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CONSER Member reports

2000/2001

Center for Research Libraries

This has been a challenging year the Cataloging Department at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL). In November 2000 Adriana Pilecky-Dekajlo, long-time CRL CONSER Operations Committee representative and Cataloging Department head since 1999, departed the Center for a new position at Endeavor. She is greatly missed! As befitting someone of her energy and excellence, Adriana's CONSER and BIBCO duties had to be divided up among several department members. Cheryl Wegner continued and concluded the CONSER training for Cleveland Public Library; Steve Early was appointed Operations Committee representative and compiler of reports and statistics; and Serafima Dukhan took on the parallel duties for BIBCO.

Despite its smaller staff, the Cataloging Dept. contributed 563 original records by August 2001 of the fiscal year. It also added 277 new name and 72 new series authority records in the national authority file through its NACO authorization. Serafima Dukhan provided original cataloging for 19th and early 20th Century Russian periodicals. Cheryl Wegner tackled post-World War II European newspapers before leaving for maternity leave in June.

Steve Early worked on periodicals in the Center's various "area studies" projects (covering Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East) and began cataloging the digitized 19th Century Brazilian ministerial reports housed on CRL's website. Xiaojing Lei cataloged Japanese serials and monographs as well as other CJK material. In the Center at large Ms. Beverly Lynch completed her term as Interim President in September and Mr. Bernard Reilly of the Chicago Historical Society began his. The Center has begun a project to catalog its voluminous Foreign Doctoral Dissertations collection, so the Cataloging Department will continue to be very busy in the coming year.

Columbia

Since the position of Digital Resources Cataloger (now called Metadata Librarian) is still vacant at Columbia, the serials cataloger, Charlene Chou, has been heavily involved in ejournal cataloging projects and in meeting the deadlines for metadata mapping and record loading to our LibraryWeb. Two copy catalogers have been fully trained to do copy cataloging for ejournals, and have used macros to expedite the workflow. Charlene Chou wrote the local procedures for cataloging ejournals, and they have been posted at our unit's website external link

This year, we've already finished projects for Science Direct,Wiley Interscience, Blackwell Synergy, IEEExplore, etc., and continue to add new titles for finished packages, such as Project Muse and JSTOR. The serials cataloger has been involved in writing specifications for loading vendor supplied cataloging, e.g. Proquest, into our ILS. Since more ejournal projects are coming, we've hired one more copy cataloger in Serials Cataloging Unit for cataloging electronic resources.

Due to the heavy workload of local projects, Columbia has had a slower start with CONSER training, but has been working on it more actively now that ejournal projects are under better control. Charlene Chou also serves on the PCC Task Force of Integrating Resources.

Cornell University Library

Cornell University Library continues its recovery from the implementation of a new LMS. Our Voyager system came up in June 2000, but there are still many obstacles to resuming "business as usual." This entire fiscal year we were unable to load the national authority file into our local system. This meant that we were obliged to check all authority work in RLIN or OCLC, and only had access to those records by searching there. This was a time-consuming activity. Only with the latest patch were we able to load the national authority file.

In working with our serials collection, we have now created well over 20,000 check-in records and numerous new check-in patterns.

Our greatest contribution to the CONSER database continues to be in vernacular languages of Southeast Asia.

We are beginning work on the Latin American Anarchist and Labour Periodicals, which we are cataloging in cooperation with the University of Texas at Austin, Harvard University and the University of Michigan.

We continue to delay the implementation of coded MARC holdings, but hope to do a limited experimental project this year to see how much time this would add to our processing.

Harvard University

At Harvard, this past fall the decision was made to migrate from our HOLLIS ILS, in place since 1985, to ExLibris' Aleph 500 LMS. Teams comprised of library staff from across the University are assessing implementation needs, with such responsibilities as reviewing data conversion issues, helping to configure the training library staff will receive, designing local standard practice, recommending workflow for this new environment, and becoming experts in specific Aleph clients. These teams cover a wide range of the functions available in the new system including acquisitions, cataloging/authorities, circulation, financial operations, indexing, OPAC design and review, reserves, serials, and desktop client configuration. In addition, a technical team has been formed with staff from Harvard's Office for Information Systems. The new system is scheduled to be in place by the end of June 2002.

At the same time, many Harvard library buildings are undergoing or have had recently completed renovations. The CONSER Office, a unit of the University Library, has traditionally been housed with technical services operations in Widener Library. As a part of a major renovation project in Widener, the decision was made to move HCL Technical Services staff to a permanent off-campus facility. The CONSER Office also moved to this new location.

Our CONSER statistics, lower than in previous years, reflect these challenges of our changing environment. Our contribution to the CONSER database was a total of 2850 records, consisting of original records as well as first-time authentication and maintenance of existing records. We added or completed maintenance work on 740 new or existing name authority records in the National Authority File.

Electronic resources play a larger role each year in our cataloging activities. We list approximately 3,200 electronic resources available both through HOLLIS' portal page and its library catalog, of which approximately 2,900 are individual electronic journal titles. Harvard uses the single record approach in providing access to resources also held in print. If no record exists in the HOLLIS ILS, a CONSER bibliographic record for the electronic resource is claimed or prepared for the database. A library sponsoring a resource for inclusion in HOLLIS assumes the responsibility for providing access and continued maintenance. Resources lacking a specific sponsor have access provided by a Harvard library on the basis of subject expertise. The CONSER Office coordinates the distribution of titles for cataloging among various Harvard libraries and also provides cataloging support as appropriate.

Over the past year we have also focused on staff training and updating of cataloging skills. In the spring, two experienced SCCTP trainers from Yale, Dajin Sun and James Shetler, presented a two-day course in Basic Serial Cataloging. Twenty-five library staff members benefited from their informative and well-organized training sessions, that emphasized, through presentations and hands-on-exercises, the basics of the serial record, cataloging electronic resources, and emerging trends in serials work.

Five library staff, two from Baker Business Library, two from HCL Technical Services, and one from the Botany Libraries attended Judy Kuhagen's Series Authority Record training at the Library of Congress in the spring and are now contributing series authority records to the National Authority File.

Harvard Law School Library reports that their East Asian cataloger has begun contributing Pinyin Chinese serial records to CONSER. Their East European cataloger has cataloged quite a few gazettes and court reports, and the Islamic Law cataloger has begun cataloging microfilmed gazettes and has cataloged some unique sets of Middle Eastern legal materials. The Law School's "Basement Project"--inputting records for substantial quantities of older materials in storage--has not involved much in the way of CONSER cataloging, as most cataloging is being input directly in the HOLLIS ILS, or downloaded from RLIN. Otherwise, Law School catalogers have continued their work in creating new authenticated records, maintaining existing CONSER records, and authenticating non-CONSER records.

Last year, we reported a file of Harvard's pattern data from paired 853/863 fields in our holding records had been sent to OCLC for loading into CONSER bibliographic records as "seed" data for CONSER's Publication Pattern Initiative. This file was loaded in February 2001. Patterns and identifying holding information were added to approximately 40,000 bibliographic records. OCLC defined use of the 891 field for this project, and the 853/863 pairs were encoded in a subfield 9 of this local field. Each is marked as provisional and is reviewed by Pattern Project participants as a part of their routine cataloging activity. Complete information about the load and examples of the data can be found on the CONSER homepage at: http://www.loc.gov/acq/conser/harvload.html.

Indiana University Libraries

There were three significant events for Indiana University Libraries during fiscal year 2000/2001. The first was the implementation of the Sirsi/Unicorn automated library system in Jan. 2001.The second was the completion of retrospective conversion during the summer. By devoting half time to the project, all catalogers, regardless of former areas of expertise, worked together to catalog the 55,000 titles that remained in our classed-together series. The third was the groundbreaking for our Auxiliary Library Facility, an expandable storage facility whose first unit will house more than a million volumes and provide space for a preservation unit.

As for the Serials Cataloging Unit, in addition to completing retrospective conversion for all but 500 of more than 105,000 serials for our main and branch libraries, we also completed the retrospective conversion of more than 3,000 serials at the Lilly, our rare books library. As with any library system implementation, there were numerous pre-load and post-load cleanup projects, some of which are still continuing. We also received a CIC preservation grant for microfilming Latin American periodicals. The serial titles have been selected, and we are now in the process of cataloging them prospectively in OCLC to alert the library community of our intention to microfilm them. The Serials Cataloging Unit continues to place a high-priority on the cataloging of electronic journals, especially those provided through aggregator services. Through the ample use of "cloned" records, we are creating separate records for all electronic resources we subscribe to or receive gratis. We are also investigating the use of SerialsSolutions and SFX to help us with patron access to these electronic resources. Lastly, we extended our commitment to the CONSER Publications Pattern Initiative by increasing our monthly target to 50 patterns a month.

Library of Congress

Serials Cataloging Sections

During the fiscal year, ILS implementation activities continued. These included, among other projects, continued resolution of duplicate bibliographic records generated by the loading of four separate legacy files into the ILS, and problem resolution in support of the serials conversion project and the two Acquisitions units' decentralized serial check-in pilots.

Although the cataloging sections continued to be effected by the ILS implementation in FY2001, production and output levels rose by nearly 50% above their FY2000 levels. The numbers are especially impressive in light of a drop in total regular hours spent on cataloging and of the little cataloging that was done during September 2001, when all staff diverted their attention to assisting with processing the serials backlog within the division. The number of hours devoted to special assignment rose by nearly 50% -- indicating the continuing support and importance of activities undertaken by staff to migrate the Library's files into a fully integrated automated system. Staff spent much time merging duplicate records and cleaning up other load problems.

As a result of the addition of the GS-9 ladder to the cataloging technician positions, cataloging technicians were able to be trained in copy cataloging and three technicians were promoted into this new grade. Their contributions in copy cataloging have also greatly benefited the sections' abilities to minimize backlogs.

Production

Productivity jumped to 0.22 titles/hour in FY2001 compared to 0.13 in FY2000. The total number of items completed in FY2001 rose to 7,873, as compared with the FY2000 figure of 5,393, and represented an increase of 45.99%. As staff master the new ILS system and time is no longer diverted to other activities, it is expected that these figures will continue to rise until they are comparable with pre-ILS figures. Of special note are an increase of nearly 217% in subject cataloging and 59% in full cataloging as the Division makes headway towards its goal of independence in processing the majority of its subject cataloging.

Overseas Operations

In FY2001, two catalogers were sent to the Cairo and Rio de Janeiro Overseas Offices to provide enhanced training in full cataloging and its associated activities. The Library is already benefiting from the resources put into the training. The Cairo Office is submitting tapes of much improved cataloging records which are being loaded into OCLC save files and subsequently imported into OCLC upon cataloger review. Prior to training, the LC cataloger hand-keyed these records into OCLC. The Rio Office is now entering directly into OCLC much improved cataloging and authority records. Prior to training, there was no method for the offices to take advantage of existing OCLC records for materials they acquired for the Library. They often created duplicate records in another file which then needed to be deleted by the cataloger at LC. . With Delhi, Nairobi, and Jakarta, this brings the number of offices directly working in OCLC to four.

Library of Congress

National Serials Data Program

In the past year, NSDP has continued its function as the U.S. ISSN center but also assumed the added responsibility of being "Serials Cataloging Section IV," responsible for cataloging U.S. non-government imprints. Because of the departure of two key catalogers-Les Hawkins and Ursula Darrah--during the year, NSDP's role in cataloging titles for the LC collection was suspended temporarily. In July 2001, NSDP was able to hire 4 new catalogers-Dennis Dearnbarger, Hong Ta, Esther Simpson and Kevin Gardner--the first new staff hired for NSDP in many years. The catalogers are now in training and plans are underway to resume NSDP's processing of titles for the LC collection but in a new workflow which will allow titles sent by publishers to NSDP to be selected and cataloged for the LC collection at the same time as they are assigned ISSN.

A planning group has been established to develop this new NSDP workflow. Under this workflow, all titles sent to NSDP by publishers will undergo searching and selection before any further processing. After a selection decision is made, NSDP will respond to the ISSN request and complete the LC processing within the section. Meetings have been held with Serial Division, Copyright Acquisitions, and the Serials Selection Officer. This new workflow is expected to provide significant processing efficiencies by reducing duplicate efforts currently occurring in Cataloging and P&R under the current workflow.

Staff

At the close of FY 2001, NSDP had a total of 14 staff:

10 catalogers (5 or 6 for most of the FY)

2 publisher liaison assistants

1 technician (temporary)

1 section head

ISSN Production (Oct. 1, 2000-Sept. 28, 2001)

Total ISSN assigned: 5297

ISSN production was somewhat higher than last year's total of 4945-a great tribute to the hard work of NSDP staff who made up for the lack of two key staff members--but lower than the 6,000+ ISSN a year which NSDP was often able to assign prior to recent staff shortages.

Electronic Serials

NSDP assigned approximately 1018 ISSN to electronic serials in the period covered by this report. NSDP assigns a separate ISSN for each different physical format but does not assign a separate ISSN for the electronic journals made available by each aggregator. Various groups are studying this controversial issue. NSDP assigns a separate ISSN to online versions at the request of the primary publisher and attempts to create records which describe the journal in terms of the primary publisher, not the aggregator.

During the past year, NSDP made efforts to update prepublication assignments for electronic serials and send those records to the ISSN International Centre (IC). NSDP also worked on identifying those electronic serials previously coded as textual and sent updated records for these titles to the IC. Over 600 records for electronic serials were sent to the ISSN International Centre a result of this project.

Because staff were not available to process the requests, NSDP had to suspend use of its online interactive application form which includes a program to convert publisher-supplied application data into a draft ISSN record. NSDP received an average of 90 online applications a month during the year 2000 and an average of 124 online applications a month in early 2001, a testament to the form's popularity with publishers. When the form is put back into service it will be with a better conversion program and provision of a better mechanism for searching unprocessed requests.

As an example of how new technology affects ISSN requests, NSDP has received requests for ISSN to be assigned to versions of existing serials which are being developed for hand-held devices. For example, Physicians Desk Reference is available for the Palm Pilot, Handspring's Visor, and the E-book. NSDP has not yet made a determination about how many ISSN to assign. This is a question which the ISSN Network will face increasingly in the future.

Cataloging Rule Harmonization

Regina Reynolds continued her work on all three cataloging standards: AACR2, ISBD(CR) and the ISSN Manual Working Group. Reynolds participated in the "Meeting of Experts" held at the Library of Congress in November 2000, the ISSN Manual working group meeting in Zagreb in February 2001, and the ISBD(CR) meeting in Boston in August 2001.

Reynolds also participated in the 26th Meeting of Directors of ISSN Centers and a meeting of the ISSN Manual Working Group in Bern Switzerland, during September, 2001. Most of the proposed "harmonization" changes to the ISSN Manual were accepted by the directors. It was also decided that ISSN would be applied to updating loose-leafs but the decision whether to use latest entry for integrating resources was postponed pending further study. Reynolds presented a solution to the latest and successive entry conflict between ISSN and the other standards. She proposed that ISSN centers create or update records for integrating resources in their national databases according to latest entry practice but assigning a new ISSN and key title (fields 022 and 22) to go along with the new title proper for each title change. Each ISSN and key title assigned to an integrating resource would be represented by a separate latest entry record in the ISSN international database which would list former ISSN and key titles in field 247. A final decision on this topic will be made in 2002. Implementation of all planned changes will not take place until publication of the new ISSN Manual which is anticipated for 2002.

Bowker Agreement

Implementation of the August 2000 agreement for Bowker to hire a cataloger to work in NSDP creating Ulrich's and ISSN records has been put on hold. Potential catalogers were interviewed but before a cataloger could be hired, the Bowker Company was sold from Reed Elsevier to CSA (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts). It is hoped that plans can be resumed in the coming year.

ISSN Promotion and Activities

Reynolds gave several presentations during the year which showcased potential uses of the ISSN and developments in the ISSN Network. Reynolds presented "Partnerships to Mine Unexploited Sources of Metadata" at the Library of Congress's conference on Cataloging for the New Millennium. Reynolds presented "ISSN: Dumb Number, Smart Solution" at an ALCTS preconference held in conjunction with ILFA. She discussed serial problems which the ISSN can help to solve: access, check-in, bar-coding, metadata, identification, linking multiple manifestations, and linking in the electronic environment. The ISSN's use as a URN was demonstrated, as well as ISSN use by such linking programs and projects as Jake, SFX, and TdNet.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

As in the past few years, the majority of the activity of MIT's Serials Cataloging Section has involved electronic serials. Almost 1500 electronic journals and serials were cataloged this year, mostly using the "single-record" approach, and URLs were added to hundreds more records according to our "comes on" policy. The Section worked closely with the Digital Acquisitions Unit to refine the e-serial workflow for new titles and packages, and for reporting updates to the Libraries' web-based database external linkof electronic journals and databases.

The Section also established procedures for regular maintenance of URLs and holdings changes and for monitoring packages for new titles. To check the validity of the links in serials records, a link-checking program is run once a month and the report sent to Serials Cataloging. Three members of the section review the report on alternate months, making changes to records in OCLC and the local system as needed, and reports changes to Digital Acquisitions to update the records on the Libraries' website.

To monitor packages that have already been cataloged for new titles, one member of the section uses a free web service called Mind-it which tracks changes in the contents of registered web pages on a weekly basis. As only those packages that have a straight list of titles on a page can be tracked in this way, other section members were assigned several packages each to "babysit", i.e. to manually review, the packages on a regular basis for new titles, holdings changes, and dropped titles. Serials Cataloging has undertaken these tasks because of a shortage of staff time elsewhere. A review of all workflow involving electronic resources will take place in the next fiscal year.

During the first half of 2001, most of the Serials Cataloging staff members were involved in the implementation and testing of the new integrated library system, Ex Libris' Aleph 500, which went live on July 9, 2001. Involvement included participation on the main Project Team, the Cataloging Functional Team, the Public OPAC Team, and on the Holdings and Indexing Strike Forces. Several staff members were also trained as trainers for cataloging.

David Van Hoy, MIT's representative on the Operations Committee, was designated a member of CONSER's group of e-serials specialists. He continued as a member of the Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program Steering Group and the PCC Standing Committee on Training's Task Group on NACO Continuing Education. He also chaired the PCC Standing Committee on Standards' Task Group on Conference Publications. Wayne Jones was a member of and served as interim chair (Oct.-Dec. 2000) of PCC's Task Force on Multiple Manifestations of Electronic Resources. Eric Celeste served as a member of the PCC Standing Committee on Automation's first Task Group on Journals in Aggregator Databases.

After ably serving as Head of Serials Cataloging for 4 ½ years, in Aug. 2001 Wayne Jones returned to his native Canada to pursue a career in publishing. Jennifer L. Edwards was named Acting Head effective Sept. 1, 2001.

National Agricultural Library

Organization and staffing of serials cataloging and CONSER work at the National Agricultural Library remained unchanged during CONSER year 2000/2001. 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 and the serials on AgEcon Search, a full text library of agricultural and applied economics scholarly literature. NAL has decided to use the single record approach for cataloging serials issued in print and remote online access. The Cataloging Branch developed local guidelines for single record approach for serials available in multiple formats.

NAL is involved in two projects, the preservation of agricultural information, and conversion of older serial records in NAL's collection. While we will not contribute the records from these two projects to the CONSER program, the serial records are available in our local catalog and in AGRICOLA on the Web.

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. Materials from Alabama, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin have been processed. NAL is modifying the bibliographic records to reflect the existence of preservation microfilm masters for USAIN.

The Library has completed a retrospective conversion project for 9,137 pre-1970 USDA serials.

NAL participated in the pilot project for the Publication Pattern Project. The Library contributed 146 publication patterns to the CONSER database. NAL continues to provide pattern data for new titles.

During the past year NAL began an assessment of integrated library systems from various vendors. NAL plans to acquire a new electronic library management system in late 2001. Pamela Q. Andre retired as Director of the National Agricultural Library in June 2001.

National Library of Canada

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 July 1, 2000 and June 30, 2001, 655 electronic serials were catalogued for CONSER.

Serials Training

The National Library provided the venue for a "Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program" which took place in Ottawa, Canada in November, 2000. The workshop will be offered again in Ottawa/Hull in November 2001.

AMICUS and Canadiana

The National Library's bibliographic database Access AMICUS on the Web is available free of charge at the Library's Website http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ehome.htm In addition, the 5th edition of Canadiana, the national bibliography on CD ROM is now available, bringing the bibliographic and authority data up-to-date as of December 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 launched its new free Web product, Canadian Subject Headings on the Web, 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 are 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. Canadian Subject Headings on the Web can be found at http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/cshweb/index-e.htm external link

ISSN Canada

During the year July 2000 to June 2001, ISSN Canada provided 1157 pre-publication ISSNs to requesting Canadian serial publishers, and registered 4452 serials in the international ISSN database in FY 2000.

National Library of Medicine

NLM has adopted the single record approach for serials issued in print and online format. All titles indexed by NLM which had multiple records in the NLM Voyager database for the print and online formats were merged into a single bibliographic record this spring. Other serial records are being merged as they are encountered. In support of this project and to accommodate the needs of our Indexing Section, NLM has begun using multiple ISSNs in bibliographic records for serials issued in print and online formats. Locally defined subfields and qualifiers allow users to distinguish which ISSN goes with each format. Only the ISSN which corresponds to the primary format (the one which was cataloged first at NLM) is distributed on the record sent to CONSER, and all local subfielding is suppressed before distribution.

All journals with citable articles are now being classed in W1, with the exception of serials in the field of information science, which are classed in the appropriate LC Z schedule. Prior to the implementation of this policy, journals outside the field of biomedicine were classed in an appropriate LC number. These journals have been identified, re-classed, and re-shelved in W1.

Almost 7500 new regional holdings serial titles were added to NLM's ILS this year. These titles are not owned by NLM, but are indexed for PubMed, in full or in part, by outside database producers. The availability of CONSER records for many of these titles was a big help to NLM and aided the completion of this project in a timely manner.

NLM is pleased to announce that the beta version of NLM's online classification schedule was made available to the public in late May 2001. This free online tool includes direct links to the NLM MeSH Browser.

Hien Nguyen, with Jeanne Baker of the University of Maryland, led an SCCTP workshop at the Library of Congress on May 15, 2001.

Diane Boehr succeeded Kevin McShane as the NLM CONSER representative in June 2001.

New York Public Library

The Serial Cataloging Section at NYPL has undergone a name change. It is now called the Serial and Electronic Resources Cataloging Section to reflect the fact that the Section has been cataloging electronic resources since the Library added these new formats to its collections a few years back.

We were very pleased last year to be able to fill two positions, which were vacant for quite some time, a Librarian and a Technical Assistant. Another Technical Assistant position is still waiting to be filled. In spite of our new name, the majority of our CONSER cataloging is in the print format. During this fiscal year (as of Aug. 2001) we created 424 original CONSER serial titles, authenticated 129 existing records, and performed maintenance on 466 CONSER and 167 non-CONSER titles.

We have begun a retrospective conversion project involving around 130, 000 humanities, social sciences and performing arts serials. Roman alphabet shelflist cards are sent to OCLC as source records for conversion.and are returned to in-house staff for review and quality control. The staff also adds holdings and item records to most of the converted records. The project began in November of 2000. OCLC is expected to complete the project in two years while the in-house staff will have an additional year to add holdings and resolve problems sent back by OCLC.

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 within two years, beginning in January 2002. Since we are a closed-stack non-circulating library, the collections had never been bar-coded. Beginning January of 2001, we have been bar-coding and creating item-level records to record the bar codes. Materials designated for offsite have been cleaned and shelved in a specified location for the move. Items, which are problematic, have been given to the Cataloging Division for resolution. Since the offsite material will circulate, the library will begin to use its local system's (Innovative Interfaces Inc) circulation module. As the offsite materials are barcoded and item records set up, the next logical step is the planning for barcoding of the remaining of the existing collections as well as newly acquired materials. Several task forces are working on these matters.

To make life even more interesting and challenging, the Library is also constructing a structure within a courtyard in its Humanities and Social Sciences Library in Midtown Manhattan where the Cataloging Division has been residing since 1911 when this landmark building was opened. Monograph Cataloging Section and the Serial and Electronic Resources Cataloging Section are scheduled to move into this new structure early 2002. We have been busy reducing the number of items held within our current premise so that less materials need to be moved to our new quarters.

New York State Library

The New York State Library has been actively involved with improving electronic access for patrons. The digitization of New York state government documents has been revitalized. Access is now available to both purchased and publicly available netLibrary e-books. An internet gateway has been implemented for direct borrower access to library subscription online databases. The library's web site has been redesigned and expanded as well. Other technological improvements include the experimentation with direct conversion of digital images to microform for archival retention/preservation. Over 160,000 images were microfilmed in cooperation with the NYS Newspaper Project and Daughters of the American Revolution.

In the 2001-2002 year, the cataloging section will be expected to provide access to more electronic resources, particularly scanned New York State documents. The library is implementing the change from Passport to CatME and CORC. In conjunction with the acquisitions unit, SIRSI Unicorn version 99.4 was implemented in serials control.

Significant staff changes were made in the past year and others are expected in the coming year. Liz Lane, Director since June 1997, has announced her resignation from that position, effective October 12, 2001. Mary Redmond, Principal Librarian, Public Services, will serve as Interim Director. Elizabeth Duncan was hired in November 2000 as Principal Librarian for Collection, Acquisition and Processing. Cathy Sagendorf was appointed as Associate Librarian in Government Documents in December 2000 and Ian Duckor as Associate Librarian in Cataloging in March 2001. One Library Technical Assistant was reassigned in August 2001 and we are anticipating hiring a replacement in the near future.

The Talking Book and Braille Library (TBBL) has been in the process of designing and implementing a new materials handling system with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Center for Advanced Technology. The Virtual Turnaround System Module and the Bulk Mail Container Unloader were installed and tested. Four other components are being designed. TBBL serves 39,000 readers in 55 upstate counties.

In February 2001, the library hired a consultant to assist in the preparation of a new strategic plan which has just been released to staff. It continues and expands the previous plan from 1998.

The New York State Library is part of the Office of Cultural Education in the State Education Department. Other units include the State Archives, the State Museum and Public Broadcasting Office. In conjunction with these other program areas, the library is embarking on a digital initiatives project. Also, in cooperation with the libraries and library systems of New York State, the library has initiated EmpireLink, a pilot project that provides the people of New York State free access to full-text online, commercial databases through their libraries. Currently, EmpireLink includes the Gale Group's Health Reference Center-Academic, the Carl Corporation's Dialog@CARL-Basic Collection and the EBSCO databases, Masterfile Select, Primary Search and TopicSearch. There are plans to further expand the project.

Government Printing Office

The Cataloging Branch of the Library Programs Service, United States Government Printing Office identifies, catalogs, and authenticates records for serial publications published by Federal agencies for the CONSER database. As during the previous year, GPO serial catalogers focused on cataloging Federal serial publications published via the Internet. New records were created and existing records were adapted. As before, GPO has continued to use CONSER's single record option to catalog serials made available in multiple formats. A number of new online only records have created for serials that are now only available as online publications.

The first issue of the new Serials Supplement for 2001 was issued in January 2001. Serials included in the Serials Supplement were received for cataloging from October 1999 and September 2000. The new supplement contains records for Federal serials and periodicals issued twice a year or less often. All records included in the Serials Supplement are CONSER authenticated. Catalogers began preparing the Serials Supplement for 2002 at the beginning of October 2000 and will complete work at the end of September 2001. New records for the online versions of Federal documents have replaced some of the records for the paper and microfiche versions. As GPO has moved from distributing tangible documents to providing access to online versions, serial catalogers have lent a hand in updating depository distribution instructions for serials. Serial catalogers continue to be involved in assigning and maintaining PURLs (Persistent Uniform Resource Locators) that provide access to online serials.

Although the number of existing records that GPO authenticated for CONSER this year is the same as last year's total, the number of new records created for CONSER decreased. The number of new CONSER records created this year totaled 256 as compared with last year's total of 315. In terms of percentage, this represents a 19 percent decrease in the number of new records. The total number of OCLC serial records updated by GPO decreased from 2643 last year to 2618 this year. This decrease in production is attributable to a decrease in staff. In May 2001, Ms. Jennifer K. Davis, transferred to Library of Congresses' Serial Record Division. Jennifer began working at GPO in May 1998. In July 2001, Ms. Esther Simpson, transferred to Library of Congresses' Serial Record Division. Esther began working at GPO in Sept. 1999. Later in July 2001, another serials cataloger has given up many of his serials cataloging duties to take over the NACO responsibilities previously performed of Mr. Dennis Dearnbarger, who transferred to the Library of Congress in July. We are presently recruiting serials catalogers for multiple vacancies.

University of California, Los Angeles

General news

UCLA gained a new YRL Cataloging Department Head. John Riemer (formerly the CONSER representative from University of Georgia) began working here in December 2001.

Statistics

Between October 2000 and August 2001, UCLA contributed to CONSER 242 original records and authenticated another 203 records. UCLA completed subsequent authentication of 6 records and maintenance of 727 authenticated records. These figures represent a very slight increase from 1999/2000.

More CONSER catalogers

November13-17, 2000, Ron Watson completed a site visit to University of Oregon, to work with Mary Grenci on CONSER cataloging. During winter and spring of 2001, Ron also worked locally to expand the number of UCLA CONSER catalogers. In February 2001, he introduced Caroline Miller, a Hebraica/Yiddish cataloger, to the joys of CONSER; and later in April, he began to work with Janet Carter at the UCLA Biomedical Library.

SCCTP training

Rhonda Lawrence and Valerie Bross continued to contribute time this year to SCCTP training, giving two workshops, one Mar. 21-22 (at UCLA) and one June 11-12 (in Monrovia). The workshops were co-sponsored by OCLC.

Other

Valerie Bross served as co-chair (with John Wright) on a PCC Task Group on Integrating Resources. The group completed an interim report in April and is working on a final report for October. Valerie has also been working with Becky Culbertson (UCSD) on a proposal to test an OCLC-hosted PURL server for freely-available e-resources.

University of Chicago Library

The University of Chicago Library was accepted as a full CONSER member in February 2001. Renette Davis went to the Library of Congress for a week of training with Hoda Fateen in April, and in May she returned to LC for the CONSER Operations meeting. We developed a plan for phasing in the catalogers and copy catalogers of the Serials and Digital Resources Cataloging Section as well as the serials catalogers in the Law Library. At this point 3 serials catalogers and 1 serials copy cataloger are creating CONSER records. So far we have contributed or updated 36 records.

We have also worked out a procedure for monographic catalogers with language expertise to contribute CONSER records. The monographic cataloger creates a record in OCLC's save file, and then it goes to Renette, who checks the record and upgrades it to CONSER. Once the record has been approved by our reviser at LC, the material is processed as regular serials copy cataloging. Renette plans to provide some formal serials cataloging training to the monographic catalogers so that they can participate more fully in the CONSER program.

We have volunteered to be part of the CONSER PURL Pilot Project. This project will include records for freely available resources which are chosen for normal cataloging by selectors of the participating institutions. The project will use OCLC's PURL server, and all participants will have access to make changes on the PURL server. The details haven't been worked out yet, but the purpose of the project is to see whether something like this can be done cooperatively so we don't all have to change our catalog records and web pages when a URL changes.

University of Florida

2000/2001 was a challenging year for us on many fronts. As the United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN) grant project came to a close, we were able to contribute a number of new and upgraded serial records to the CONSER database. Some of this work was accomplished through the hiring of an excellent temporary staff member.

Staff challenges were a major feature of the year. Naomi Young, Serials Cataloging head, was out for three months of medical leave near the beginning of the year; two long-term staff members left during the summer. At the close of the year, only one of these two vacant positions could be filled, although the prospects for the future are hopeful.

Naomi Young attended the CONSER/BIBCO Operations Committee Meeting in May, and moderated one of three breakout sessions on electronic serials.

There were no other special projects here as such, but we did find a sharp increase in the number of electronic serial records we were able to enhance. (Although our library primarily uses a single-record approach, we acquired a number of electronic-only titles through consortial database purchases.) We were again able to meet our contribution goal for the calendar year before the end of summer.

UF formally withdrew from the patterns project near the beginning of the year, but has contributed and adjusted some patterns as part of other maintenance work. We are hopeful that our migration to a new Library Management System, and its attendant changes in workflow, will give us more opportunities to contribute in this area.

University of Georgia

The University of Georgia contributed newly-authenticated records to the CONSER database, as well as performing maintenance of existing records. Our main focus is English-language print material. The coming year will see much more of a focus on electronic serials. Our virtual backlog is quickly growing, and needs to be reduced. Currently we are adding a URL to the print record whenever we hold the title in both formats. We have approximately 3000 such records in our OPAC, and many more to be done. But there are also many electronic titles which will need separate records.

This year we began to participate in holdings-related CONSER activities. In November 2000, the University of Georgia hosted the beta test for the SCCTP Basic Holdings workshop. People from the state of Georgia and beyond came to Athens for this one-day workshop. This gave us both the opportunity to contribute to SCCTP and also some good training in the MARC format for Holdings. In February 2001 we began to contribute publication patterns for the Experiment. To date the University of Georgia has contributed 728 new patterns, 62 subsequent patterns, and modified 298 patterns. Participation in this project is also beginning to generate some CONSER maintenance statistics. Our staff member who is in charge of holdings contributes the bulk of our patterns. Late in the summer she began training to edit the frequency in a bibliographic record when she comes across them while editing the pattern.

Beth Jedlicka taught two SCCTP Basic Serials Cataloging workshops in 2000/2001.

University of Maryland

Jeanne Baker is a member of the PCC's Standing Committee on Automation and its 2nd Task Group on Journals in Aggregator Databases. She is also a new member of the CONSER Publication Pattern Initiative. Jeanne participated in the Patterns Workshop at the 2001 annual American Library Association Conference where she led a discussion of publication pattern workflow. The University of Maryland held one of the first SCCTP MARC Holdings Workshops, having two separate sessions training a total of 40 staff members of the University System. Jeanne continues as a trainer in the Serials Cooperative Cataloging Training Program. Jeanne and Hien Nguyen (National Library of Medicine) on May 15 taught an abbreviated version of the Basic Serials Cataloging Course emphasizing serial copy cataloging. Jeanne is participating as a reviewer of the text for the SCCTP's new Advanced Serials Cataloging Workshop. Beth Guay participated as a member of the PCC Task Force on Multiple Manifestations of Electronic Resources (Aug. 2000-April 2001).

University of Michigan

After battling an extended illness, Serials Cataloging Unit Co-Team Leader Joan Butler passed away in late September 2000. In Jan. 2001, Thomas Champagne was appointed Head, Serials Cataloging Unit.

The major Serials Cataloging Unit accomplishment during the year continues to be the focused effort to catalog ejournal packages and aggregator services. As of the last count for FY 2000/2001, Serials Cataloging Unit staff had cataloged over 9,730 electronic journals or online versions of print journals.

The University Library began a process in the spring of 2001 to explore the possibility of migrating to a new library management system, replacing the III (acquisitions) and NOTIS (cataloging, circulation, OPAC, etc.) systems we are currently using. In preparation for our eventual migration, Acquisitions/Serials Division staff identified a number of database clean-up projects for both the III and NOTIS databases.

University of Oregon

The University of Oregon was an enhance library coming into this fiscal year. By October 2000, we were being mentored for full membership by Ron Watson, University of California-Los Angeles. We worked closely with Ron for a little over seven months before being given independent status at the 2001 Operations Meeting last May. Like our previous work with Kristin Lindlan, University of Washington (our enhance mentor), the time we spent working with Ron was an excellent and enjoyable learning experience. We believe that CONSER's system of providing personal mentors gives comprehensive training much more quickly than any other system. This is particularly true for smaller serials cataloging operations such as the one here at UO.

Our CONSER statistics for the past year total 192 authentications (including 90 original records and 102 upgrades), 12 upgrades from CONSER minimal level to full level, and 132 CONSER maintenance transactions. We have experimented with use of the core level record and have recently begun authenticating CJK records. Our CONSER work comes almost entirely from new cataloging, changes that require a new record, and routine maintenance transactions. The Library has greatly expanded our retrospective conversion activities. This work, while taking up a great deal of time, is not contributed via CONSER, and we've been pleased at our ability to generate reasonable CONSER statistics while at the same time undertaking this long-term project.

University of Texas at Austin

As always, CONSER activity at Texas involved Latin American serials almost exclusively. Work continued on the usual assortment of new receipts, newspapers from storage and title or format changes. A new project this year involves cataloging of microfilm produced in a grant-funded project to film early 20th century newspapers from Mexico. Cataloging of the newspapers themselves has been ongoing for several years, while the microfilm cataloging began in May 2001. Approximately 700 titles will be filmed and cataloged during the 2 years of the project.

University of Washington

Renovation work impacted the University of Washington Libraries and its Serials Cataloging Section during 2000-2001. Renovation of the Suzzallo Library building for earthquake safety and program improvements required the Section to move again, this time to a temporary location three miles from campus at Sand Point, a former U.S. military base. It has complicated work for serials catalogers, who often need to go to campus to look at issues in the stacks; some of us also have meetings on campus regularly.

We began cataloging our foreign newspaper collection. Some of the collection had been cataloged in the past, but all records are being checked for completeness. We hope to coordinate this work with the International Coalition of Newspapers (ICON) project. The Center for Research Libraries received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the first phase of a project to inventory, catalog, and preserve foreign newspapers.

The Serials Cataloging Section had a few staffing changes this year. Stephanie Sheppard, a new librarian, began working January 2001. Steve Ditore, a half-time copy cataloger, resigned March 2001, and Xiaoli Li, another copy cataloger, resigned in May 2001 to take a librarian position in the East Asia Library.

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 for retrospective conversion.

Our CONSER statistics for 2000-2001 totaled 3326, with 1387 titles authenticated (up from 1305 in 1999-2000) and 1939 titles maintained (down from 2401 the previous year). We continued to authenticate a portion of our catalog records as minimal (166 titles) or core level (180 titles). We also maintained 217 non-CONSER records in OCLC in relation to our CONSER work.

Many people in the Libraries worked on improving access to aggregator databases. Our catalog records now contain links to electronic versions of titles available via the Academic Universe and ProQuest.Records added to the UW catalog continue to enrich our local digital registry--a resource that supports the generation of local, subject-specific web pages.

Steve Shadle and Kristin Lindlan made contributions to CONSER-related activities. Kristin continued to serve as the UW Libraries' representative to the CONSER Operations Committee. She began working with Meg Mering, University of Nebraska, on writing the SCCTP "Advanced Serials Cataloging" training manual to be used for the program's two-day workshop and continued working with Bonnie Parks, Oregon State University, in CONSER Enhance. Kristin wrote an article: "Serials cataloging guidelines and levels of cataloging at the University of Washington Libraries," Serials Review, v. 27, no 2 (2001), p. 9-13.

Steve Shadle and Nancy Yu (Library of Congress) trained serials catalogers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Dec. 4-8, 2000, and serves as reviser for their electronic journal titles. As a trainer in the Serials Cooperative Cataloging Training Program (SCCTP), he gave a two-day workshop, "Basic Serials Cataloging," for OCLC/WLN Sept. 7-8, 2000, in Seattle and the same workshop again for OCLC Western May 10-11, 2001, in Boise, Idaho, both with Bonnie Parks. Steve also served on the SCCTP Advisory Group and began working with Les Hawkins, Library of Congress, on writing the manual to be used for its one-day workshop on "Electronic Serials Cataloging." He continued to serve on the CONSER Electronic Serials Expert Group. Steve also wrote an article: "The core serials record: where it can save time," Serials Review, v. 27, no. 2 (2001), p. 14-21

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