About the presenter:

Regina Romano Reynolds has been head of the National Serials Data Program, the U.S. ISSN center, since 1992. Reynolds has worked at the Library of Congress since 1976 and has spent much of her professional career explaining and promoting ISSN use to publishers and the information community. Reynolds has an M.L.S. (Beta Phi Mu) from the University of Michigan. She is active in the American Library Association and the North American Serials Interest Group where she is a frequent author and presenter on topics in serials, standards, and electronic resources. Reynolds was the 1999 recipient of the Bowker/Ulrich's Serials Librarian Award. She is also actively involved in the revision of AACR2 to accommodate seriality and electronic resources as well as in the international harmonization of cataloging rules and standards.

Summary:

If the library catalog is to play any role as a portal to Web resources, new means have to be developed to bring the ever-increasing number of Web resources of interest to library patrons under some kind of bibliographic control. Traditional cataloging of published textual materials, which has been largely monolithic to date, will have to be progressively subdivided into a hierarchy of different record levels aligned with the research (and probably monetary) value of the resource. At the highest level, traditional cataloging will still prevail. At the lowest level, records might be produced from publisher-supplied or secondary-source metadata which has been formatted into MARC records for inclusion in library catalogs. These metadata-based records could also be selectively edited by trained catalogers and optionally enhanced with authoritative name and subject headings. OCLC's CORC program is one opening wedge to the entry of such non-AACR-based records into shared databases and library catalogs.

To realize fully the potential of such metadata-based catalog records, new partnerships and new sources of cataloging data have to be explored and exploited. Metadata created in association with existing identifiers such as the ISBN and ISSN, and metadata planned to support emerging identifiers such as the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and the developing identifier, the ISTC (International Standard Text Code), are potential sources of bibliographic data which libraries can convert, or convert and enhance to produce MARC records. Non-identifier-based publisher registration procedures such as CIP, Copyright, and others might also yield useful data. As all of these registration procedures are increasingly completed electronically, they yield data which are highly manipulable, enhanceable and convertible.

In addition to exploring sources of metadata, especially metadata supplied by publishers as part of registration procedures, this paper will examine ways in which such registration procedures could be modified to better provide libraries with needed data. Such modifications include addition of elements needed for library cataloging, and provision of instructions which will result in publishers providing data in more standardized ways. With the increasing use of online forms, interactive programs could be developed to "talk" publishers through the process of completing registration forms in such a way as to make them more useable for conversion to basic catalog records. Finally, ways for publishers to provide subject information will be explored.

The potential for creation of catalog records based on publisher-supplied metadata will be illustrated using data from a study of records created by the National Serials Data Program (NSDP). NSDP, the U.S. ISSN Center, uses an online form for ISSN registration. Publishers complete the form according to instructions supplied by NSDP. Data from the online form is converted to a draft catalog record which is then edited and enhanced by professional catalogers. Results of a study of the usability of information supplied by publishers on the ISSN application form, and the editing required on NSDP records produced by conversion from the online application form, will be presented.