LC CATALOGING NEWSLINE

Online Newsletter of the Cataloging Directorate
Library of Congress

Volume 11, no. 2    ISSN 1066-8829    March 2003


CONTENTS
LCCN Marks Ten Years of Publication
New Catalogers
LC Conference 2000 Action Forum

LCCN Marks Ten Years of Publication

LC's Cataloging Directorate on Jan. 15 celebrated the tenth anniversary of LC Cataloging Newsline (LCCN), which published volume 11, no. 1, in January 2003.

Robert M. Hiatt (Cataloging Policy and Support Office) has edited the electronic newsletter since its inception. John D. Byrum (chief, Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division) has chaired the LCCN Editorial Advisory Group, also since its inception. Reporters volunteering from throughout the Cataloging Directorate have supplied an average of nine articles for each issue. Topics have included news of directorate policies and programs and major staff changes--subjects of interest to subscribing catalogers and technical support staff within LC and from other libraries throughout the world.

Between January 1993 and December 2002, the newsletter has published 1,150 articles in 122 issues comprising ten volumes. There are now 2,500 subscribers to the distributed version of the publication. Since Sept. 17, 1997, there have been nearly 35,000 visits to the remote access version available on the Cataloging Directorate's Web Site at URL [March 2003].

Judith A. Mansfield, acting director for cataloging, and John D. Byrum presented certificates and on-the-spot awards to the newsletter's Editorial Advisory Group, which in addition to Byrum and Hiatt include Julianne Beall (Decimal Classification Division), Roselyne Chang (History and Literature Cataloging Division), Jurij Dobczansky (Social Sciences Cataloging Division), Les Hawkins (Serial Record Division), Albert Kohlmeier (Cataloging in Publication Division), Susan Morris (Office of the Director for Cataloging), Geraldine Ostrove (Cataloging Policy and Support Office), William Starck (Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division), Valerie Weinberg (Special Materials Cataloging Division), David Williamson (Office of the Director for Cataloging), and Roman Worobec (Arts and Sciences Cataloging Division).


NEW CATALOGERS

The Cataloging Directorate has gained four new catalogers since the beginning of 2003. Reiner Gogolin and Nancy Emery joined the Law Team, Social Sciences Cataloging Division, in January. Gogolin came to LC after working in the Washington, D.C., library of the law firm Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering. Emery worked at the libraries of the University of Michigan and the University of Colorado and holds a master's degree in industrial psychology. Both Gogolin and Emery will specialize initially in descriptive cataloging of German and Romance-language legal materials.

The Hispanic Team, History and Literature Cataloging Division, also has hired two catalogers. Thomas Hannigan began on February 18. He holds a B.A. in Spanish and a master's degree in library and information science from the University of Texas at Austin and previously worked as a researcher at Watson Wyatt and Co. in Washington, D.C. Elsie Ramirez joined the team on March 10. She is a native speaker of Spanish and earned a B.A. in anthropology from Montclair State University, New Jersey, and a master's degree in library and information studies from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, while working part-time at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro and the Greensboro Public Library.

Within the Acquisitions Directorate, the Serial Record Division has hired eight new serials catalogers: Rick Fitzgerald, Ana Kurland, Iliana Mitropolitsky, Kristie Muldrow, Hien Nguyen, Pamela Simpson, Diana Snigurowicz, and Soon Yang.

Rick Fitzgerald received a masters in library science degree from the University of Arizona in December 2002. While working on his masters, he worked for the Center for Creative Photography, the University of Arizona Special Collections, and the Tucson Museum of Art. Spanish and Dutch are his primary languages. Ana Kurland comes from the Library's Hispanic Division. She recently graduated from Florida State University with a masters in library science. She will be cataloging publications in the Spanish and Hebrew languages. Iliana Mitropolitsky formerly worked for LSSI (Library Systems & Services, Inc.) on the serials holdings conversion and most recently as a technician in Copyright Acquisitions Division, LC. She holds a bachelor's degree in library science from the Library Science Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria, and a masters in Slavic studies from St. Kliment Ohridski University. Ms. Mitropolitsky also has language skills in French, Russian, Macedonian, Slovenian, Byelorussian, Czech, Serbian, Croatian, and Old Church Slavonic and experience in a variety of subject areas with a subject specialty in literature, especially Slavic literature. Kristie Muldrow has been with the Serial Record Division since mid-1998 as a cataloging technician. She has a bachelor in business management from the University of Maryland, and her languages are French and Spanish.

Hien Nguyen is returning to the Serial Record Division after having worked at the National Library of Medicine for sixteen years as a CONSER serials cataloger. In addition to her native Vietnamese and French, Ms. Nguyen has cataloged in Romance languages, including Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. She has also cataloged in German and Japanese. She holds a bachelor's degree in French and a masters in library science from SUNY, Buffalo. Pamela Simpson has been appointed to the position of cataloger in the National Serials Data Program where she worked from 1991 to 1994. From 1994 to 1999 she was the serials and electronic resources cataloging librarian and the French bibliographer at Pennsylvania State University. She has a B.A. and a master of French Studies from Auburn University and an M.L.I.S. from Louisiana State University. Diana Snigurowicz comes from the Government Printing Office, where she has been working as a CONSER serials cataloger of print and electronic resources since summer 2002. She has also worked in libraries at the IMF/World Bank and the University of Maryland at College Park. In addition to her M.L.S. from the University of Maryland at College Park, she also holds a masters in historical musicology from the University of British Columbia, a masters in history from the University of Maryland at College Park, and a Ph. D. in modern European history from the University of Chicago. Soon L. Yang comes from the Japanese, Korean, South and Southeast Asian Acquisition Section of the African/Asian Acquisitions and Overseas Operations Division, LC. She is a native speaker of Korean and has a good working knowledge of Japanese and German languages. She has received degrees from Ewha Womans University (law), Northern Virginia Community College (business administration), and George Mason University (accounting).

The new catalogers are the first to be hired in the directorates as the result of a recruitment process that began in autumn 2001. The Library's hiring plan for fiscal 2002 authorized the directorates to fill more than forty cataloger positions, two decimal classifier positions, and positions for a cooperative cataloger and team leader and a reviewer for the Cataloging in Publication Cataloging Team. Interviews continue for the remaining cataloger positions.


LC CONFERENCE 2000 ACTION PLAN FORUM

(This is the first of two articles.)

The third LC Conference 2000 Action Plan Forum took place on Sunday, Jan. 26, during the 2003 Midwinter Meeting of the American Library Association (ALA) in Philadelphia, Pa. Chaired by Beacher Wiggins (Acting Associate Librarian for Library Services, LC), the forum featured brief updates on all work items in "Bibliographic Control of Web Resources: A Library of Congress Action Plan" and fuller reports on five selected items in the areas of library education, portal applications, metadata enrichment, and electronic archiving.

Wiggins reported progress on a number of work items. For work item 1.1 (increased availability of standard records for electronic resources), he reported that the Library had commissioned Ardith Bausenbach (senior automation planning specialist, Automation Planning and Liaison Office, LC) to conduct an environmental scan of existing projects to identify, organize, and provide access to electronic resources. This work would probably commence in April. Work item 2.2 (international sharing of authority records), led by Barbara Tillett (chief, Cataloging Policy and Support Office, LC) is being fulfilled through the Virtual International Authority File project, a proof-of-concept collaboration among LC, OCLC, and the Deutsche Bibliothek. The three institutions were about to sign a collaborative agreement for a multi-stage test to link personal name authority records and make them available and maintained through the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) protocol. Tillett was also leading work items 3.3 (showing provisions in AACR2 and MARC 21 for explicit links from record to resource and record to record) and 3.5 (guidelines on separate vs. single records for manifestations). Wiggins explained that work item 3.3 was intended to package work that had already been done into a form that could be readily understood and used by the library vendor community. He noted that from the perspective of the Cataloging Policy and Support Office, work item 3.5 had also been completed, but he expected that other organizations and programs, such as CONSER, would carry on with refinements or formulations tailored to their constituencies. For work item 3.6 (development of AACR2 to provide for bibliographic control of full range of electronic resources), Wiggins had communicated with the chair of the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR, Ann Huthwaite (Acting Manager, Kelvin Grove Branch, Queensland University of Technology Library), urging that JSCAACR consider the bicentennial conference's recommendations on making AACR2 more responsive to the cataloging of Web resources. Huthwaite had replied that the JSC had considered how the conference recommendations could fit into the strategic plan it was developing. Wiggins therefore considered work item 3.6 complete but looked forward to the issuance of the JSC strategic plan.

Wiggins said that LC was seeking a principal investigator or lead organization for work item 4.2 (metadata extraction tool), which had generated much interest during the bicentennial conference. LC's acting director for cataloging Judith A. Mansfield had described this work item to the industry group AVIAC (Automation Vendors Information Advisory Committee) which met in conjunction with the Midwinter Meeting. Work item 6.5 (incorporating "event awareness" into AACR2) is awaiting the appointment of a leader. Work item 6.1 (LC research on digital initiatives) was being fulfilled by means of LC's regular reports to the Digital Library Federation. Work was also progressing on work items 2.5 (LCC and LCSH for the Web developer community, led by Kathryn Mendenhall (acting chief, Cataloging Distribution Service, LC) and 3.1 (library principles for the metadata community, with principal investigator/author Sherry Vellucci (dean of the School of Library and Information Science, St. John's University)). Work items 4.4 (resource selection/user feedback tool) and 6.4 (research and development on changing nature of the catalog) were on hold pending completion of related work items.

Seven speakers gave brief administrative updates on their work items. John Celli (chief, Cataloging in Publication Division LC) reviewed progress on work item 1.2 (repurposing of metadata). There have been several successful repurposing projects at LC, including the ONIX TOC project, which repurposes publishers' ONIX files to make table of contents data and publisher summaries available on the Web, and projects to link certain catalog records to full electronic texts. David Seaman (Digital Library Federation) joined the work group for this item, which also included Mary Levering (United States Copyright Office, LC), and Regina Reynolds (National Serials Data Program, LC). Celli welcomed nominations for a principal investigator; he can be reached at [email protected].

John Byrum (chief, Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division, LC) spoke on 2.1 (common user interfaces ... across a range of discovery tools). He predicted that the refinement of such interfaces, or library portals, would likely assume in the coming years an importance on a par with the impact of integrated library systems. The work item, which had evolved considerably since the ALA 2002 Annual Conference in Atlanta, Ga., was now being led by the LC Portals Applications Issues Group (LCPAIG). The issues group had identified numerous portal products and a bibliography of selected resources, both listed on the LCPAIG Web site at URL //www.loc.gov/catdir/lcpaig/ [March 2003]. Byrum said that LCPAIG would consult closely with the Association of Research Libraries Scholars Portal Project and with the Internet Portals Interest Group of ALA's LITA (Library and Information Technology Association).

Rebecca Guenther (senior network development and MARC standards specialist, Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NDMSO), LC) reported on work item 3.2 (identification, mapping, etc., of key metadata schemes). She said that the IFLA Metadata Working Group had produced a draft report that was reviewed at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in August 2002. As METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) has developed, a registry of extension schemata for use with METS-encoded documents had also been developed. Guenther mentioned other metadata mappings that were available: MARC 21 to MODS, the Metadata Object Description Schema; MARC 21 to Dublin Core; the Dublin Core/MARC/GILS Crosswalk (GILS is the Government Information Locator Service); MARC 21, Dublin Core, and Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata. Guenther and Alan Danskin (British Library) represent the MARC 21 community in the CORES Interoperability Forum, part of the CORES Project funded by the European Union to encourage interoperability of metadata standards in support of the "semantic Web."

Sally McCallum (chief, NDMSO) is the leader for work items 3.4 (supporting FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) displays for multiple versions), 3.7 (guidelines for persistent identifier system, shared resolving system), and 4.5 (convergence of standards for harvesting metadata). She said that NDMSO, as the lead organization for these items, would assure that work was progressing on each, but would not necessarily carry out the work itself. She summarized ongoing work to support end-user catalog displays that are cognizant of FRBR issued by an IFLA working group in 1998 using an entity-relationship model for cataloging. The OCLC Office of Research expected to have a demonstration site for FRBR-cognizant displays of catalog records for fiction (the Fiction Finder project) available by February. The vendor VTLS, Inc., has used FRBR in a new release of its integrated library system, which has been installed at the Universite catholique de Louvain. At LC, staff have identified all FRBR-related data elements in the MARC 21 formats. The JSC Format Variation Working Group has submitted several reports on using FRBR concepts for expression-level records; the JSC had also received a report from Pat Riva (McGill University) on possibilities for incorporating FRBR terminology into AACR. The IFLA Working Group on Functional Requirements of Authority Numbering and Records (FRANAR), now chaired by Glenn Patton (OCLC), was considering FRBR elements in authority records. During the next ALA Annual Conference to be held in Toronto, Canada, the Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) and MARBI (Machine- Readable Bibliographic Information) would sponsor a joint program on FRBR on the morning of Sunday, June 22.

McCallum said that work item 3.7 was moving forward, but the work was difficult and would be carried out over the long term. Persistent identifiers include the DOI (Digital Object Identifier); in addition, Internet namespaces had now been assigned for the ISSN, ISBN, and ISMN (International Standard Music Number), a step that could permit those numbers to function as persistent identifiers for digital resources. The PURL and Handle systems were well-known examples of resolver systems. McCallum mentioned the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative experiment underway to assign persistent identifiers to Dublin Core roles and relators.

McCallum reported that work item 4.5 was essentially complete with the release of OAI (Open Archives Initiative) version 2.0. The Library of Congress exposes metadata for its digital collections in MARC 21, Dublin Core, and XML, and was considering exposing metadata in MODS.

Adolfo Tarango (University of California, San Diego) reported on work item 4.1 (specifications for records for titles in aggregator databases). He was also chair of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) Third Task Force on Journals in Aggregations and was leading this work item for the lead organization, the PCC Standing Committee on Automation (SCA). The CONSER-at-Large meeting at ALA Midwinter had considered the wording of the item and confirmed that libraries will continue to need record sets for serials in aggregator databases; creators of record sets need access to base records that can be customized; the base records should be CONSER records; and vendors and CONSER should work together to customize the records for titles in aggregations. Tarango would present a report to the SCA.

Glenn Patton summarized progress on three work items being carried out by OCLC personnel. Work item 4.3 (specifications for embedded metadata) is being led by Stuart Weibel (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative); Patton said a consultant had been hired to work with vendors that produce Web authoring tools. Lorcan Dempsey (OCLC Office of Research) was the leader for work item 6.2 (catalog user tools) and was considering user tools and customizable user interfaces. Work item 6.3 (simplified LCSH) was being carried out by the FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) project, led by Ed O'Neill (OCLC Office of Research).

Carol Tobin (past president, ALA Reference and User Services Association (RUSA)) is the leader for work item 5.2 (sponsor a series of open forums on metadata needs to support reference service). With LC, RUSA was co-sponsor of a forum at Midwinter featuring Professor Marcia Bates (Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles), the principal investigator for work item 2.3 (metadata enrichment). Articles in the LCCN, v. 11, no. 5, will summarize the RUSA/LC Forum as well as the five detailed reports at the Conference 2000 Action Plan Forum on work items 1.3 (selection criteria for electronic resources), 1.4 (archiving and accessing electronic government publications), 2.3 (metadata enrichment), 5.1 (library/information school curricula for technical services), and 5.3 (continuing education needs for technical services).


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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