BEAT Annual Report 2004

The RCCD chief oversees the activities of the Library's inter-divisional Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT), which is responsible for initiating research and development projects to increase the value to users and end-users of cataloging products. The hallmarks of the BEAT efforts are to investigate and test new approaches to bibliographic access that transcend the normal and to do so by bringing together teams involving public, technical, and automation staff.

H-NET Reviews

H-NET reviews is a collaborative a project begun last year with the cooperation of H-NET: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, to link catalog records to H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences, H-Net's online scholarly journal (ISSN 1538-0661). The project links LC catalog records to corresponding H-Net reviews, increasing access to valuable information about published works cataloged by the Library. The reviews cover contemporary publications as well as classic publications in a variety of academic fields. Many of the reviews, in addition to containing relevant Library of Congress subject headings, include footnotes and bibliographies.

The subject of external links was one of intense debate this year, but convinced of their utility the team continues to work with H-NET to provide these links from the catalog record. During the year various issues such as multiple or problem links were resolved or corrected and with this project BEAT dramatically expands access to information about these books, facilitating access to additional information detailed in the reviews and though the searching made possible both at H-NET as well as through links BEAT simultaneously provides to the LC Online Catalog.

In FY 2004 new links were made to 1,022 items, keeping within the projected range of 1,000 links to reviews per year.

Additional information about H-Net Reviews may be viewed by following the link here.

DTOC

The digital Tables of Contents project creates electronic versions of Tables of Contents from hard copy of the contents and then with programs written by the division AOC links the electronic versions to the catalog record. Despite the loss of two production staff, the project still managed to create over 8,300 new dTOC records, and has now produced more than 25,400 TOC files since the inception of the program. During the year the underlying dTOC computer program was updated twice by the RCCD division's AOC, improving both its provision of information to the user and its visible statement of scope in the record display.

ONIX Projects

Additional information regarding all of the ONIX projects is available from links provided on the BEAT main page at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/beat/beat.html

ONIX Sample texts

Samples themselves might consist of such things as a first chapter, book jacket illustration, images, etc. - - information that readers or prospective users of a book would find of interest. This project makes links from LC catalog records to copies of these sample texts, which with the publisher's permission have been stored at the Library to insure long-term availability. This project now has over 16,500 samples available.

ONIX Descriptions

With more than 100,000 descriptions now available, LC researchers can access and view publishers' descriptions of books fro which BEAT has received such records. The LC cataloging record carries a hot link to the description, thus extending the information about an item that can be provided to the reader.

ONIX Reading Group Guides

In this still experimental project, BEAT provides links to publishers' discussion guidelines or topics for book groups for which the information is not on LC's Web server as it is with the Table of Contents and Publishers Description projects. Thus, these bibliographic records will be closely monitored by BEAT to determine the reliability of the URLs involved. To date, 44 of these guides have been made

ONIX TOC

The original of the ONIX projects now in place, the initiative utilizes the data to create Table of Contents (TOC) records that the Library makes available on the Web. Hyper-links are made from this TOC data to the catalog record, and the reverse, thus allowing researchers to move from or to the Library's online catalog where they can make additional searches for related or other material. A catalog record with a related TOC file retrieved in an online search has the hot-link to the TOC displayed on screen. In FY04 5,816 ONIX TOC links were created.

Links to Book Jackets

LC often receives a number of dust jacket images along with data utilized in the ONIX TOC and ONIX Descriptions projects. As the provision of the dust jacket image further enriches the information about an item for the researcher, BEAT intends to add links for such data through its dust jacket initiative. The project will begin by linking to some 2,300 images currently on-hand.

Contributor Biographical Information

ONIX data often includes information about contributors, and BEAT has undertaken a biographical information initiative that makes this information available to researchers. The information is being linked from the catalog record to data stored on the Web. This allows Web users to encounter the information and in turn access the underlying catalog record as well as utilize the consequent access to the LC catalog and to identify related items therein.

To date more than 12,600 files have been created and linked to the catalog record where the contributor was represented

E-CIP TOC

This year saw a dramatic re-introduction of an idea that the AOC fist demonstrated in 2002: the use of electronic source material to create E-CIP TOC on the web. In the earliest iteration approximately 150 E-CIP TOC were created but after that point source files were no longer available to the project. At the start of Fiscal Year 2004, a way was found a way to provide the project with this data, and it began again in earnest.

Using a program written by the AOC in RCCD, a BEAT Team member, source files are received from CIP division. The programs convert the source files into HTML-encapsulated text files and those are in turn placed on the Library's Web server. Overnight, the 'batch cat process is run to add data in the MARC catalog record, resulting in reciprocal links being made between the web- based TOC and the LC local catalog. In its first year of full-scale production approximately 35,000 E-CIP TOC were created, and the RCCD AOC recently handed-off the responsibility for production to the CIP division

In a second aspect of the E-CIP TOC initiative, publishers send the Library electronic versions of their publications and as part of the cataloging process staff are being encouraged to incorporate TOC information within the body of the catalog record. At the end of the Fiscal Year,10,490 E- CIPs had received TOC treatment, which represents 36% of all E-CIP materials received by the Library.

Web Access To Publications In Series

This project has multiple components, each making its own particular contribution to the Library's work. The project has also led to an entirely new initiative, the Web Catalog Assistant, discussed separately below. The key to the value added by all of the aspects of the projects described here is that the access to (links to) the publications that the project provides often take the researcher to significant information resources that offer full-text and/or abstracts and other description for many of the individual titles in these various series. The result is that these links can provide perhaps thousands of full-text documents or descriptions for the titles identified. So far in the aggregate, the project has provided access to the full electronic texts of more than 24,000 individual monographs. A brief summary of the workings of this project is described here.

Many social science monographic series of the "working paper/ discussion paper" type are now available in electronic form. One of the major components of this project determines which, from among the titles LC has (of those within scope for the project) are available in electronic form and adds the URLs to the LC serial records for these series. To date, this project has resulted in links to the electronic versions of 245 monographic series, of which 40% were previously not represented in the LC catalog. A second major facet is the creation of electronic serial records for a number monographic series that have not been represented in LC's catalogs, and in turn has led to the creation of electronic resource records for the individual monographs within those selected series. By way of example, 521 monographs have appeared in just one series alone, as in the Federal Reserve Board's Finance and economic discussion series In turn, this operation has led to yet another contribution: the creation of electronic resource records for the individual monographs within selected series.

The Library has a Web page on Technical Reports and Working Papers in Business and Economics at http://www.loc.gov/rr/business/techreps/techrepshome.php providing brief information on the organizations creating these working papers and reports, and offering an additional access point for researchers to both the electronic versions as well as links to the print versions of these publications at the Library of Congress.

By harvesting bibliographic data directly from the series issuer's web site it is possible to provide access to the abstracts and full electronic texts of the monographs as soon as they are published. In that way access is provided to high research value monographic series that have not been represented in the LC catalogs, thereby opening up a rich, new source of information for researchers who may now access electronic versions of these items.

A third related aspect, often described as a separate BEAT project, is providing significantly improved access to pre-1970 Congressional hearings, resulting in improved service to the Congress, centralized availability of information now widely dispersed throughout the Library's collections, modernization and uniformity of catalog formats for the hearings, and addition or inclusion of other information, such as the existence and location of alternate data sources. Approximately 6,500 hearings have been identified.

The project has also improved the timeliness and consistency of the classification of Congressional hearings by facilitating the addition to the LC Classification Web of classification cutter numbers for all Congressional Committees and subcommittees. The availability of this data has allowed novices, with little cataloging experience to process the hearings efficiently and also permitted the reduction of a sizeable arrearage. An additional benefit was the compilation of the most complete list of Congressional committees and subcommittees to date.

More information about the Pre-1970 Congressional Hearings initiative is provided at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/beat/pre1970.hearings.html and information concerning web access to publications in series, as well as its other related projects may be linked by going directly to http://www.loc.gov/catdir/beat/web.series.html

Web Catalog Assistant

BEAT has developed a computer application (Web cat assistant) to aid catalogers in creating bibliographic records for monographs in series identified in the Web Access to Publications in Series. The "Web cat assistant," facilitates the creation of a MARC record that is sent into the Voyager cataloging client. While the cataloger is also required to perform some of the steps in this process, the capability greatly reduces the manual keying of data and allows catalogers to concentrate on authority control and subject analysis. A very beneficial function of the program is that it programmatically alerts catalogers by E-mail when there are changes in the series web sites, indicating the appearance of new papers that need to be cataloged. This eliminates the time-consuming task of periodically checking these web sites for new titles and at the same time facilitates access to additional resources.

More information about this project can be found at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/beat/webcat.html

Web Access to Works in the Public Domain

Begun in FY 2002, this project undertakes to link LC bibliographic records to full text electronic copies of these same cataloged materials residing in collections of other institutions. Though these works -- all in the public domain -- have been digitized by various institutions, many of the original printed works are also in the collections of the Library of Congress. By linking LC catalog records to these electronic versions, the Library provides users with more unified and centralized access to materials of this nature as well as provide users of the LC collections or of LC catalog data rich and substantive information about the contents of these works as well as access to their texts.

There were two additions to this project during the year.