A relationship with the ALCTS Publisher/Vendor-Library Relations Committee (a potential collaborator in the action plan) would be valuable.

Helen Gbala mentioned that Pat Promis of the ALCTS AS Publications Committee, Guides Subcommittee is reviewing an acquisitions guide for aggregators. She suggested that SCA could make sure the publication includes a specification for MARC records when acquiring aggregators.

The final report of the most recent Aggregator Task Force describes two scenarios for record maintenance. It was suggested that vendors should be encouraged to support one or the other. There was consensus at the meeting that it would be valuable to conduct a survey to find out exactly what libraries are doing to maintain sets of aggregator records. A question about the ILS in use should be included.

There was some discussion about whether the SCA should propose "things for vendors to tell their customers" or "things that SCA should tell libraries", i.e. best practices, when accepting MARC record sets for aggregators. One suggestion was to stress, to the vendors, that record numbers be persistent.

Translating the discussion into work plan details, the SCA identified the following:

Activities:

• Survey

Outcomes:

• Clearinghouse web page that includes record set availability info and best practices

Participants:

• SCA subcommittee
• Others

Ed Glazier, Kyle Banerjee, John Riemer, and Ruth Bogan (chair) agreed to formulate a draft workplan for review by the SCA in 30 days [ca. February 19] and delivery to LC in 45 days [ca. March 1]

The meeting ended at 5:20 PM.

Minutes kept and compiled by Ruth Bogan.