In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 1998, the Cataloging Directorate and Serial Record Division (SRD, Acquisitions Directorate) cataloged 274,890 new items and created 242,213 new bibliographic records. This represents a decrease of 4.9% from the previous fiscal year. The directorate also produced 128,042 inventory-level catalog records for nonprint arrearage items.
The directorate and SRD produced 175,103 full original bibliographic records; this figure included 51,792 CIP records, an increase of one percent over the previous year. Production in the annotated card program for juvenile literature also increased by 6.05 percent to 4,400 records. A total of 24,880 minimal-level monograph and serial catalog records was produced; 39,265 titles were copy-cataloged; and 2,965 collection-level records were created, with 11,833 items cleared by this means. Dewey Decimal Classification numbers were assigned for 111,293 titles. CIP verifications, also called CIP upgrades, totaled 51,181. In each of these areas, production was slightly less than in fiscal 1997.
In the area of authority work, a total of 7,194 new headings were added to Library of Congress Subject Headings, representing a decrease of 11.53 percent from the previous year, and 3,818 new Library of Congress Classification numbers were established, an increase of 7.4 percent over fiscal year 1997. LC cataloging generated 167,441 new name authority records (NARs) and 9,713 new series authority records. The 167,441 new NARs include 64,194 machine-derived authority records created through the LC/OCLC Uniform Title Correction Project, the first large-scale project to create authority records by automated techniques.
The Library's cooperative cataloging partners in the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) set new records for production in several categories in fiscal 1998. The CONSER program created 30,856 new serial records, with 43,742 maintenance transactions for the fiscal year (including LC production). For monographs, the BIBCO program saw the creation of 37,559 bibliographic records in its second year, an increase of more than 25 percent. PCC institutions created 9,233 new series authorities, 2,159 new LCSH headings, 883 new LC classification numbers, and 161,446 new name authorities. The figures for new subjects, classification numbers, and NARs as well as the BIBCO bibliographic production are all new record highs. The 161,446 NARs includes approximately 31,000 records created through the Dance Heritage Coalition and loaded into the national authority file in fiscal 1998.
The modest decrease in cataloging production was predictable given the resources the Cataloging Directorate and Serial Record Division are devoting to the LC ILS (integrated library system) implementation project and the steady loss of staff over the past two years. More than 100 staff members in the directorate and SRD have been serving on ILS project implementation teams since April 1998. Catalogers and cataloging technicians are needed not just on ILS bibliographic control implementation teams, but on the ILS teams that are planning the implementation of the acquisitions/serial check-in, inventory control/circulation, and public catalog modules as well. This investment of cataloging staff resources in the ILS implementation will benefit the Library as a whole. Far more damaging to production levels has been the loss of staff, chiefly through retirements, with little or no prospect of hiring replacements. In fiscal 1997 the Cataloging Directorate lost twelve senior catalogers and ten cataloging technicians; the losses were nearly as great in fiscal 1998: twelve more senior catalogers and six cataloging technicians left the directorate, a decimal classifier was promoted into a noncataloging position, and only three entry-level catalogers were hired. The retirements or promotions of two automated operations coordinators and five team leaders further reduced time available for cataloging as catalogers were called upon to fill those vacancies temporarily. The Serial Record Division was also severely affected as three of its senior catalogers retired during the fiscal year.
In fiscal year 1998, sixteen public libraries contributed to BIBCO, NACO, and SACO, three of the component programs of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). Most of these libraries are independent participants; however, a few contribute through joint ("funnel") projects with institutions that share similar collections, formats, or locations.
Cleveland Public Library is one of the strongest public library BIBCO participants, contributing 3,262 bibliographic records (nine percent of the fiscal year BIBCO total). The library also endorses the use of the new core-level record; ninety-one percent of their BIBCO contributions are at core-level, which is a higher percentage than any other BIBCO library. In fiscal year 1999, Queens Borough Public Library will join the ranks of BIBCO members.
The thirteen NACO public libraries contributed 7,551 new name authority records and 598 new series authority records last year, five and six percent respectively of the PCC totals. Nine of the thirteen libraries are independent members; the remaining four institutions contribute through funnel projects. Cleveland Public Library and the Cooperative Computer Services, a Chicago-based consortium, function both as independent libraries and as members in the NACO-Music Project.
Public libraries make an even greater statistical contribution to the Subject Authority Cooperative Program (SACO). In fiscal year 1998 they contributed 344 new subject headings to LCSH, which is sixteen percent of the new subjects created for the year. Edmonton Public Library in Edmonton, Alberta, proposed 128 new subject headings, followed by Hennepin County Public Library with121 and Cleveland Public Library with seventy-four. The OCLC Fiction Project also contributed 120 new subject headings and subsequently updated and re-distributed over 1,725 bibliographic records, thereby increasing access to records used most frequently in public libraries.
In March 1996, the Public Library Association (PLA) conference held in Portland, Oregon, sponsored a PCC outreach program to public libraries about cooperative cataloging and the PCC. The PLA subcommittee "Cataloging Needs of Public Libraries" will sponsor a program "Cooperative Cataloging Goes Public" at the ALA Annual Meeting in New Orleans in 1999, where the benefits of cooperative cataloging will be shared with many public librarians. Currently, the PCC public library participants are Arlington Heights Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland Public Library--Music Library (NACO-Music), Concord Free Public Library, Cooperative Computer Services, Cooperative Computer Services--Music Cataloging (NACO-Music), Dallas Public Library, Dayton and Montgomery County Public--Music Collection (NACO-Music), Edmonton Public Library, Free Library of Philadelphia, Hennepin County Public Library, Jacksonville Public Library Fine Arts and Recreation Dept. (NACO-Music), Johnson County Library (Overland Park, Kansas), AV Cataloging Centre (OLAC), Louisville Free Public Library, Queens Borough Public Library, San Francisco Public Library, and Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library (Northern California Project).
The Cataloging Policy and Support Office has posted a document on its home page announcing LC's plans to implement the core-level record on Nov. 16, 1998. For a full report please visit the CPSO Home Page (URL: http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso) or view the document directly at URL: http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/corelev.html
At the request of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging Steering Committee, the Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office has approved the USMARC identification code "DPCC" for use in series authority records created by LC staff and by NACO participants to indicate national-level tracing practice.
BIBCO participants who create records for items in series are directed to follow the national tracing practice indicated by presence of "$5 DPCC" in the 642 and 645 fields in series authority records (SARs) in the national authority file to assure consistency in the presence and form of series access points. The default national-level tracing decision will be to trace.
Background for decision
The treatment of series items varies from one library to another (if items are analyzed, if items are classified separately or as a collection, if an access point is included in analytic records) depending upon local needs and limitations. LC's local tracing practice has been the de facto "national" tracing practice for many years. However, considering LC's local tracing decision to be the national tracing decision causes the following problems in the context of BIBCO records:
Many BIBCO participants are doing retrospective cataloging for items in series processed by LC before LC hanged its default tracing decision to "trace" in 1989 (at the request of other libraries) or even before LC changed its default analysis decision to "analyze in full" in 1971.
Due to increasing quantities of publications and a decreasing number of catalogers at LC, exceptions to the default decision of "analyze in full" are being made at LC to not analyze some series. Many BIBCO participants want to catalog at least some items in these series and want to include access points for the series in the BIBCO analytic records. However, LC's local tracing decision for these non-analyzed series is coded "n" for "not traced."
LC generally does not catalog issues of periodicals and does not create SARs for periodicals. Some BIBCO participants want to be able to catalog specific issues of periodicals for local reasons and want to include access points for the periodical in the BIBCO analytic records. However, if an SAR were created, LC's local tracing decision would be "n" for "not traced."
Implementation
New SARs: All LC staff and NACO SAR contributors will include national-level tracing practice in the 645 field as shown below in SARs for monographic series, multipart items, and other series (serial) regardless of that institution's local tracing decision. If the series is numbered, the national-level decision for form of numbering will be given in a 642 field.
642 $a [form of number in access point] $5 DPCC
645 $a t $5 DPCC
LC will add its local tracing practice to the new SAR; a NACO participant has the option to add its local tracing practice to the new SAR.
642 $a [form of number in access point] $5 DPCC $5 DLC
645 $a t $5 DPCC $5 DLC
642 $a [form of number in access point] $5 DPCC $5 IaRedo
645 $a t $5 DPCC $5 IaRedo
Existing SARs: The national-level tracing practice information will be added in 645 and 642 fields as appropriate in existing SARs through a project managed by LC's Cataloging Policy and Support Office.
The Library of Congress and the National Library of Canada are pleased to announce that the harmonized USMARC and CAN/MARC formats will be published in a single edition in early 1999 under a new name: MARC 21. The name both points to the future as the library community moves into the twenty-first century and suggests the international character of the format, which is appropriate and important given its expanding worldwide use.
MARC 21 is not a new format. From 1994-1997 the USMARC and CAN/MARC user communities worked to eliminate all remaining differences in their two already-similar formats. Compatibility had been a feature of the development processes for both formats for many years. In 1997 and early 1998, updates to the formats were issued that made the format specifications identical. MARC 21, a continuation of both USMARC and CAN/MARC, publishes the formats in one edition under a new name.
Further announcements on the publication of the new editions of the five formats that make up the MARC 21 family of formats -- Bibliographic, Authority, Holdings, Classification, and Community Information -- will be made when printing of each is completed over the next year. The National Library of Canada will also be producing simultaneously a French edition of MARC 21.
In September, Stuart Stone, a senior cataloger from LC's History and Literature Cataloging Division, traveled to Sao Paulo to train catalogers at the Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP) in name authority record (NAR) creation and submission as part of the NACO program component of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). He also traveled to Rio de Janeiro to meet with representatives of the Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil (BNB) to foster interest in the PCC.
During the week of Sept. 14-18, 1998, twelve catalogers (descriptive, serials, and subject catalogers) from the Sistema Integrada de Bibliotecas, USP, one of the largest universities in Latin America with thirty-nine separate libraries in its system, were provided with NACO training.
From Sept. 21-25, 1998, Stone toured the Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil (BNB) in Rio de Janeiro and was given a demonstration of the sophisticated cataloging software that had been developed and modified for national needs by the staff to enable creative shared cataloging. The BNB uses an adapted version of USMARC and translates into Portuguese Library of Congress subject headings for use in their bibliographic records. The Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil maintains a web page at URL: http://www.dpt.bn.br. During Stone's visit to the Library of Congress Overseas Office in Rio de Janeiro he made a presentation on "The Library of Congress and the Program for International Cooperative Cataloging" in the U.S. Consulate. More than two dozen librarians, mostly heads of libraries or library divisions from the greater Rio area, attended the talk that discussed the four component programs of the PCC (NACO, SACO, BIBCO, and CONSER) and to learn how they might be able to participate and contribute. Most were involved already in some aspect of international cataloging efforts through the Internet.
LC's law classification specialist Jolande Goldberg traveled to Rome, Munich, and Moscow in October to represent LC in conjunction with her development and dissemination of the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) schedules for law materials.
Visiting Rome first, Goldberg represented LC at the seventeenth International Association of Law Libraries conference, held at the International Institute for Unification of Civil Law (UNIDROIT). As part of her research supporting the development of the canon law schedules, she also visited the Pontifical Lateran University and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. She examined the university's library catalogs and holdings, concentrating on modern canon law, and discussed the outline of the canon law schedules with Dr. Phillip Milligan (university secretary) and the head of the library. Goldberg met with Dr. Paul Weston, who directs the Vatican Library's cataloging and online operations, and examined some of the historical manuscript holdings of works dating from as early as the ninth century. As a result of the interest in classification at the Vatican Library, Goldberg concluded an agreement that Dr. Weston and the library's canon law specialist would review her forthcoming drafts of KB-KBS subclasses. Finally, she met with deputy secretary-general of UNIDROIT Walter Rodino to explore using LCC to classify a particular historical collection in their library, as well as their holdings in comparative and uniform law (class K) and law of nations (KZ).
Goldberg next visited the University of Munich Theological Faculty's Canonistic Institute, which contains extensive library collections. She was able to discuss her draft outlines as well as aspects of modern canon law with specialists on the research staff there.
Her final destination was the Russian State Library (former Lenin State Library) in Moscow, to attend the international conference, "LBC: New Horizons in Knowledge Organization," which was devoted to the Russian library classification system, known also as BBK, and its evolution from the Soviet era to the present. Also attending the conference was Joan Mitchell, editor-in-chief of Dewey Decimal Classification.
Goldberg's host in Moscow was Dr. Eduard Sukiasyan, editor-in-chief of LBC and recently appointed deputy director of the state library. She gave two presentations at the conference, "LCC: Tools and Management to Keep It Up-to-Date," and the closing address, "LC Classification: Application of Enabling Techniques for Organization of Collections in the Electronic Environment." LCC is not well-known in that library community, and Goldberg's presentations were provocative and well-received.
The 1997 cumulation of the Library of Congress Rule Interpretations which CDS began distributing in May of 1998 is defective. All orders for the cumulation processed since January 1998 were filled with this cumulation. CDS is printing a corrected cumulation and will replace all copies distributed to date.
The Encoded Archival Description Working Group at the Library of Congress is pleased to announce the first release of a search system for archival finding aids at the Library of Congress. Archival finding aids are detailed guides to primary source material that provide fuller information than that normally contained within cataloging records. The Library has been instrumental in developing and testing an emerging standard for encoding finding aids in Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) using the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) document type definition (DTD).
The new search page provides the following features:
The HTML display of these finding aids is generated through OmniMark conversion scripts, which will be modified and refined as the Library implements version 1.0 of the DTD. The search engine used is InQuery, which was originally developed by the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval at the University of Massachusetts and which is now available commercially from Sovereign Hill Software. This same engine is used by the National Digital Library Program's American Memory site. The Library is continuing to develop advanced searching features, which will be added to the site in the future.
LC has also begun to implement links from catalog records to EAD finding aids: within the catalog record, the 856 field URLs point to HTML versions of the finding aids, which in turn link to the native SGML.
The Library is also still working on problems associated with electronic delivery of very large finding aids, such as the guide to the Federal Theater Project Records, which currently can be viewed only as an SGML file and cannot be accessed through the EAD search page.
Visit the Library of Congress search page (URL: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/faid/). It can also be reached through the Library's EAD finding aids page (URL: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/ead/). Provide any comments to Mary Lacy (mlac@loc.gov) or Anne Mitchell (amit@loc.gov).
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: William Anderson, John Byrum, Roselyne Chang, Janice Herd, Angela Kinney, Albert Kohlmeier, John Mitchell, Mary Louise Mitchell, Susan Morris, Geraldine Ostrove, David Smith, Linda Stubbs, and David Williamson. Address editorial inquiries to the editor at the above address or rhia@loc.gov (email), (202) 707-5831 (voice), or (202) 707-6629 (fax). Listowner: David Williamson. Address subscription inquiries to the listowner at dawi@loc.gov
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, volumes 1-3 are available on LC MARVEL. Volume 4- are available through the LCCN home page (URL: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/lccn/). The back issues on LC MARVEL are being migrated to the web site.
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(12/09/98)