Standing Committee on Automation: Annual Report 2002

Oct. 1, 2001-Sept. 30, 2002

Meetings

The committee met twice at the usual venues, the midwinter and annual meetings of the American Library Association, but the detailed work of the committee continued to be accomplished by and through separate task groups reporting to the committee.

Series Numbering Task Group

A task group chaired by Gary Strawn (Northwestern) and consisting of Greta de Groat (Stanford), Sherman Clarke (NYU), and Stephen Hearn (Minnesota), charged with examining the conditions that prevent series headings from being arranged by automated systems in numerical order and to identify an algorithmic approach for the better arrangement of series headings.

In a very short span of time, this task group put together an extremely thorough and detailed specification of sorting algorithms for series headings, involving trade-offs between better sorting and less processing. The algorithms were tested and refined against a set of headings for numbered series (81,950 headings in all) extracted from Northwestern's bibliographic database. The task group concluded that it had "identified several approaches to the normalization of series numbering. These approaches very in their sophistication, the correctness of the resulting order of series headings they produce, the relative amount of time each requires to process a typical heading, and the amount of space occupied by the normalized series numbering. The use of any of these normalization techniques provides a better sort order for series headings than the order produced without any normalization at all, or by standard system normalization; the employment of even the simplest technique beyond standard system normalization carries with it a marked improvement in the number of correctly sorted headings."

The final draft report of this task group has been submitted to the committee for final review and approval.

Journal Aggregations - Action Item 4.1

Two previous task groups of SCA having worked on issues involving bibliographic records from journal aggregators, it was chosen at the fall 2001 PoCo meeting to play the lead role for action item 4.1 under the LC's action plan: Bibliographic Control of Web Resources. The final report of the previous task group on journal aggregations was submitted to PCC on October 23rd.

The task assignment for this action item is as follows: "(1) Develop specifications for the creation and maintenance of records for titles contained in aggregator packages that will enable vendors to produce high-quality bibliographic data and accurate information about the volumes/dates of coverage of individual titles. In addition to the creation of individual records, vendors must be able to provide customers with high-quality updated bibliographic records when bibliographic data and/or scope of coverage change significantly. Communicate the specifications to the vendor community and encourage their adoption. (2) Communicate to the library community (especially public services and acquisitions librarians) about the importance of securing appropriate bibliographic control and maintenance as a component of subscribing to an aggregator package."

This task was assigned to a new task group chaired by Adolfo Tarango of UC San Diego, which has now begun work.

Task Group on Serials Displays

This task group will be charged to "(1) Examine ILS's make use of linking entry fields in records for serials and other resources and establish criteria for assessing their effectiveness. (2) Determine the types of functionality that are needed to effectively use such links. (3) Develop a list of 'best practices' for ILS's in making use of linking entry fields in order to optimize access. (4) As appropriate, consider the recommendations of the JSC task group on expression level cataloging (when published) in regard to links and how these recommendations might impact on the work of this group." The task group is still in the process of formation; the names of some volunteers have been received, and additional names are being sought.

Report submitted by Gary Charbonneau, chair 09-19-2002