LC CATALOGING NEWSLINE

Online Newsletter of the Cataloging Directorate
Library of Congress

Volume 10, no. 11    ISSN 1066-8829   December 2002



CONTENTS

Highlights of Fiscal Year 2002


Highlights of Fiscal Year 2002

The Cataloging Directorate of the Library of Congress achieved extraordinary success in the face of unprecedented challenges in fiscal year 2002. The year began in the aftershock of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, closely followed by the discovery of potentially fatal anthrax spores on Capitol Hill. It seemed as though the year would be dominated by these tragic events and the frustrations of delays in hiring and continual loss of staff. In fact, however, the real story this year was the exemplary way in which the directorate overcame these difficulties to produce more catalog records than ever before, provide leadership to the national and international cataloging communities, foster professional development and advancement, and collaborate with other units for the benefit of the entire Library.

Production, Productivity, and Workflows

The Cataloging Directorate and Serial Record Division (SRD) achieved record high production in fiscal 2002, processing more than 300,000 items for the first time in their history. Staff cataloged 310,235 bibliographic volumes on 291,749 bibliographic records, at an average cost of $94.58 per record including fringe benefits and overhead costs--a significant improvement over the average cost of $122.60 per record in fiscal 2001. In addition, the Cataloging Directorate created 41,776 inventory-level records for arrearage items.

Production of full- and core-level original cataloging, the category of work of greatest value to other libraries, totaled 199,586 records, an increase of 12.99 percent over fiscal 2001. Copy cataloging production increased to 49,576 records, 56.63 percent more than in fiscal 2001. A total of 4,259 collection- level cataloging (CLC) records was completed, including 3,790 by the NUCMC Team, Special Materials Cataloging Division (SMCD), for manuscript repositories throughout the United States. Other teams cleared 16,481 items using CLC, more than twice the level of the year before. The Decimal Classification Division assigned Dewey numbers to 110,290 books, and 42,937 titles in the Cataloging in Publication program received CIP verification. Minimal-level cataloging (MLC) increased 65.18 percent over the previous year, to 38,328 records, while the number of hours spent on this work increased only 12.58 percent.

Production of authority records was also very high in fiscal 2002. The Cataloging Directorate and SRD created 88,475 new name authority records, a decrease of 3.71 percent from fiscal 2001, and changed 44,823, compared to 249,252 name authority changes in fiscal 2001. Both decreases reflect the fact that the pinyin conversion project, which involved a great deal of authority work, was essentially complete. The number of new series authority records increased 7.61 percent over the previous year, to 8,279; new subject authority records totaled 7,365, an increase of 6.23 percent; new Library of Congress Classification (LCC) proposals numbered 1,837, which was 11.94 percent higher than the year before. The 192 LCC changes during the year represent a decrease of 20.33 percent from fiscal 2001, and changes to subject authorities decreased almost forty percent to 7,574, decreases that also reflect the wrapup of the pinyin conversion.

In addition to clearing more than 100,000 items from arrearages held in the Public Service Collections Directorate, Area Studies Directorate, and Law Library, the directorate contributed staff resources to the Baseline Inventory Project, with the assistant chief of CPSO serving as co-manager, a senior technical advisor detailed as full-time resource person, and several other staff contributing large amounts of time. In the Serial Records Duplicate Project, the CPSO Premarc/Quality Control and File Management Team merged 29,000 more records, bringing the project total to 63,000 records. The team also processed approximately 21,500 records in response to error reports and changes to the database requested inside LC and by outside libraries; corrected pinning and linking errors reported by the Collections Access and Loan Management Division; and worked on various inventory control pilot projects.

This extraordinary production occurred despite several major impediments: the Library's anthrax-related closure for a week in October, heightened security measures, the two-week Voyager software upgrade Feb. 15-Mar. 3, and temporary staff relocations to permit ergonomic furniture upgrades and recarpeting. Although overtime was offered to staff for much of the year, it was not the decisive factor in achieving record-high production; in fact, the total number of hours worked decreased for every category of cataloging except MLC. The increased production more likely reflects increased productivity, careful monitoring of arrearages and work on hand, the use of automated copy matching services, and streamlined and innovative workflows. Productivity increased through full implementation of the core-level record as the base level of cataloging for all teams and the use of data from the 955 field of every bibliographic record to increase individual accountability.

To streamline workflows, the German and Scandinavian Languages Team (GSL), Social Sciences Cataloging Division (SSCD), organized an "assembly line" to process older items that were about to age into the arrearage. The Music and Sound Recording Teams, SMCD, implemented a new workflow using the OCLC RetroCon batch automated searching service for the approximately 30,000 new CD-ROM sound recordings received each this year.

Following the recommendations of the Dewey Exceptions Task Force, the Decimal Classification Division (Dewey) reduced its dependence on printouts from the cataloging teams and explored having classifiers work directly online.

The directorate's nonrare print arrearage stood at 128,750 items on October 1, peaked in May at 168,651 items, and by the end of September had decreased to 134,607. In addition, the directorate processed 102,607 arrearage items for other directorates. The directorate and SRD received 367,509 items for cataloging (including new titles, added volumes, and added copies) and processed 372,932 items, or 101.5 percent of new receipts. The directorate ended the fiscal year with 187,493 items on hand, including arrearage items.

The directorate continued to perform labeling of hardbound books, with the help of detailees from the Binding and Collections Care Division, to enhance the security of the in-process collections and shorten total throughput time from receipt to shelving of the item in the Library's stacks. Work continued to establish a Cataloging Directorate position description that would include labeling with other duties to support a GS-7 grade.

Aftermath of Terrorist Attacks

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, occurred in the last month of the previous fiscal year and affected cataloging activities throughout fiscal 2002. The Cataloging Directorate, with all other units of the Library of Congress, responded in the early weeks of the new fiscal year by preparing evacuation plans and means for communicating with staff in the event of an evacuation or other emergency. Mandatory computer security awareness training was begun, and staff learned new safety procedures for opening mail. Several members of the directorate, including four on the Law Team, SSCD, volunteered to participate in the Health Services Office's three-phase Baseline Survey of Staff Health related to intermittent mail handling. An HLCD employee was called up to active military service in Afghanistan.

The Computer Files and Microforms Team, SMCD, as part of its contribution to the Library's Web preservation project, MINERVA, cataloged The September 11 Web Archive, a collaboration between the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive and WebArchivist.org. This remote-access electronic resource presents a digital archive of Web sites relating to the events and immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The discovery of anthrax in the Senate Hart Office Building required the Library to close from October 18 through 24 for anthrax testing. The cataloging divisions thus lost one full week of production. Furthermore, the Library suspended acceptance of deliveries from the United States Postal Service from October 18 until the beginning of March, while an offsite postal testing and irradiation facility was built. The impact of the five-month hiatus in mail deliveries was felt most sharply in the divisions that receive books directly (CIP, RCCD, and the Romance Languages Team of SSCD), but all teams instituted greater security precautions and were vigilant for evidence of damage to irradiated materials that might have been missed in the acquisitions units. Damage was noted in the records for these damaged items in the LC integrated library system.

Cooperative Cataloging Programs

The chief of RCCD and the Cooperative Cataloging Team (Coop) continued to serve as the secretariat to the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). In fiscal 2002, the PCC celebrated its tenth anniversary. During this decade, member institutions contributed more than 350,000 bibliographic records and more than 1.2 million name and series authorities to the international pool of shareable cataloging created according to mutually agreed standards. As a result of PCC activity, more than 74,000 subject headings were incorporated into the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), and more than 8,000 numbers into LCC.

PCC members created 162,363 new name authorities in fiscal 2002, compared to 143,031 the previous year, an increase of thirteen percent; 10,044 new series authorities, an increase of 6.74 percent; 3,165 subject authorities, an increase of more than twenty percent; and 2,551 LCC proposals, an increase of nearly 25 percent. Original cataloging from CONSER, the serials component of the PCC, totaled 30,160 records, in contrast to the 14,445 produced in fiscal 2001. In the BIBCO program for monograph bibliographic records, members created 82,014 bibliographic records, an increase of 12.17 percent over the 73,115 monograph records created in fiscal 2001.

The NACO component for name authority work expanded with the training of seventeen new NACO libraries, the retraining of eleven libraries, and the creation of three new funnel projects (Mississippi Project, Mountain West Project, and the Minnesota Funnel Project) that collectively added twenty-seven new member institutions.

Three new libraries joined BIBCO: Duke University, State University of New York Buffalo, and the Smithsonian Institution bringing the number of participants to forty-six. BIBCO concentrated on finishing the BIBCO Participants' Manual. To prepare for implementation of new rules in AACR2 for cataloging integrating resources, CONSER and BIBCO developed a training workshop for cataloging integrating resources.

Forty-three PCC institutions outside the United States, working individually or in funnel projects, contributed a total of 30,206 new name authority records (18.6% of total PCC production); 12,579 revised name and series records (27.3% of total modifications); 955 new subject authority records (30.2%); and 19 revised subject authority records (4.3%). The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) joined BIBCO and CONSER as the second member outside North America, with the National Library of Wales. The Singapore Integrated Library Automation Services (SILAS), already a SACO participant, joined NACO. Expansion training in England, Scotland, and South Africa attracted new institutions to NACO. To encourage the growth of the PCC in South America, the Coop Team leader organized a teleconference for LC staff and librarians in Brazil and the Taller sobre Encabezamientos de Materia LCSH / Workshop on LCSH for Librarians from Latin America, a bilingual workshop held at the Library of Congress May 20-24, attended by 17 librarians from eight countries.

Streamlined review processes enabled PCC contributions to increase while the number of hours worked in the Coop Team fell by 29.16 percent from the previous year, to only 11,506.5 hours. SACO, the component of the PCC for subject authority work, profited from accelerated handling of LCSH subject proposals. The major innovation was making interactive subject proposal forms available on the PCC Web site. To facilitate evaluations of training sessions an interactive training evaluation form was posted to the appropriate PCC Web sites. Several studies measured the cost- benefits of NACO and the reduced LC expenditures resulting from more documentation being freely available to participants on the PCC Web site. This year, the Descriptive Cataloging Manual (DCM) Z1, and the LC Supplement Guidelines to the MARC 21 Authority Format, 2002 ed., were made available exclusively for PCC partners, in PDF format.

Pinyin Conversion

The LC Pinyin Task Group disbanded, having substantially achieved its goal of converting LC's authority and bibliographic records from Wade-Giles to pinyin romanization. A final version of the Chinese romanization guidelines and procedures for establishing headings for Chinese place names were formulated, with input provided by librarians at other institutions.

Staffing and Personnel Management

The directorate continued to lose staff as the Library's hiring processes did not keep pace with retirements. At the end of the fiscal year, the Cataloging Directorate had 518 employees, twenty-four fewer than when the year began, with a net loss of two division chiefs, an assistant chief, four team leaders, an assistant team leader, ten catalogers, a Dewey classifier, two professionals in the Cataloging Policy and Support Office, an automated operations coordinator, one cataloging technician, and three office staff. In addition, one cataloger was promoted to become the first automated operations coordinator for the Cataloging in Publication Division (CIP), and one team leader accepted a year-long appointment as CIP's acting assistant chief. The director for cataloging, Beacher Wiggins, was appointed acting associate librarian for library services on Sept. 1, and on Sept. 16 Judith Mansfield, chief of ASCD, was named acting director.

The directorate was authorized to hire two decimal classifiers and forty-four catalogers from outside the Library under the fiscal 2002 hiring plan, which would add at least one cataloger to nearly every cataloging team. The authorized selecting officials and subject matter experts in the directorate completed their work on position descriptions and job analyses, but no vacancy announcements were posted until August, and only seven of the thirty-four authorized vacancy announcements were posted by Sept. 30. The directorate would have to wait until the next fiscal year to fill the positions.

The directorate continued its review of duties and position descriptions in recognition of the impact that the LC ILS, other new technology, and the explosive growth of research-quality electronic resources have had on all cataloging work. A resulting new GS-9 cataloging technician position was added to the existing GS-5/8 ladder by the beginning of fiscal 2002 and new GS-13 senior cataloging specialist and decimal classifier positions were certified in April. Twenty-four technicians received promotions to the GS-9 by the end of the year, an indication of the enormous skill and experience that the cataloging technicians contribute to their teams. Senior GS-12 catalogers could apply for promotion by submitting a portfolio of accomplishments to their supervisors. By the end of the year, seventeen catalogers had been promoted to GS- 13 in the directorate, in addition to three in the Serial Record Division.

At year's end the revision of position descriptions for automated operations coordinators, team leaders and assistant team leaders, secretaries, and chiefs and assistant chiefs was still ongoing.

Cataloging Policy

The LCC law schedule (Class K) was essentially complete at the end of the year, after thirty years of development in consultation with the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Advisory Committee for LC Law Classification and colleagues around the world. The Cataloging Policy and Support Office (CPSO) law classification specialist, Dr. Jolande Goldberg, received the Joseph Andrews Bibliographic Award, the American Association of Law Library's highest bibliographic honor, for her work on the LCC law schedules.

The chief of CPSO continued to serve as chair of LC's Metadata Policy Group and as the Library of Congress representative to the Joint Committee for Revision of AACR, which was very active this year as a major revision to AACR2 was finalized. The directorate, SRD, and the processing units of the Public Service Collections Directorate implemented AACR2, Chapter 9, recast as "Electronic Resources," in the summer. The director for cataloging, on the advice of CPSO and PCC libraries, determined that LC would implement the redrafted AACR2 Chapter 12, previously "Serials" and now "Continuing Resources," on December 1 of the next fiscal year, to allow more time for training and for inclusion of the revision in Cataloger's Desktop.

The Music Cataloging Advisory Group (MCAG) began work to eliminate the Music Cataloging Decisions (MCDs) as a separate body of commentary on AACR2 by drafting language to merge the seventy- two existing MCDs into theLibrary of Congress Rule Interpretations.

Several members of the directorate participated in the review of the International Standard Bibliographic Description for monographs (ISBD(M))and for continuing resources ISBD(CR), led by the chief of RCCD under the auspices of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.

In the area of subject cataloging policy, among the largest projects of this year were the reformulation of headings for battles and the change from the heading "Handicapped" to "People with disabilities," with revision of many related subject headings. The CPSO Subject Heading Editorial Team (SHED) continued its project to add field 781 records for geographic place names tagged 151, thereby authorizing the use of the place name as a geographic subdivision. More than 33,000 authority records have been enhanced in this way since the project began in 1999; the project has reached place names beginning with "Sa."

The online LCC became the authoritative version, and printed quarterly updates were discontinued with update 284, as was the production of looseleaf pages for this particular printed form of LCC.

Electronic Resources Cataloging/Library of Congress Action Plan

The Library of Congress Action Plan Steering Group shared progress on "Bibliographic Control of Web Resources: A Library of Congress Action Plan," a set of twenty-nine work items that resulted from the Library of Congress Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium held in November 2000 (fiscal 2001), at the ALA Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference and through journals and a Web site. Approximately half the work items in the plan are led by Library of Congress units, while the rest are led by external groups.

One project for the action plan is the start of a proof of concept project among the Library of Congress, the Deutsche Bibliothek, and OCLC, Inc., to test one model for a virtual international authority file, starting with personal names. If successful, this model could be the foundation for a global linked network of national and regional authority files for names of persons, corporate bodies, and uniform titles including series. The chief of CPSO led the project and publicized it in numerous venues in the United States and abroad.

The Computer Files and Microforms Team welcomed four experienced catalogers on 120-day details to learn descriptive cataloging of electronic resources. The insights gained from these details would serve the directorate well as it planned more extensive training in the next fiscal year. The Children's Literature Team, HLCD, provided input to planning of the International Children's Digital Library, a cooperative project with the University of Maryland and a private firm, the Digital Archives, to make the text of outstanding children's literature available online. The team updated the cataloging for materials selected for this project.

Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team

The chief of RCCD continued to chair the Library's inter- divisional Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT), which initiates research and development to increase the value to users of cataloging products. During the year BEAT enriched more than 40,000 catalog records with electronic tables of contents (TOC). It also enhanced online bibliographies and provided direct access from the Library of Congress Online Catalog to full electronic text of more than 7,000 working papers and research monographs.

The ONIX Descriptions project, launched this year, creates records containing publishers' descriptions of books. These descriptions are placed on the LC Web site and reciprocally linked to bibliographic records in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. The project created approximately 27,600 records in fiscal 2002.

Also initiated this year was the Web Access to Works in the Public Domain project, which links bibliographic records for selected works that LC holds in print to full text electronic copies in trusted repositories. The initial implementations of this project resulted from cooperative agreements with the University of Michigan for materials digitized in its Making of America project, and Indiana University for works in its Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875 project.

The Web Access to Publications in Series project provided access to the full electronic texts of 7,044 individual monographs in ninety-three series (fiscal 2001 and 2002) by linking to the electronic files from the serial record in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

The BECites+ project enhances printed library bibliographies by placing them on the Web in electronic form, adding and linking annotated citations, tables of contents, indexes, and back-of-book bibliographies cited therein. Completed during this year were two bibliographies on Thomas Jefferson and five separate parts of a large-scale undertaking on Immigrant Arrivals to the United States.

Cataloging in Publication

During the anthrax-related closure in October and the five- month mail embargo, CIP staff went to great lengths to keep publishers informed of the Library's mail situation and to encourage them to participate in ECIP as an alternative. To make it easier for publishers to participate, the requirements for ECIP galleys were eased somewhat, and the Web pages for ECIP and Electronic PCN were augmented with links to an email "help desk" for publishers to email questions to the division. The division also implemented a comprehensive set of telephone message scripts to respond to the most common questions from publishers. The number of publishers participating in ECIP more than doubled, from 1,066 in fiscal 2001 to 2,222 at the end of fiscal 2002. More than a third of all CIP galleys -18,082 out of 53,733 galleys in all-- were submitted electronically in fiscal 2002, making ECIP cataloging one of the directorate's principal workflows. The total number of conventional and ECIP galleys was slightly lower than the 54,840 galleys received the previous fiscal year, probably because of delays in receiving mailed applications. Average throughput time for CIP galleys improved to 10.5 business days from 12.2 business days the previous year, with eighty percent of all galleys completely processed within fourteen business days.

The division terminated the paper PCN program on Jan. 1, as planned and announced the previous year. For fiscal 2002, the division processed 22,687 EPCN applications and established 4,406 EPCN publisher accounts, an increase of 29% in each of these figures over fiscal 2001.

Planning continued on the New Books project, which will enrich catalog records for forthcoming titles with a wide range of information, including tables of contents and images of book jackets. In consultation with the CIP Advisory Group which meets during each ALA Annual Conference and Midwinter Meeting, the division decided to facilitate development by limiting initial services for partner libraries to an email capability and limiting publisher participation in the initial phase of the project to those who participate in ECIP. Further progress on the New Books project awaited recruitment of developers and other project staff.

Using overtime funds, CIP claimed 29,895 outstanding books from 194 publishers, giving emphasis to titles that were relevant to national security and the war on terrorism.

Dewey

The Decimal Classification Division increased its production by 1.49 percent over fiscal 2001, assigning Dewey numbers to 110,290 monographs in English and other Western languages, despite retirements that left the division with only six classifiers. Division chief David Smith retired in February after more than 40 years of Federal service. Dennis McGovern, team leader of the Education, Sports, and Recreation Team, SSCD, was appointed acting chief on Feb. 18.

Editorial work on Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) Edition 22 and on Abridged Edition 14 continued on track to meet the targets set for their publication in summer 2003 and January 2004, respectively. Two meetings of the Dewey Editorial Policy Committee took place at the Library, Meeting 117 on Dec. 3-5 and Meeting 118 on May 15-17.

In January, OCLC Forest Press made Abridged Edition 13 available in WebDewey(TM), the online version of the classification, and published People, Places, and Things, which provided Dewey numbers for more than 50,000 of the most frequently used Library of Congress Subject Headings.

At the beginning of the fiscal year, OCLC Forest Press support shifted from "gift fund" to "revolving fund" status, in accordance with the revolving fund legislation for the entire Library which took effect on Oct. 1. This change required the division to apply a new method of reporting status of funds.

Training and Outreach

The Coop Team and CPSO collaborated to offer two subject cataloging workshops at ALA Midwinter Meeting and two at the ALA Annual Conference, as well as NACO Series Institutes and other NACO and SACO training. Library of Congress staff served as faculty at the ALA preconference, "Knowledge without Boundaries." The Romance Languages Team, SSCD, provided a cataloger to train staff in the New Delhi Field Office, African-Asian Acquisitions and Overseas Operations Division, in subject cataloging of social sciences for five weeks.

One of the most notable training efforts of the year was the East Asian Art Cataloging Workshop and Chinese and Japanese Rare Book Cataloging and Korean Romanization Sessions at the Library on April 1 and 2 in conjunction with the 2002 Annual Meetings of CEAL and the Association for Asian Studies, Inc., in Washington later that week. Four catalogers from prominent United States art museums spoke at the workshop, along with members of the Coop Team, the Japanese I Team, and policy specialists in CPSO.


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: Julianne Beall, John Byrum, Roselyne Chang, Jurij Dobczansky, Les Hawkins, Albert Kohlmeier, Susan Morris, Geraldine Ostrove, William Starck, Valerie Weinberg, 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]).

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