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Monthly Catalog Now on the Federal Bulletin Board
By popular demand, the most recent month’s Monthly Catalog records now have a home on the Federal Bulletin Board. If you are among those who would like to download an FTP file of every record created, produced, or updated during that month on OCLC by GPO catalogers, visit the Federal Bulletin Board at http://fedbbs.access.gpo.gov. The MOCAT file is available in the SPCMOCAT directory, with the continuous stream of unedited USMARC records arranged by OCLC number. It corresponds with the tape now being sent on a monthly basis from the Government Printing Office to the Library of Congress Cataloging Distribution Service. The purpose of the file is to provide the data necessary for those who wish to download and manipulate the information so that it works within their own unique system. To search for individual records, it is recommended that you continue to use the MOCAT product in one of its other mediums: paper, CD-ROM, or the World Wide Web.
Help documents that describe the data in the FTP file are available at the Federal Bulletin Board site in text and PDF format. For questions that concern downloading and other technical matters, the GPO Access User Support Team will be available to assist you from 7:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday (except Federal holidays). You can reach the User Support Team via e-mail at gpoaccess@gpo.gov, or by phone at (888)293-6498.
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Issues in Cataloging Electronic Titles
Remarks by Thomas A. Downing
Chief, Cataloging Branch
Before the Depository Library Council
Monday, October 19, 1998
San Diego, California
Good morning! It is a pleasure to be here with you today and to provide comments that supplement information presented in our two handouts. In addition to the Cataloging Branch update handout, we have included, for the first time, a handout that describes our CONSER related activities. Given the significant percentage (approximately 50% or more) of Federal Internet related electronic works that are serials, our participation in CONSER, or the Cooperative ONline SERials program, has become very noticeable in recent years. People are welcome to help themselves to these handouts. [See Administrative Notes, v. 19, no. 13 (11/5/98).]
During this morning's presentation I will focus on five subjects: our ongoing review of cataloging and locator related services, an announcement concerning a new temporary workteam within the Cataloging Branch, plans to augment an impending user friendly display of our Web edition of the Monthly Catalog with a "current awareness" application, a summary of Internet cataloging related policies, and some comments concerning our PURLs services.
Review of Cataloging and Locator Services
Reviewing and evaluating the scope and level of cataloging and locator services is an intermittent but worthwhile process. With agency Web services still evolving, we should look for opportunities to reduce redundancy between our applications and to improve those services that we do best. Our efforts to try new ventures and to take the initiative in providing electronic services is an essential and intrinsic element of this process.
During the course of several months, a group of librarians from the Cataloging Branch, the Depository Administration Branch, and our Electronic Transition Staff were informally organized to work towards the objective of establishing a one-to-one correspondence between each Browse Electronic Title (BET) entry and a Monthly Catalog record; and to achieve an identical correspondence between the PURL assigned to a BET entry and a related Monthly Catalog record. Our librarians worked hard to meet these objectives and, in the course of their efforts, they and our management team learned from the experience.
One thing we have learned from this experience is that achieving a one-to-one correspondence between a Browse Electronic Title entry and a Monthly Catalog record and that assigning a PURL to both a BET entry and a related Monthly Catalog record can be difficult tasks. We have also learned, for want of a better word, that not all Internet works are as "catalogable" as other works. In a technical sense, everything is "catalogable," even objects that do not contain information. However, having at this stage cataloged thousands of Internet related titles, we would like to begin a process of better defining the scope of our services. Here are some of the questions and issues which we have identified, and we welcome your thoughts and comments as we work through them.
- Should we catalog works at Web sites when we know that particular Web sites frequently remove works soon after they have been posted? This question is asked because we are not, at present, routinely archiving electronic products that we point to but which are housed at other agencies' sites.
- Should works at Web sites be cataloged when we know that the practice at a particular site is to replace one title with another title at the same address? This situation differs from the first example because in this instance, our record, which contains a link for one title, may soon take the user to an entirely different title which the agency has placed at the same URL. PURL checker software checks only links, and does not compare titles at Web sites with titles represented by cataloging records.
- Should we catalog a title that is accessible at a URL that works only "on the fly"? In this instance, should we provide users with an address that goes to a main page, which sometimes is the only page with a stable URL, and then expect users to browse through many related electronic pages or to search for the title that is represented by our record?
- Are users better served by being able to choose applications that primarily complement, but do not significantly duplicate, one another?
- What overall organization of our cataloging and locator services best serves users and depository librarians while optimizing our use of personnel?
We believe that we need to begin a process of critically analyzing work, looking at information related life cycle issues, experimenting with various workflows, and recommending a more refined set of applications that meet the needs of users and that create an environment in which applications are used with an improved expectation of consistently finding resources that are appropriately associated with each application.
New Temporary Internet Workteam in the Cataloging Branch
To begin this process and to learn more about issues that must carefully be considered, and procedures that seem to work best, we have created a temporary Internet Cataloging Workteam in the Cataloging Branch. As with the earlier workgroup that I described near the beginning of my remarks, this is an unofficial organization that will be used to collect information, test concepts, document proposed procedures, and streamline our processing of electronic resources.
We expect that our project team, led by Laurie Hall and staffed by Mike Clark, who maintains our PURLs, by Steve Uthoff, our administrative librarian for cataloging policy, and by two of our catalogers, Mike Levinson and Bob Luoma, will examine various issues associated with electronic services. Some of the issues they will investigate include:
- Procedures to provide front end review of potential Internet resources to determine, first, if works are in the scope of the Federal Depository Library Program and secondly, if works are catalogable.
- Policies that may be applied in selecting works to be cataloged and in providing the most reliable electronic access.
- Procedures to assure that, if works fall within the program, but are not cataloged, such works will be accessible via other applications, as appropriate.
- Review the current range of notes that are applied to Internet works to see if additional options should be added that would provide people with as much information as possible. Because of the changes to electronic texts that may occur at Web sites after a cataloging record has been produced, we must not be overly precise in what our notes indicate.
- Potential procedures, including archiving, for assuring continued access to cataloged electronic works. At present, our ability to assure continued access to many works is limited because we have not, as yet, incorporated archival services into the LPS workflow of Internet resource discovery and cataloging.
This team will also contribute to our efforts to catalog Internet related works as soon as possible. As our group digs in to perform this work, other challenges may be identified. As work progresses to a stage when it may benefit from widespread review, we will certainly seek your advice.
Current Awareness Application for the Monthly Catalog Web Edition
Another thing that we have learned from our work during the past few months is that users of the Web edition of the Monthly Catalog should be well served by an Internet related current awareness application. Such an application could resemble Browse Electronic Titles in that users could choose to review all Monthly Catalog records with PURLs that were produced during the most recent week or in other weeks during the most recent thirty day period. We expect to work with GPO Production to make this happen as soon as possible and are confident that it will be a useful application.
Summary of Internet Cataloging Related Policies
In recent years, we have devoted quite some time to communicating our Internet related cataloging policies. Our policies are available in their entirety at our Web site. For now, given some recent discussions on GOVDOC-L, I would like to take several minutes to provide a brief summary of our approach to cataloging and providing access to Internet related titles.
When electronic works have already been cataloged as such physical forms as paper, microfiche, CD-ROM, etc., and then become available as an electronic version, we upgrade existing records. These records are updated by adding an electronic related note in the 530 field and by adding a hot-linked PURL to the 856 field. These practices are consistent with CONSER guidelines and reflect the approval of the ALA GODORT Cataloging Committee.
When electronic works have not initially been published in physical form or if no suitable record for a physical form version exists, we produce an "electronic only" record. The term "electronic only" can be misleading because, in quite a number of instances, agencies rush to publish a work first on the Internet and then issue a physical version. In many instances, we have produced an electronic version record and then, using our option to use a single record to reflect all versions (this is what we have always done with paper and microfiche, etc.) we upgrade the electronic record to reflect the physical description of the physical form version, shipping list information, price, if applicable, and other information as appropriate.
Although some people may prefer a single record for each and very format of a title, we have never had and, most particularly at present, do not possess adequate personnel resources to follow such a practice. Our single record option is authorized by CONSER and the ALA GODORT Cataloging Committee and is an essential component of our efforts to keep pace with very significant workloads of titles in all versions.
We also apply a policy of producing a "collection level" record of related works that appear at an agency Web site. Collection level records have been approved by the ALA GODORT Cataloging Committee and point users to related resources that are rapidly evolving as to titles, content, and addresses. Collection level records provide a basic and not too specific sense of the related resources that are available at Web sites. To date, we have produced approximately seventy such records and find that they are consistent with the realities that people face when they access a site.
PURLs Services and Electronic Access
I would like to conclude my presentation by thanking Council for its commendation of our efforts to establish persistent names for Internet resources. Our use of PURLs, or Persistent Uniform Resource Locators, is an effective means of attempting to assure continued access to electronic resources and we appreciate Council's appreciation for these efforts. Although the use of other persistent naming conventions may, at some point, become advisable, PURLs are a recognized way of helping to assure continued access to electronic works.
In this regard, a recent article in the membership news section of the July/August OCLC Newsletter describes our large scale use of OCLC's PURLs software. In addition, Norman Oder's article, "Cataloging the Internet: Can We Do It?", which appeared in the October 1, 1998, issue of Library Journal, also recognizes GPO as a notable user of PURLs software.
Some of you may have noticed another article which appeared in the July/August 1998 OCLC Newsletter, entitled: "Top 100 computer files in WorldCAT." Yes, a casual glance at the files suggests that many of these works are United States Government publications. We reviewed these titles and concluded that seventy-three of the top 100 computer files represented in WorldCAT are Government publications. As of the date of this article, seventy-one of these seventy-three files had been represented in Monthly Catalog records.
To answer the question, "Can we catalog the Internet?" we can say, yes, we at GPO can and do catalog an increasingly important segment of it and that we look forward to the continued challenges that the Internet presents. In dedicating ourselves to Internet related tasks we recognize that we have much work to do in the years ahead to maintain good Internet related cataloging and locator services and to work towards providing continued access to works in archives and at publishing sites. Council's advice in all these matters is a key component of our efforts and is much appreciated.
I thank you for this opportunity to provide information and look forward to working with all of you during Council. Thank you.
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