Annual Report of the Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team 1998

The BEAT Team

The Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT) was formed in December 1992 as a Cataloging Directorate program and was charged with the development and implementation of initiatives to improve the tools, content, and access to bibliographic information. The membership represents the core cataloging divisions, CDS, acquisitions, and also has members from CIP and Constituent Services, reflecting the Directorate's desire to provide benefits from its projects to as wide an audience as possible and to incorporate within its program objectives the needs and interests of various constituencies beyond those of technical services. Accordingly, the Team aims to develop tools to aid catalogers, reference specialists, and searchers in creating and locating information, seeks to enrich the content of Library of Congress bibliographic records as well as improve access to the data the records contain, and conducts research and development in areas that can contribute to furthering these efforts

BEAT's initial funding came from a generous grant from the Edward Lowe Foundation, and its work has been supported since that time by the Library's Business Research Project, and the Library's Director of Electronic Programs, Robert Zich. In keeping with the spirit of the original grant, BEAT's primary focus has continued to be small business and entrepreneurship, but all of the Team's projects are undertaken with the understanding that they can be expanded to other areas. Several projects currently in production or in development reflect this concept.

BEAT currently has fifteen members, almost all of whom are volunteers and who continue to work on their BEAT assignments in addition to their regular duties. BEAT meets regularly to monitor progress on work it has undertaken and to exchange information on project status as well as to plan further work. The chair of the group is John Byrum, Chief of the Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division, which also acts as the Secretariat for the Team. Comments or questions can be directed to Mr. Byrum at jbyr@loc.gov

The Year in Review

Digital TOC

In 1997 BEAT initiated an experiment to establish whether the Library could develop an efficient process to link Table of Contents (TOC) data with underlying MARC records using access through the World Wide Web to present the information to catalog and other users. This process uses scanning and optical character recognition as well as programming developed by the BEAT and Cataloging Directorate staff to create the Web-based TOC files and their links to MAC records using automated means. After initial development work was completed the Team undertook a small pilot, which was followed by a production-level test at the end of the year. Test results supported the expansion of the project to full production mode in January 1998, and the digital TOC project was demonstrated for attendees at the ALA annual meeting in Washington D.C. in June 1998

During the first few months much project time was given over to training staff, and the creation of documentation of various types to insure uniformity, but by February the work progressed to full production mode. With the support of then RCCD staff member Jermaine Smith, the project's original developer, Robert August, was able to move into dally production. In July the project was handed off to Bruce Knarr, team leader of the RCCD South Asia Team, and by the end of the year linked TOC for over one thousand titles had been created. The subject scope covered reflects primarily business areas, but in the last half of the year the coverage was expanded to include other areas that BEAT has supported previously, particularly computer science. In 1999 it is the intention of the project chair to expand further, with additional coverage of technology and social sciences more generally, and possibly into smaller, more discrete areas of bibliographic interest.

TOC files contain HTML Meta Tags that provide index terms to Intent search engines. Users of the World Wide Web can find TOC in results list of their Web searches, and through Web links connect to the TOC for items of potential interest. The TOC in turn allows the display of the catalog record and provides an additional link that allows further online searching of the Library's catalogs. Results of Web-based online searches of the Library's catalogs also provide links to TOC data. Catalog searches can be conducted from http:\\lcweb.loc.gov/z3950

Coordination with Electronic CIP

The digital TOC project is intended to supplement the ever increasing availability of TOC resulting from expansion of the electronic CIP (E-CIP) program where TOC data are included in the MARC records for about 50% of the titles processed as E-CIPs. Both the chief of the CIP division, John Celli, and David Williamson, the Directorate's Cataloging Automation Specialist and the principal automation liaison for E-CIP, are members of BEAT, and this relationship has benefited both BEAT and the E-CIP development areas. When E-CIP production is fully in place we anticipate we will be able to greatly increase the number of TOC provided for records cataloged at the Library. In addition, the digital TOC project also allows some E-CIP TOC to be placed on the Web if they are beyond the guidelines for inclusion as part of the regular E-CIP processing stream. Preliminary data suggest that perhaps fifty percent of E-CIP titles could receive TOC treatment.

BEOnline

BEOnline entered production mode this year. Originally conceived as a pilot project intended to serve as both a model and a catalyst for developing approaches to meet the challenges of identifying, selecting, and providing bibliographic access (as well as direct access) to electronic works that are remotely available on the World Wide Web, this project is concentrating on business- and economics-related materials, especially those which will facilitate business reference in the area of entrepreneurship and small business.

BEOnline's original tactical plan had three major objectives:

1. Establish selection criteria guidelines to enable Library staff to determine which digital resources warrant bibliographic control and access.
2. Establish a catalog framework to identify levels of access and cataloging approaches for the digital resources selected.
3. Establish a cost-effective work flow to provide bibliographic control of resources selected.

BEOnline staff Allene Hayes, Regina Reynolds, and Carolyn Larson have thus far selected a total of 275 Internet resources utilizing the selection guidelines it has developed. Subject Cataloging support is being provided by Jan Herd, of the Business and Economics Cataloging Team, with the support of her team leader Gabriel Horchler, a BEAT Team member. Each selected resource is listed on the BEOnline Web page and can be accessed directly through hyper links.

The cataloging of the selected resources appears to be the most challenging aspect of the project. Of the resources selected, over 100 have been cataloged following the developing cataloging framework. Approximately 45 print publications have been enhanced to inform researchers of the Internet resources' tangible equivalents or related works. Automated cataloging techniques for this project were developed by David Williamson. Thirty-two authority records have been created for the Internet resources. However, the cataloged records have yet been released from the MUMS database, and they will remain in the MUMS database until the completion of the larger test bed originally envisioned. Each record, however, can also be accessed via the BEOnline Web site resources listing. The BEOnline Web site address is http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/business/beonline/beohome.html

During the year the cataloging framework continued to be revised, and the BEOnline staff dealt with issues involving use and value of various MARC fields, work flow, time required to complete certain aspects of the work, and use of "metadata level" records. The current work flow for the project can be viewed on the Web site under "BEOnline Workflow." BEOnline was demonstrated for attendees at the annual meeting of the American Library Association in June 1998.

The Entrepreneur's Guide to Small Business Information

In 1994 BEAT produced The Entrepreneur's Reference Guide to Small Business Information, a bibliography of approximately 200 sources in the Library of Congress that the Reference Staff of Business Reference Services, in consultation with other areas of the Library having business subject expertise (e.g., the Business and Economics Cataloging Team), determined to be of value to those who may be involved in establishing, building, or managing a small business. The 1st edition, published in 1994, was extremely popular and all copies have been distributed.

In 1998 BEAT sponsored production of a second edition of the Guide, entitled The Entrepreneur's Guide to Small Business Information, which was compiled by the reference staff of Business Reference Services (Science, Technology, and Business Division) of the Library of Congress, which includes members of the BEAT Team Carolyn Larson and Jim Stewart, and it can be viewed at http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/business/guide2.html It may also be accessed as a link from the Business Reference Services Web page, http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/business, under "Indexes, Bibliographies, and Guides."

Designed for small-business owners and business reference specialists, the Guide is an annotated listing of 179 resources including "how to" books, reference titles, directories, serial titles, and databases indicative of the most recent work in the field. Where appropriate, citations to online editions of these works, or other related materials on the Internet, have also been included. While the selections for this edition were made in 1996, all URL's were rechecked in November 1998, just prior to release.

Other Projects

Two additional projects or proposals were developed during the latter part of the year.

• The first of these by BEAT Team member and the Library's Law Classification Specialist, Jolande Goldberg, was a proposal for a Pilot Project (authorized by the Library's Cataloging Policy and Support Office) to update of international law/international relations subject headings. The Law schedules involved were all converted to electronic format (MARC Classification Format) with BEAT support previously. This pilot was recently been given approval to proceed, and more detail is available in the 1999 program section of this report.
• The second project was proposed and investigated by BEAT Team member Victoria Behrens, Coordinator of Automated Operations in the Library's Special Materials Cataloging Division. who joined BEAT in March, 1998. In response to the Team's desire to continue to expand beyond its business focus, she looked to online finding aids and bibliographies created by various reference divisions, and which were posted on these respective divisions' Web pages. She proposed enhancement of the Motion Picture, Broadcast and Recorded Sound reading room's "Shakespeare in film and television" finding aid.

The original concept was to enhance the finding aid by

• Creating links between the finding aid and related material on theWeb
• Creating links between the finding aid and related LC bib records
• Creating links between related LC bib records and the finding aid.

BEAT endorsed the idea as a promising experiment, but it appears that existing commitments by MBRS, scarcity of material that could be readily incorporated, and the responsibility to support the upcoming implementation of the ILS cloud the outlook for undertaking this in 1999. Accordingly, BEAT agreed to postpone further consideration of this project for the present, but to revisit the issue again in the Spring of 2000.

1999 Projects

The final item on the 1998 agenda was the determination of projects that the Team would undertake and/or continue to support in 1999. In brief, the Team will:

1. Continue the Digital TOC project. While continuing production operations under the present cataloging system, the team will also investigate and develop techniques or programs to enable the project to go forward in the new Integrated Library System environment projected for the Library in 1999. Expand the subject coverage of material in scope for TOC treatment.
2. Continue BEOnline, though with a modification in approach which will require less direct cataloger intervention except for items of very high value. BEOnline has innovative and potentially very significant contributions to make in support of the 'bibliographic enrichment' goals of BEAT work. A potential variation on the BEOnline themes would be consideration of making explicit links from print publications to their often expanded electronic forms.
3. Undertake a project to explore ways to enrich content of bibliographic records with abstracts, summaries, etc., or links to them, using selected materials from cooperating publishers in the Electronic CIP project for data acquisition and processing of such material BEAT proposes to develop this prototype/experiment with a very small group of selected E-CIP participants. The BEAT Team is interested in additional enrichment work as well as in further exploring the potential for use of materials already in electronic form.
4. Undertake a new project, BECites, to link electronic bibliographic materials to works they contain (as well as linking discrete items to the bibliographies) and to expand these links to additional resources in various formats. This initiative will focus first on A Guide to Finding Business Information at the Library of Congress (Richard F. Sharp, compiler), making a portion of the Guide available on the Internet in hypertext for the first time as an enhanced electronic bibliography. This "webliography" will ultimately include electronic links to additional content information from the titles it contains. An announcement providing more detail on this project will be made shortly.
5. Produce a 3rd edition of the Entrepreneur's Reference guide to Small Business Information. . This edition would appear first in electronic form, to be followed shortly thereafter by a print version. The BEAT target date for this guide is June 1998.
6. Support a proposal from the Library's Cataloging Policy and Support Office (CPSO) for a pilot project in which updated 053 field data (Classification data in [Subject] authority records) would be added for a limited number of items from the former JX, International law / International relations, two areas of classification BEAT has supported previously. Major revisions of classification schedules in these two areas were completed recently, and improving the links between classification and terminology has been of interest to BEAT for some time.