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The Library of Congress > Cataloging, Acquisitions > PCC > CONSER > Annual Reports > 1999/2000 Annual Report

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Compiled by the Library of Congress
Serial Record Division, November 2000

Introduction

During 1999/2000, CONSER and its affiliate programs continued to grow and flourish. The success of the Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program (SCCTP) and the initiative to add publication patterns to CONSER records raised awareness of and interest in CONSER both at home and abroad. The CONSER Operations Committee held its annual meeting May 11-12, 2000 at the Library of Congress with opening and closing sessions held in conjunction with BIBCO. CONSER at large meetings were held at both mid-winter and annual ALA meetings. Jean Hirons continued as CONSER Coordinator. During the year Eniko Basa and Les Hawkins were detailed to the CONSER Specialist position at the Library of Congress.

CONSER membership grew to 38 members with the addition of five institutions at the full, associate and affiliate levels. The CONSER database grew to 906,803 records with the addition of over 28,000 authenticated records.

Highlights of the year include the completion of rule revisions for chapter 12 and associated efforts towards international harmonization, the start of the publication patterns initiative, and the development of new courses for SCCTP. New problems arose with electronic resources (hardly a new development!) and several groups were established to recommend CONSER policies and practices.

FY 2000 was particularly noteworthy for the increased level of international activities. The first non-North American institutions joined CONSER (National Library of Wales and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) and SCCTP training and CONSER practices were brought to Taiwan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. Jean Hirons received the Marcia Tuttle International Grant, awarded by the North American Serials Interest Group, in support of a visit to the national libraries of Wales and Scotland, the British Library, and Cambridge University.

The year ended on a sad note, however, with the death of Crystal Graham (UC San Diego) in August. Among Graham's many achievements were establishing the ARL guidelines for cataloging microform masters, co-authoring the paper "Issues Related to Seriality," and her work on the CONSER single record option. Graham was well known for her tireless efforts to promote good serials practices and she will be sorely missed.

CONSER membership

Membership in CONSER now stands at the following: Full members (24), Associate members (4 plus USNP), Affiliate members (4), and CONSER Enhance members (6). Brown University, Northwestern University, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology joined as full members; Cleveland Public Library and the National Library of Wales joined as associate members, and R.R. Bowker became an affiliate member. Both Brown and Cleveland Public joined as a result of participation in SCCTP. Bowker's membership is somewhat unique in that a Bowker employee will be located in the National Serials Data Program (NSDP).

The responsibility for training new members was successfully shared by LC and CONSER catalogers alike. The CONSER Curriculum, prepared several years ago by John Riemer (Georgia) and others, was used by trainers at LC, MIT, and CRL and revised by David Van Hoy (MIT).

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AACR2 revision, international harmonization, and associated activities

The CONSER AACR Review Task Force met during ALA mid-winter in San Antonio to discuss the rule revision proposals for chapter 12. Hirons and the task force were charged by the Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of AACR (JSC) in the fall with preparing the revision. The proposals were submitted by Hirons in February and subsequently received comment by all JSC constituents. In addition, Hirons gave workshops on the revision at the Texas Library Association and NASIG and gave a presentation at the ALCTS Committee to Study Serials Cataloging meeting in Chicago. Hirons also attended the JSC meeting in London in September where the revisions were discussed. The chapter will be finalized in April 2001. In recognition of five years of hard work, a small party was held at ALA for members of the CONSER task force to celebrate its accomplishments.

Hirons and LC colleagues Regina Reynolds, Judy Kuhagen, and John Byrum attended the two day meeting of the ISBD(S) Working Group, held prior to ALA midwinter, at which the basic concept of "continuing resources" was adopted and many other ideas were exchanged. To continue the momentum, a meeting of a subgroup was held in Ottawa in early June to discuss the development of an international standard serials title (ISST).

Reynolds participated in the ISSN Manual Working Group, attending meetings in Paris and Washington, and presented the proposed changes to ISSN directors. The Library of Congress hosted the annual meeting of the ISSN Directors in September.

CONSER was the source of MARBI Discussion Paper No. 119, Seriality and MARC 21 which proposed defining a new code ‘i' in leader 07 (bibliographic level) for integrating resources. Code ‘i' would be used with a serials 008 for textual materials and could also be applied to cartographic materials. The proposed new approach would provide serials control coding for integrating resources while separating them from serials for purposes of OCLC authorizations and searching and retrieval in catalogs. The paper also included suggestions for additional codes in the serials 008 and a repeatable 260 field Initial reaction to the proposal was very favorable.

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Electronic Resources

Electronic serials once again dominated discussions at the CONSER Operations Committee meeting. Robert Bremer (OCLC) and Reynolds addressed the growing problem of multiple e-serial versions. These include aggregations, smaller packages of serials, OCLC's Firstsearch, and other ways in which the publisher's online version is made available. As a result of the discussion, a task force was established under the PCC Standing Committee on Standards, chaired by Riemer. Other topics included finding ways to share the cataloging of e-serial packages, how to maintain URLs in CONSER records, CORC, and the Jake database. Following the meeting, Hirons set up a group of "e-serial experts" who are using email to identify trends and problems and suggest CONSER practices. Topics discussed have included multiple versions, use of LCRI 1.11A, and the revision of CCM Module 31.

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Publication Pattern Initiative

The publication pattern experiment passed a significant milestone in June 2000, when use of OCLC bibliographic field 891 was implemented. Twenty institutions are currently signed up to participate in the experiment. Five new participants joined following an information session at NASIG, given by Hirons, Frieda Rosenberg (UNC, Chapel Hill), and Ruth Haas (Harvard). OCLC record #35601086 for Heart failure reviews, was the first CONSER record in which 891 fields were added. To date only VTLS can make full use of the data to set up a check-in record.

The CONSER task force, experiment participants, and vendor representatives met at ALA in San Antonio and Chicago, discussing progress of the initiative, the formation of a new Workflow Task Group, and seeding CONSER records with Harvard holdings data. Linda Miller (LC) coordinated a CONSER sponsored survey concerning their systems' use (or non-use) of MARC Format for Holdings Data, to which the response was almost 100%.

Late in the year, Robert Bremer developed a macro that allows for pattern creation from the data in a bibliographic record for titles that don't have complex frequencies. At the end of the year pattern data had been added to over 100 records.

Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program

SCCTP continued to flourish and grow with more than forty workshops of the Basic Serials Cataloging course scheduled in 2000. Comments have been overwhelmingly positive and a selection have been added to the SCCTP home page . Forty-six trainers from the US and Canada have been trained to give the workshop. The second SCCTP course, serial holdings, is being prepared by Rosenberg and Thom Saudargas (College Center for Library Automation) and drafts were submitted for review during the summer. A call for trainers was sent out in September and the course will be tested at the University of Georgia in November and released in February 2001 following a train-the-trainer session. Work was also begun on two additional courses: Advanced Serials, prepared by Margaret Mering (University of Nebraska) and Kristin Lindlan (University of Washington), and Electronic Serials, prepared by Steve Shadle (University of Washington) and Les Hawkins (LC). Together with the Holdings and Basic Serials courses, these four will form the core SCCTP courses.

Interest in serials training is not limited to the US. Lisa Furubotten (Texas A&M) translated the Basic Serials Workshop slides into Spanish and gave a course in Mexico City during the spring. She is also working with Elizabeth Steinhagen (University of New Mexico) on a Spanish translation of the CONSER Cataloging Manual. These efforts have generated interest in closer ties between CONSER and libraries in Mexico. SCCTP trainers Cathy Weng (Temple University) and I-chene Tai (Le Moyne College) translated the Basic Serials Cataloging Workshop and portions of the CONSER Editing Guide into Chinese and gave a week-long session in Taiwan during August. Anna Chan (Library of Parliament) translated the slides in French and gave a course in Ottawa with simultaneous French and English slides! Hirons also used the materials to provide portions of the course to catalogers at the National Library of Wales and Cambridge University during September. The training has resulted in increased interest in CONSER and its activities in the UK, in Mexico, and throughout the US.

CONSER documentation and publications

The year 2000 marked the death of New Serial Titles which had been published since January 1953. The cumulation for 1999 was the last published volume. Two updates to the CONSER Editing Guide were published. Update 11 (fall 1999) included new policy information for use of regular LCCNs by CONSER members, a revision of field 210 to accommodate broader use of abbreviated titles, and other changes. Update 12 (spring 2000) incorporated the use of encoding level 4 (core), CONSER use of cataloging source code ‘c', and a new code "s" that identifies the form of item as electronic. An update to the CONSER Cataloging Manual included the long-awaited Legal Serials module, prepared by Rhonda Lawrence (UCLA), with assistance by Ann Sitkin and John Hostage (Harvard). CONSERline dropped its ASCII email version and became a Web-only distribution following severe problems with its mailing list.

Member reports

Center for Research Libraries

This past year, the Cataloging Department at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) participated in numerous activities within the CONSER program and made many contributions in support of CRL's continued commitment to the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC).

During the past year (through Aug. 2000) the Cataloging Dept. at CRL contributed: 1, 644 original and/or newly authenticated bibliographic records and performed maintenance on additional records to the CONSER database. In the course of normal cataloging activities, the Dept. also added or updated 819 name and series authority records in the national authority file through our participation in NACO.

Work continued on cataloging and collating the foreign newspaper collection held at CRL made possible by a grant from National Endowment for the Humanities. Work started on the project in June 1997, and was completed in Oct. 1999.

Other CONSER-related work focused on training. Staff worked with Andrea Olson, from Cleveland Public Library, and completed 2 and 1/2 days of training July 11-13, 2000.

Special cataloging projects included: Periodiques clandestins, 1939-1945; post-World War II foreign newspapers and periodicals; U.S. newspapers previously assigned a temporary location; rare Russian serials; foreign government documents; area studies uncataloged holdings; Sanborn fire insurance maps; Indonesian and Indian serials on microfiche; cataloging the first acquisitions of the Slavic and East European Microform Project (SEEMP); cataloging the first acquisitions of the Thai Materials Project funded by the Title VI Centers; Chinese and Japanese serials, and deposits.

In addition to the regular cataloging activities, staff in the Dept. were involved in: bar-coding and creating item records in support of the Innovative Interfaces Circulation module; adding subject headings and LC classification numbers to CRLCATALOG bibliographic records; profiling and customizing the CRL Webpac; retrospective conversion clean-up by transferring holdings information from the card catalog to CRLCATALOG; maintenance of CRL databases on the web; maintenance of CRLCATALOG bibliographic and authority records.

Xioajing Lei joined the staff in Nov. 1999, as a cataloger of Far Eastern materials. Marjorie Bloss, Vice-President of Library Operations, served as chair for PCC starting Feb. 2000. Marjorie also left the Center at the end of August 2000.

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Cleveland Public Library

Cleveland Public Library joined CONSER as an associate member in April of this year. In July, CPL's Operations representative, Andrea Olson, received training at the Center for Research Libraries. Adriana Pilecky-Dekajlo from CRL is reviewing CPL's CONSER contributions. Cleveland Public has gotten a somewhat slow start in CONSER, mainly because Andrea is responsible for coordinating foreign language cataloging in addition to serials, and CPL has two new Slavic catalogers.

Cornell University

Cornell University Library has spent the greater part of the past year getting ready for and implementing our new LMS. Our Voyager system came up in June.

In planning for our recovery from this event, we created a master plan. One of the most ambitious parts of that plan is the creation of prediction patterns for the 50,000+ serials currently received in the collections. To this end, the assignments of all the cataloging librarians and most of the copy catalogers in Central Technical Services were modified so they would devote one-half of their cataloging time to the editing of serial records, adding check-in patterns, or revising and creating new check-in patterns. We loaded the patterns available from the Library of Congress and have been following their guidelines for the creation and naming of new patterns. In Central Technical Services there are five of us creating new patterns, 19 staff adding the check-in patterns to the records. More than half of those staff are now without revision and only consult with their former revisers to ask for the creation of a new pattern or to discuss the myriad tricky situations that arise from serials and the seemingly unpredictable nature of their publication. Some of the staff have mentioned the new-found comfort that they are experiencing with serials.

We were greatly aided by Harvard and the Library of Congress concerning the prediction patterns. Even so, it still seemed that every other title needed a new pattern, but that has slowly come down to a more manageable number. There are many that we have had to create because of the languages that we collect so extensively. We are creating our Chinese patterns using pinyin romanization for the labels. We have added patterns with Vietnamese and Thai labels, as well. Our project is going well, but slowly.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the number of our CONSER contributions dropped precipitously in the summer months, although it is now recovering. Our greatest contribution continues to be in vernacular languages of Southeast Asia.

With all of the changes now in the works, we have decided that the implementation of coded MARC holdings at this time would be more than we could handle. We have temporarily postponed that aspect of our brave new world.

Harvard University

Harvard's contribution to the CONSER database numbered approximately 5,900 bibliographic records. This reflects original cataloging as well as maintenance to existing CONSER records. Staff added or completed maintenance work on 909 name authority records in the National Authority File. In the spring, two staff members, one from our Fine Arts Library and another from Tozzer Library (anthropology), attended the series authority training conducted at the Library of Congress by Judy Kuhagen.

Since Jan. 2000, the Harvard Law School Library has significantly increased its input and authentication of Middle Eastern and Slavic language serials, since the bibliographers in these areas are being trained in serials cataloging. In addition the Law School Library continues inputting records for East Asian serial titles and is concentrating on cataloging titles in its English language backlog with LC or CONSER copy.

Other news includes the addition, to Harvard's online catalog, of the serial holdings of the Center for Hellenic Studies located in Washington, D.C. For this phase of the project, holdings for 283 titles were added to our catalog. Bibliographic information for titles already held at Harvard was upgraded, as necessary, unique titles received initial cataloging and authentication, and the remainder had CONSER copy claimed. In the future, the cataloging of new serial titles acquired by the Center will be completed by staff in the HUL CONSER Office.

This past spring, a file of publication patterns and holdings information for serial titles currently received by Harvard libraries was prepared to be used as "seed" data for the CONSER Publication Patterns and Holdings Experiment. Data from the 853/863 fields in these Harvard holdings records will be embedded in 891 fields on the associated CONSER bibliographic records on OCLC.

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Indiana University

After a year of great change for technical services at Indiana University during fiscal year 1998/1999, it was anticipated that fiscal year 1999/2000 would be a year of consolidation, a year to build upon the changes in organizational structure. The various technical service units were merged into one department, and the move was successfully accomplished late in December 1999. But with the sudden departure of Michael Kaplan as Associate Director of Technical Services and with the October 20th deadline for implementation of our new online catalog from the SIRSI Corporation, the year brought us even more changes and surprises. Now, with the hiring of Harriette Hemmasi from Rutgers University as the new Associate Dean and Director of Technical Services and with our automation deadlines successfully past us, we can now look forward to a year of consolidation and building upon past accomplishment. Staffing levels remain the same as last year, except for a one-year appointment for retrospective conversion of serial titles held by our rare books library, the Lilly Library. An Indiana State Library grant for a 1/3 FTE original cataloger will allow us to complete the project next year.

The Serials Cataloging Unit also completed a CIC-funded project to preserve African newspapers through microfilming. The Unit provided full-level CONSER bibliographic records for preservation masters. This year we received another, more extensive grant for the microfilm preservation of Latin American periodicals. Titles and volumes are now being selected for preservation. After the selection process is complete, CONSER-authenticated preservation microfilm records will be created prospectively in OCLC to alert the library community at large of our intentions to microfilm the serial.

Indiana University Libraries are currently experiencing severe overcrowding in stack areas. We have received funding for the building of an Auxiliary Library Facility. Groundbreaking will occur on March 2001, with occupancy of the building anticipated for August 2002. It is expected that the Serials Cataloging Unit will work closely with bibliographers and collection managers in preparing electronic reports to aid them in the selection process and then making the necessary changes to reflect the transfer of titles to the facility.

The Serials Cataloging Unit has placed a high-priority on the cataloging of electronic journals this year, especially those provided through aggregator services such as Project Muse, JSTOR, Wiley, and CatchWord. Through the ample use of "cloned" records, we are creating separate records for all electronic resources to which we subscribe. This includes gratis publications that bibliographers have specifically selected.

Toward the end of the fiscal year, Indiana University implemented the use of 891 fields for publication patterns for serials currently on subscription and is participating in CONSER Publications Pattern Experiment. We had an ulterior motive: our Acquisitions Division faces the daunting task of creating 25,000 prediction patterns in SIRSI/Unicorn when our database goes live late in December 2000. Also at the end of the year, IU passed a significant milestone in retrospective conversion. In anticipation of the shutdown that would have to occur when we switched our automated library system, a project was launched to identify and import from the national utilities all remaining records available for serial titles yet to be converted. We made our deadline with three days to spare, but the task of cleanup still remains.

Library of Congress
Serials Cataloging Sections

Integrated Library System (ILS) Implementation and Documentation

The entire year was again focused on implementation of the Library of Congress Integrated Library System. By the end of the fiscal year, full production in the Serial Record Division had resumed. The Division continued to devote a substantial amount of time to revising workflow and documentation to adapt to the flexible and evolving nature of the new system.

Serial Record organizational changes

Several important shifts in responsibilities occurred in FY00. In order to streamline the processing of US imprints, NSDP has taken on the role of the full cataloging sections and now fully catalogs those serials selected for LC's collection in addition to assigning the ISSN. There is no longer a separate minimal level cataloging section, with the titles selected for that level of cataloging being handled in the four cataloging sections. With the availability of "copy" from CONSER institutions, Serial Record has been able to move this cataloging function to the technician position.

Serials conversion

A major contract has been let to convert the serials holdings of the Library from manual records to machine-readable. The projected completion date for the conversion of the "active" records is 2002 and the proposed completion date for conversion of the inactive records is 2005. As a by-product of merging several automated files including MUMS, SERLOC, ACQUIRE, and PREMARC, approximately 100,000 duplicate serial records were generated in the ILS which must be identified, have the information merged, and the duplicate records deleted. The identification and deletion of these duplicates is an important step that must be completed before the contractors can begin the conversion. This process is proving to be a long term effort involving serials catalogers and staff throughout LC.

Publication Pattern Project

In July members of the division began to participate in the CONSER Publication Patterns Project. To date more than 90 publication patterns were contributed in a variety of languages including Arabic, Dutch, English, and German.

Foreign trips - Nairobi, Jakarta

Jeffrey Myers-Hayer recently completed a 7 week trip to Nairobi and Jakarta to assist them with cataloging serials directly into OCLC.

Staff Changes

Carroll Davis, formerly of Columbia, rejoined Cataloging Section III as a senior cataloger in January and Lucy Barron, formerly of Harvard, joined as the Head of Serials Cataloging Section II in March.

Training

In May 2000, Hoda Fateen, Cataloging Section II, trained Valerie Bross of UCLA in serials cataloging and subject analysis. In September 2000, the University of Wales joined the CONSER Program. Maryvonne Mavroukakis will be their reviewer and LC contact.

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Library of Congress
National Serials Data Program

Present Status

NSDP remains a section of the Serial Record Division of the Library of Congress. In the past year, NSDP has continued its function as the U.S. ISSN center but now has the added responsibility of being "Serials Cataloging Section IV," and cataloging U.S. imprints for the Library of Congress collection.

ISSN production again decreased because of staffing problems. Although NSDP has added a cataloger since last year, training of catalogers to catalog titles for the Library of Congress collection and carrying out these new cataloging responsibilities have taken time away from ISSN assignment and record creation. It is expected that in the future this situation will improve, as titles can be assigned ISSN and cataloged for the LC collection in one operation.

Electronic Serials

NSDP assigned 1133 ISSN to electronic serials in the period covered by this report; 620 ISSN were assigned to postpublication titles and 513 were assigned to prepublication titles. The vast majority of these assignments were to online serials. Many ISSN requests are received through NSDP's online application form for electronic serials. Recently, improvements have been made to the program which takes the data supplied by the publisher and converts it to a preliminary record which the cataloger edits. One unresolved area of ISSN assignment work for e-serials is the question of how to assign and identify journals in aggregations made available by different vendors. Some feel these journals can differ enough in what has been digitized, coverage, and presence or absence of illustrative or additional material to warrant separate ISSN. To date, NSDP has not assigned separate ISSN to different digitizations of the same journal. An old question which is still troublesome is the case where a publisher makes a journal available in print and PDF versions and feels they are the same publication and should carry the same ISSN. NSDP continues to face challenges in both of these areas.

Rule Harmonization

Regina Reynolds was actively involved in the revision of the AACR rules for serials, the ISSN Manual Working Group and was a corresponding member of the ISBD(S) revision group. Some of the challenging areas of AACR revision were use of latest entry for integrating resources and some e-journals; harmonization of title transcription and title change rules; and the potential for developing an International Standard Serial Title (formerly Benchmark, then International Standard Title). Reynolds participated in the fall 1999 and spring 2000 meetings of the ISSN Manual Working Group, and the January 2000 meeting of the ISBD(S) revision group. Reynolds drafted preliminary guidelines for the construction of the ISST.

Bowker Agreement

In August, 2000, the Library of Congress and R.R. Bowker signed an agreement to cooperate in a cataloger/editor position to be located in NSDP at the Library of Congress. Under the terms of the agreement, Bowker will hire an employee to work at NSDP to create entries for Ulrich's, and to make ISSN assignments for NSDP based on ISSN requests received at NSDP. Both Bowker and NSDP will participate in selecting the employee, who will be trained by both organizations.

Library of Congress ISSN-related Activities

LC ILS--August 2000 marks the first full year of implementation of the Library of Congress Integrated Library System (ILS). Manual check-in records are being converted to digital form and digital records are being created for new materials. During this year, the usefulness of the ISSN in serial records for titles held by the Library became increasingly apparent. Check-in of titles using the ILS requires location of the check-in record, a task which can be time-consuming for many publications, especially those in languages other than English. Even in cases where the ISSN is printed on the serial, there is no efficiency if the ISSN is not also in the ILS record for that serial. In order to increase the usefulness of the ISSN search, a project was initiated to search the ISSN database and add ISSN to any records lacking ISSN. Over 700 ISSN were added to LC serial records in the first phase of the project.

NSDP cataloging positions were upgraded to be equal in grade to cataloging positions for those cataloging material for the Library of Congress collections. A group of NSDP catalogers were trained to do complete LC cataloging and two have been promoted. In the future, the remaining three catalogers will be trained. Eventually, all NSDP catalogers will be able to create full LC catalog records and assign ISSN for titles selected for the Library of Congress collections.

ISSN Promotion and Activities

Regina Reynolds participated in a meeting of the group working on the International Standard Text Code (ISTC), a potential new ISO standard for identification at the work level. It has not yet been decided whether and how such a standard might apply to serials. Reynolds spoke about the presentation of e-journals–including use of ISSN--at a workshop sponsored by the National Information Standards Organization. At the annual meeting of the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG), Regina Reynolds gave a workshop entitled, "Not Your Father's ISSN." The workshop included information about ISSN involvement in seriality discussions and rule harmonization, ISSN and electronic resources, the ISSN Network Strategic Plan, and the potential for ISSN as a URN. A demonstration of the URN application was given, as well as illustrations of the ISSN's potential to serve as a catalog link to A&I data, data from directories, and family trees of records. The URN application, in particular aroused much interest. Reynolds also discussed use of the ISSN on electronic journals during her preconference presentation, "From Wonderland to Promised Land: The Ideal E-Journal." The linking potential of the ISSN was also the topic of a presentation entitled "ISSN: Link and Cross-Link to Data and Metadata" which Reynolds gave at a preconference on Metadata to the American Library Association's annual meeting. The presentation was repeated at the conference during the meeting of the Committee to Study Serials Cataloging.

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Much of the activity of MIT's Serials Cataloging Section concerned e-serials. Apart from the sheer time spent cataloging several hundred titles – relying chiefly on the single-record approach ("piggybacking"), but creating separate records when necessary – a lot of thought and effort were devoted to doing the sorting and analysis which are becoming increasingly necessary when dealing with the diverse packages to which the Libraries have access. Virtually every package which we cataloged presented new challenges, new ways to access the titles, mirrors and other alternative URLs, whole packages of hundreds of titles changing their URLs all at once, other packages which included titles to which we should have had access but didn't, or titles to which we should not have had access but did – and these issues, which were often complicated and time-consuming, had to be sorted through either before we commenced the cataloging of any individual package, or during the course of it. We feel that we have learned a lot about providing bibliographic access to these e-titles.

Several Serials Cataloging staff members participated in the assessment of integrated library systems from various vendors, the eventual result of which was the selection of Ex Libris's Aleph 500 to replace Geac Advance which is currently used in the MIT Libraries. The plan is to go live with the new system in June 2001.

David Van Hoy, MIT's representative on the Operations Committee, carried out training and review of serials cataloging for members of the staff of one of CONSER's newest members, Brown University. The bulk of the training was carried out via phone, email, and Brown's OCLC save file, but David and Gretchen Yealy, Brown's Serials Catalog Librarian, also exchanged visits to each other's institution. David also continues as a member of the PCC Standing Committee on Training's Task Group on NACO Continuing Education. Wayne Jones is a member of the PCC Task Force on Multiple Manifestations of Electronic Resources, which is investigating the best practices for creating single or separate records for e-versions. Wayne will also be temporarily chairing the task force during Oct.-Nov. 2000 while chair John Riemer moves from Georgia to his new position at UCLA. Carol Fleishauer completed her two-year term as a member of the PCC Steering Committee.

The Serials Cataloging Section is now fully staffed with four copy catalogers, two professional catalogers, and a section head. The newest member of the section is Craig Thomas, who started as a copy cataloger on Aug. 15, 2000.

National Agricultural Library

The National Agricultural Library has completed a major renovation of its first floor, which includes the Main Reading Room, newly combined Service Desk, Library Services Area, and new exhibits. This renovation began in 1998, and concluded with the reopening of the first floor on March 7, 2000. The Library held an official opening ceremony on April 12, 2000, culminating in a day-long symposium and an official USDA millennial event.

Organization and staffing of serials cataloging and CONSER work at National Agricultural Library remained unchanged during CONSER year 1999/2000. Nevertheless, staff reductions in other Branches have resulted in serials staff having to balance their serials cataloging work with other assignments.

Electronic serials continued to be a significant part of our contribution to the CONSER program. The major emphasis continues to be United States Department of Agriculture electronic serial publications. The Cataloging Branch is forming a committee to develop local guidelines for the use of single record approach.

NAL is involved in two projects to provide access to older agricultural serials. The U.S. Agricultural Information Network (USAIN) in cooperation with the land grant university libraries has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to microfilm and catalog the most significant published materials on the history of state and local agriculture and rural life. Also the Library has expanded the retrospective conversion of the pre-1970 USDA serials. A contract was awarded for transcription of our serial records from our card file. While we will not contribute these records to the CONSER program, the serial records from these two projects will be available in our local catalog and in AGRICOLA on the Web.

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National Library of Canada

CONSER Records Loaded

The National Library of Canada's CONSER records dating from January 1999 were loaded into OCLC in March and April 2000, adding more than 7,000 CONSER records to the database.

Electronic Serials

In addition to the ongoing cataloguing of electronic serials archived in the National Library's electronic collection available on its Website, since January 2000 the National Library of Canada has been cataloguing electronic serials issued by the Canadian federal government and made available through the Canadian government distribution agency, the Depository Services Program (DSP). Between January and September 2000, 589 electronic DSP federal serials were catalogued for CONSER.

Name Authorities

With the implementation of the MARC 21 format, the National Library's name authority records are now available in a form more accessible to U.S. libraries. The LC/NLC Names Agreement dating from 1975, under which NLC establishes Canadian names on request from LC and other NACO libraries, continues to function. In addition, LC staff has begun to download NLC name authorities from AMICUS on an as needed basis. NLC became an official NACO member in March 2000.

Serials Training

The National Library will provide the venue for a "Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program" to take place in Ottawa, Canada in November, 2000.

Retirement

Tom Delsey retired as Director-General, Corporate Policy and Communications, National Library of Canada, on September 29, 2000, after 23 years with the National Library. Tom has played an active role in the evolution of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, and was a key participant in the founding of the CONSER Program.

AMICUS and Canadiana

The National Library's bibliographic database Access AMICUS on the Web is currently available free of charge. The Library's Website is at http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ehome.htm external link. In addition, Canadiana, the national bibliography on CD ROM has just been issued in its 4th release, bringing the data up-to-date as of June 2000. Canadiana CD ROM also includes the MARC 21 bibliographic and authority formats in English and French. Purchasing details are available at the Website.

Canadian Subject Headings on the Web

The National Library is planning a new Web product, Canadian Subject Headings on the Web, expected to be ready in fall 2000. This is a Web version of the Library's list of subject headings on Canadian topics, designed to complement Library of Congress Subject Headings. Canadian subject headings will be viewable in either MARC 21 authorities format or in a thesaurus display, with links to French-language equivalent headings drawn from Laval University's Répertoire de vedettes-matière.

ISSN Canada

ISSN Canada provided 1,398 pre-publication ISSNs to requesting Canadian serial publishers, and registered 4,727 serials in the international ISSN database in FY 2000.

National Library of Medicine

In Dec. 1999, NLM held the SCCTP Basic Serials Cataloging Workshop for newly hired catalogers, as well as long-time monographic catalogers who are now also doing serials cataloging. The Workshop was led by our own Hien Nguyen.

By cross-training a number of monographic catalogers in serials cataloging, NLM has maximized the use of existing staff resources and language skills. This tactic has provided positive results and NLM has been able to increase the number of serials cataloged overall, and specifically to increase the number of serials submitted to CONSER.

After consultation with all areas of the Library, NLM has decided to use the single record approach for cataloging serials issued in print and remote online access. We believe this approach will cause less confusion for users of our OPAC, who can determine the formats for which the serial is available through the holdings records. It also facilitates interlibrary loan routing. Where dual records currently exist in the catalog, they will be merged into a single record sometime this fall.

NLM is pleased to announce that the revised 5th ed. of the NLM Classification has been printed and is now available for purchase.

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New York Public Library

The Serial Cataloging Section at NYPL has continued to shrink due to retirements in FY 1999/2000. We have not been able to hire staff for librarian positions. Despite the loss of staff, however, we have managed (without creating a backlog) to catalog our new receipts [many] to CONSER full level. Our CONSER cataloging is heavily favoring print materials. We have not cataloged aggressively our electronic resources, but hope that we will do so in the future.

In March 2000 our long awaited new Director of Technical Services Cynthia Clark arrived from California. Several issues needed her attention immediately. An offsite storage facility is being built jointly by NYPL, Columbia, and Princeton. Two million items are expected to be moved into this new facility in two years. Since we are a closed-stack non-circulating library, the collections have never been bar-coded. We now have the daunting task of bar-coding the items and creating item-level records to record the bar codes. The Library is also constructing a structure within a courtyard in its Humanities and Social Sciences Library in Midtown Manhattan. Part of Technical Services will move into this new structure when it is completed sometime next year. We are also gearing up for a retrospective conversion project involving around 130, 000 humanities, social sciences and performing arts serials. The project is scheduled to commence imminently.

New York State Library

The New York State Library maintains the New York State Information Locator Service to provide users with links to state agency web sites and to agency publications. In addition, users have the ability to browse state government information by subject categories.

The State Library continues to scan agency documents from our Checklist of Official Publications of the State of New York. CONSER staff adds appropriate 856 links for the electronic versions to the OCLC records. The single record approach is the method of choice because the content is identical.

Our CONSER staff, consisting of two librarians and three library technical assistants, continues to balance their CONSER tasks with reference or key user assignments. During the current fiscal year, emphasis was placed on the processing of New York State document serials and older newspapers microfilmed through the Newspaper Project, as well as on reducing our backlog of retrospective serial titles. 856 links were created for gift serial titles as they became available in dual electronic/print formats.

Because of a transition in positions and vacant titles, we regrettably were unable to dedicate resources to the examination of issues relating to the cataloging, preservation, and archiving of New York State documents that exist only in electronic format. We are, however, committed to establishing procedures for the handling of electronic documents as well as electronic serials and aggregator databases. A proxy server is being set up to give our borrowers the ability to access subscription products off-site.

In November 1999, one of our experienced and very capable library technical assistants left the project for a promotion to a sister agency. Because of complexities in our recruitment process, it took a full six months to fill the position. The Basic Serials Cataloging Workshop Trainee Manual prepared for the Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program has been very helpful in our new employee's initial training, as will be the one day CE serials workshop sponsored by the New York Library Association which he will be attending this month.

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U.S. Government Printing Office

The Cataloging Branch of the Library Programs Service, United States Government Printing Office identifies, catalogs, and authenticates serial publications published by Federal agencies for the CONSER database.

Cataloging of serials published via the Internet has increased from last year's report of 10-15 weekly to a current production of 25 to 35 each week. Both electronic serials and monographs may be accessed via Catalog of United States Government Publications at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/locators/cgp/index.html

Our five serial catalogers continue the use of PURLs (Persistent Uniform Resource Locators) as a means of maintaining access to online serials. An administrative staff member runs weekly validation software to ensure maintenance of a growing total of 6200 PURLs, approximately 1/3 of which are serials. Each online record contains a valid URL at time of processing. As a means of providing timely information we continue to use CONSER's single record option for titles in multiple formats.

Prompted by a continued growth of federal serial publications we will add a sixth serial cataloger to our staff in the fall 2000. Mr. Martin Bokow, a contractor librarian with NOAA with a formidable serial cataloging background, has accepted our offer of employment.

In early winter 2001 we plan to publish our inaugural issue of the annual Serials Supplement 2001 which will replace the annual Periodicals Supplement which listed only those serials published more than three times a year. The Serials Supplement will list all serials regardless of frequency.

Statistics for July 1999– June 2000


Original CONSER level records produced			 	  319
Authenticated existing records to CONSER level			  262
Total number of records added to CONSER database		  581
Maintenance of titles in Periodicals Supplement 2000		  984
Database maintenance transactions				2643
Maintenance of non-CONSER records				     16
Number of serial records with URL/PURLs			1972
Series authority records created					     58
Series maintenance transactions					     46

University of California, Los Angeles

Between October 1999 and August 2000, UCLA contributed 366 original records and 248 authenticated records to CONSER. UCLA completed maintenance on another 533 CONSER records.

This past year, Rhonda Lawrence and Valerie Bross both participated in SCCTP training institutes. In November, 1999, Rhonda co-taught a workshop at Northern Arizona State University in Flagstaff, Arizona. The following month, Rhonda co-taught another two-day workshop, this time with Valerie Bross and Yvonne Zhang at the University of California, Irvine. More recently, this past September, Rhonda (with Yvonne Zhang) and Valerie (with Pat French) co-taught two sessions sponsored by the California Library Association.

Sara Shatford-Layne continued to chair the CONSER Task Force on AACR Review.

Last March 31st marked the retirement of Connie Narvas, a CONSER cataloger at the Young Research Library. Connie Narvas worked at UCLA for over 28 years in various capacities (most serials-related!), including 15 years in the YRL Serials Cataloging Section. Of course we miss her, but take pleasure in knowing that she is having a good time.

University of Florida

Our most notable achievement is full staffing for the year, with the hiring of Naomi Young as Head of the Serials Cataloging Unit and, therefore, UF CONSER Operations representative. Because of this, we were able to achieve our calendar year 2000 quota for contributions before the end of the third calendar quarter.

In late spring, Naomi used the SCCTP training materials to provide a review for experienced staff, and training for the newer staff members.

With the assistance of the Florida Center for Library Automation, UF is also formulating strategies and approaches for participating in the caption and patterns project. We hope to develop a way to use any pattern and caption information we contribute to the project to ease our projected migration to a new ILS in the coming years.

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University of Georgia

CONSER year 1999-2000 has been the first full year up on Voyager for the University of Georgia. Much local practice has been documented, though much remains to be done, as well as designing and redesigning of workflows for the processing of materials. The size and scope of the Serials Cataloging Section is expanding. Last fall, Serials Cataloging began inputting holdings for serials. This was formerly done in the Serials Department. Renee Blakey, who is in charge of serial holdings, moved from Serials Department to Serials Cataloging. A new position was created to assist her and begin work on holdings clean-up.

University of Georgia staff members continue to participate in CONSER activities. John Riemer and Beth Jedlicka have taught four SCCTP Basic Serials Cataloging workshops, two for SOLINET and two at the University of Georgia. John is chairing the PCC Standing Committee on Automation Task Group on Journals in Aggregator Databases and the PCC Standing Committee on Standards Task Force on Multiple Manifestations of Electronic Resources. He is also on the SCCTP Advisory Group. On November 3, the University of Georgia will be hosting the beta test for the new SCCTP Basic Holdings Course. Beth Jedlicka became Head of Serials Cataloging and CONSER Operations Committee Representative in July 2000. John Riemer begins his new position as Head of Cataloging at UCLA on December 1. His knowledge and expertise will be greatly missed by his colleagues here at UGA.

University of Maryland at College Park

Jeanne Baker is a trainer in CONSER's Serial Cataloging Cooperative Training Program and she participated in three Basic Serial Cataloging workshops this year. Jeanne and Carol Baker from the University of Calgary gave training at the University of Toronto, February 10-11, 2000. Jeanne and Les Hawkins from the Library of Congress gave training in two workshops, one on April 4-5, 2000 at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus and the other on June 14-15, 2000 at the Library of Congress, the second time that FEDLINK has sponsored a Basic Serial Cataloging Workshop. Jeanne is also a member of the PCC Standing Committee on Automation and a member of its Task Group on Journals in Aggregator Databases. The University of Maryland has loaded into its online catalog, Victor, the aggregator analytic cataloging records for the full text serial titles in Ebsco's Academic Search Elite database.

Jeanne and Beth Guay attended the CONSER Operations Committee Meeting on May 11-12, 2000. At this meeting, Beth discussed her proposal for catalogers to code bibliographic records for databases at encoding level K so that anyone could maintain these records as numerous changes occur. Continuing her interest in cataloging electronic resources, Beth is now a member of the PCC Task Force on Multiple Manifestations of Electronic Resources.

University of Michigan

After battling an extended illness, Serials Cataloging Unit Co-Team Leader Joan Butler passed away in late September 2000.

Joan had attended the Pinyin meeting held at LC in October. Tom Champagne attended the NACO Series Institute held at LC in May.

The major Serials Cataloging Unit accomplishment during the year was the continuing effort to catalog ejournal packages and aggregator services. Over the course of the year, the Unit cataloged full-text tiles included in: InfoTrac's General Reference Center Gold and Health Reference Center Academic services, the International Index to Music Periodicals, ProQuest's Research Library and ABI/INFORM services, and Softline's Alt-HealthWatch, Ethnic NewsWatch and GenderWatch services. Finally, in June, staff began work on cataloging the full-text publications available through Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe.

The Unit revised 1,050 PEAK record URL's in a two-week period during November, when the Library switched from the PEAK project to Elsevier's ScienceDirect service version of their publications. Later we revised the MARC holdings for all of the IDEAL titles, when the Library subscribed to the complete back files.

Ejournal services cataloged during the year included additional OCLC Electronic Collections Online titles (doubling the number we currently subscribe to from 170, to 355), Kluwer, MCB University Press, and various publishers via CatchWord. As of the last count for FY 1999/2000, Serials Cataloging Unit staff had cataloged over 6,800 electronic journals or online versions of print journals.

Serials Cataloging, Monograph Cataloging and Library Systems Office staff evaluated new URL link checking software programs in the spring, and in June, Serials Cataloging began using the LinkScan software to verify continued URL functionality.

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University of Texas at Austin

As usual, most CONSER activity at Texas involved Latin American serials. Work continued on the usual assortment of new receipts, newspapers from storage, and title changes. The only special project for the year involved a large microform set, Latin American anarchist and labour periodicals, 1880-1940. We coordinated a cooperative effort with Harvard, Cornell and the University of Michigan to divide the cataloging, all original, of the 1000+ serials in this set. Texas has completed its portion, and the others are in progress.

University of Washington

Significant activities impacted the University of Washington Libraries and its Serials Cataloging Section during 1999-2000. An Innovative Interfaces INN-Reach union catalog for the six state-supported institutions of higher education in Washington was implemented. In preparation, serials catalogers participated in indexing and display decisions and in testing and problem record cleanup. The UW Libraries joined the International Coalition of Newspapers (ICON) project, which received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for inventorying, microfilming and cataloging foreign newspapers in the United States. Renovation of the older Suzzallo Library building for earthquake safety and program improvements began; the Serials Cataloging Section moved to a temporary location in the Allen Library April 2000.

The Serials Cataloging Section had a number of staffing changes this year. C. Marsh and S. Ditore were reclassed to Library Technician III (for retrospective conversion and searching) and .5 FTE Library Specialist I (for copy cataloging) respectively. X. Li was hired October 1999 to fill another Library Specialist I vacancy. J. Akeroyd's position as temporary Serials Cataloger was extended another year in Sept. 1999, but she resigned spring 2000 to take a position in the Law Libraries. C. Schickler left the section mid-April 2000 to work on a project to catalog a large collection of Pacific Northwest serial titles.

We worked on the usual tasks related to cataloging of new serials titles, title changes, and maintenance work, and also serials retrospective conversion. Print, microfilm and electronic serial titles remained the foci of our cataloging work and older titles and the Periodicals Collection of retrospective conversion. Backlog reduction was a major goal this year, with titles in English and western European languages targeted in particular.

Our CONSER statistics for 1999-2000 totaled 3706, with authentication of 1305 titles (down from 1458 in 1998-1999) and 2401 titles maintained (up from 2235 last year), with our total activity remaining at a constant level. We authenticated a larger percent of records for titles new to the UW Libraries as minimal (12%) or core level (13%).

Many people in the Libraries, including staff from the Serials Services Division and the Serials Cataloging Section, worked on improving access to aggregator databases. Records for Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe and ProQuest were purchased and loaded into our local catalog for the fall academic quarter. Maintainence will be done by replacing existing records with updated files. The early reaction from staff at reference and information desks has been very positive.

Steve Shadle and Kristin Lindlan contributed to many CONSER-related activities. K. Lindlan served on the CONSER Operations Committee and its Task Force on AACR Review, whose report of draft rule revisions was sent to the Joint Steering Committee February 2000, and also served as Chair of CC: DA's Task Force on Appendix on Major/Minor Changes (draft appendix submitted June 2000). She began working with Bonnie Parks, Oregon State University, for CONSER Enhance June 2000.

S. Shadle was appointed to CONSER's Electronic Serials Expert Group in May 2000. He also contributed to the Serials Cooperative Cataloging Training Program (SCCTP), serving on the Steering Committee, October 1998-August 1999 and the Advisory Group beginning August 1999. He was a trainer at three of the its Basic Serials Cataloging workshops, one at the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival & Information Studies October 18-19, 1999, with C. Baker and two for OCLC/WLN with K. Chan on February 24-25 and June 15-16, 2000. He also was one of the trainers at its Training Skills Institute at the University of British Columbia School of Library, Archival & Information Studies November 17-19, 1999. He wrote about the program in "SCCTP: The Trainer's Perspective," CONSERLINE: Newsletter of the CONSER Program," 15 (Winter 2000).

Continue to the Appendices

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