LC CATALOGING NEWSLINE

Online Newsletter of the Cataloging Directorate Library of Congress

Volume 9, no. 11    ISSN 1066-8829    October 2001


Contents
Action Plan for the Bibliographic Control of Web Resources
Electronic Location and Access
Broadening Interest in LCSH
Pinyin Conversion Status Report
Changes in LC Minimal-Level Cataloging Practice
Online Conversion of LCC Completed
Train-the-Trainers Sessions for Two New SCCTP Courses
Dewey's 125th Anniversary

Action Plan for the Bibliographic Control of Web Resources

Beacher J. Wiggins, director for cataloging, is currently reviewing the many comments and suggestions regarding the Library's Action Plan for the Bibliographic Control of Web Resources, available at //www.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/draftplan.html [Oct. 2001] that were submitted during the comment period of June- September 2001.

For each work item in the plan, there will be a lead organization or person to take responsibility for the item; also individuals and organizations will be invited to collaborate in producing the deliverables sought. To capitalize on the expertise resident in the units comprising the American Library Association's Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS), a proposal was made to the ALCTS Executive Committee that a group be formed to assist the Library in identifying which action items are suitable for ALCTS to develop in partnership with LC. This suggestion was approved in June, and a task force has been appointed comprising Karen Calhoun (Cornell University), chair, Priscilla Caplan (Florida Center for Library Automation), Carlen Ruschoff (University of Maryland College Park), Mark Sandler (University of Michigan), Brian Schottlaender (University of California, San Diego), and Steve Shadle (University of Washington). John Byrum, chief, Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division, and Judith Mansfield, chief, Arts and Science Cataloging Division, are serving as the LC liaisons to this group. The ALCTS task group, which conducts weekly meetings through conference calls, is responsible for determining work assignments and charging or creating ALCTS groups with the work, with approval of the Executive Committee. Thereafter the task group will monitor progress of the ALCTS groups assigned to action plan work items.

Taking this input and other advice into account, Wiggins expects to publish a new iteration of the action plan by the end of October.


Electronic Location and Access

The following is a statement of LC policy prepared by CPSO with the approval of the director for cataloging on the use of field 856 in authority records:

"LC has decided that it will not use the 856 (Electronic Location and Access) field in name/series or subject authority records, nor will NACO/SACO participants be permitted to add the field in records they contribute. Instead, LC will seek the addition of a newly defined subfield $u (Uniform Resource Identifier) in the 670 (Source Data Found) field.

Use of the 670 $u rather than the 856 will provide the opportunity for enabling links to Web resources while clarifying the relationship of that resource to the entity described in the authority record. It will also reduce the redundancy of data in the authority record, since it would be necessary to add information in a subfield $b of a 670 field even if the 856 field were used. The 670 subfield $b will, as is now the practice, contain a summary of the data found in the source for immediate use when consulting the authority record for normal cataloging purposes. The new subfield $u would provide a link to the URL for those needing additional information.

A paper on the addition of $u to the 670 field is planned for discussion at the MARC Advisory Committee meeting during ALA Midwinter 2002."


Broadening Interest in LCSH

The past several months have seen a broadening international interest in the enrichment of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). In the United Kingdom, where several institutions already participate in SACO, the British Library authority control co-ordinator delivered a day of training in LCSH to a group of university archivists. An expansion in the use and development of LCSH in the British Isles will supplement the substantive advances already made between the U.S. and the U.K. in cooperative cataloging.

Active participation in SACO contributions has now extended to Asia and Africa. A large packet of subject proposals from the National Library Board of Singapore is now being processed in the Cooperative Cataloging Team and in the Cataloging Policy and Support Office. The proposals relate to historical, ethnic, and cultural matters special to Singapore's needs in cataloging materials for its citizens. In a similar vein, the University of Swaziland faxed a group of subject proposals useful in classifying its national bibliography. These proposals, too, reflect areas of LCSH in need of expansion to cover details of the national culture not hitherto encountered.

In both cases, the institutions reformatted and transmitted the SACO proposal forms available on the PCC website at URL //www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/saco.html. [Oct. 2001]


Pinyin Conversion Status Report

During the week of October 1, OCLC converted from Wade-Giles to pinyin headings on 652 CONSER records coded other than "chi" (490 are LC records), and approximately 25,000 other non-Chinese bibliographic records in its WorldCat database. OCLC plans to send the Library a file of the LC records it converted. That file in turn will be used as the basis for the manual conversion of non- Chinese records in the LC database.

By the end of September, the Library had corrected access points on more than 2,000 converted Chinese bibliographic records that were marked for review. Corrections to records that have errors in other than access fields will be made on an as- encountered basis.

New documents were recently posted on the Library's pinyin Web site: the specifications for conversion of non-Chinese material and LC subject headings that have been revised. The specifications were prepared by OCLC and LC staff to help prepare for OCLC's conversion of non-Chinese records. The non-Chinese specifications differ from the ones used to convert Chinese records in several ways: 1) a complex searching and selection process is used to identify records for possible conversion; 2) personal names are only to be converted if they include $c or $d subfields, and match former headings on converted authority records; 3) many more records are marked for review; 4) the program does not attempt to convert certain kinds of notes; and 5) three tables of Korean and Japanese syllables are used to minimize the chance that text in one of those languages might inadvertently be converted.

Four lists of Chinese subject headings were posted on the Web site: 1) all Chinese subject headings that were revised during the years 1999 and 2000; 2) nine subject headings that were replaced by name headings; 3) subject headings that need to be changed from the machine-converted form; and 4) subject headings that did not convert and need to be converted manually. These lists have been made available so that LC and other libraries can use them to review the Chinese subject headings in their databases and make changes or corrections where necessary.


Changes in LC Minimal-Level Cataloging Practice

Effective Sept. 5, the Cataloging Management Team, after consultation with team leaders and director for cataloging Beacher Wiggins, has authorized a flexible approach to "cut-off" dates for both enhanced and regular minimal-level cataloging (MLC). Cataloging teams now have the discretion to perform regular MLC for any work that has been on hand longer than two years, calculated from the date the initial bibliographic control (IBC) record was entered in the LC database. (If there is no IBC record, the cutoff date is calculated from the accession date stamped in the item, not from the date of publication.) Teams may, at their discretion, perform enhanced MLC for materials that have been on hand for more than one year. In all instances, materials will first be searched for copy on OCLC or RLIN, as appropriate, and copy cataloging will be preferred to either enhanced or regular MLC.

As performed in the Cataloging Directorate, regular or basic MLC includes a bibliographic description, an MLC call number (not related to the Library of Congress Classification (LCC)), and name and series access points, with authority work performed as needed to resolve conflicts. Enhanced MLC also includes an LCC call number, a subject access point(s), or both. The directorate is also beginning to apply "encoding level 7 copy cataloging," in which a copy-cataloged record is fitted into the LC database with authority work done according to MLC guidelines, and the resulting bibliographic record is assigned an encoding level of 7 so that it will not displace the original member record in the OCLC database.


Online Conversion of LCC Completed

Conversion of the LC Classification schedules to the MARC 21 Format for Classification Data has now been completed. The ten-year project involved the entire staff of the Classification Editorial Team, Cataloging Policy and Support Office (CPSO) as well as most of CPSO's subject cataloging policy specialists.

Online conversion enabled re-publication of all of the printed schedules. Some were revised in the course of conversion so that the current printed volumes are new editions. The printed schedules are available from the Cataloging Distribution Service. Law schedules that have only recently been written are the first whose initial publication is online.

A standard preface was written for all of the newly edited schedules, and can be modified according to each schedule's individual features. Indexes were prepared for schedules that lacked them, such as PQ (French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literature) and PB-PH (Modern European languages). In conjunction with the conversion project, the LC Classification Outline was also revised and posted on the CPSO Web site at URL http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/ [Oct. 2001].


Train-the-Trainers Sessions for Two New SCCTP Courses

The Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program (SCCTP) is developing two new workshops that will be released in 2002 and is seeking people interested in becoming workshop leaders. The new courses are: Advanced Serials Cataloging Workshop and Electronic Serials Workshop. Two train-the-trainer sessions are scheduled for January 2002 to give prospective trainers an overview of the training material and some training tips. The first session will take place in conjunction with ALA Midwinter in New Orleans, Jan. 16-18, 2002. The second will be held in Toronto, Canada, at Ryerson University in conjunction with the Ontario Library Association meeting, Jan. 28-30, 2002. The first two days of each session will be devoted to the Advanced Serials Workshop. The third day will cover the Electronic Serials Workshop. Trainers may attend either session or both. There is no cost for the training or the materials but trainees are responsible for paying their own expenses.

The courses are based on the revised chapters 9 and 12 of AACR2. Issuance of the course material will be timed to coincide with the publication of the Chapter 12 revision, probably mid-2002. The Advanced Serials Workshop consists of a day-and-a-half of training and a half day devoted to special problems and cataloging exercises. The Electronic Serials Workshop is a one-day course that includes cataloging rules, aggregations, single-record approach, and problem solving.

To see a fuller description of the train-the-trainer sessions and instructions for applying to become a trainer go to URL //www.loc.gov/acq/conser/scctp/trainersannounce.html [Oct. 2001].


Dewey's 125th Anniversary

On August 21 nearly two hundred IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) delegates from six continents gathered on the "Skywalk" of the Prudential Center in Boston to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the first publication of the Dewey Decimal Classification in 1876. Attendees included national librarians, officials from IFLA and other associations, Dewey translation partners, representatives of other major classification systems (Library of Congress Classification, Universal Decimal Classification, Bliss), the Decimal Classification Division's three assistant editors, and other close friends of the classification.

After executive director of OCLC Forest Press and editor in chief Joan Mitchell's opening remarks about Dewey's past and present, Winston Tabb, LC's associate librarian for library services, spoke about the special relationship between the Library of Congress and Dewey, a history spanning more than a century. Jay Jordan, president and chief executive officer of OCLC, closed with observations on Dewey's future and a toast to 125 years of the DDC.


LC CATALOGING NEWSLINE (ISSN 1066-8829) is published irregularly by the Cataloging Directorate, Library Services, Library of Congress, and contains news of cataloging activities throughout the Library of Congress. Editorial Office: Cataloging Policy and Support Office, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540-4305. Editor, Robert M. Hiatt; Editorial Advisory Group: Victoria Behrens, John Byrum, Roselyne Chang, Jurij Dobczansky, Anthony Franks, Les Hawkins, Albert Kohlmeier, Susan Morris, Geraldine Ostrove, David Smith, David Williamson, and Roman Worobec. Address editorial inquiries to the editor at the above address or [email protected] (email), (202) 707-5831 (voice), or (202) 707-6629 (fax). Listowner: David Williamson. Address subscription inquiries to the listowner at [email protected].

LC CATALOGING NEWSLINE is available in electronic form only and is free of charge. To subscribe, send a mail message to listserv @loc.gov with the text: subscribe lccn [firstname lastname]. Back issues of LCCN are available through the LCCN home page (URL http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/lccn/).

All materials in the newsletter are in the public domain and may be reproduced, reprinted, and/or redistributed as desired. Citation of the source is requested.


LC Cataloging Newsline Home Page
Cataloging Directorate Home Page
Library of Congress Home Page

Library of Congress
Comments : [email protected] 11/07/01