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BIBCO Annual Report FY08

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In FY 2008, BIBCO partner institutions contributed 76,572 new bibliographic records, an increase of 16% over FY2007. Many participants pledge to send more records next year and deserve high praise for their dedication. It is hard to quantify the contributions of time and energy by BIBCO Contacts, Representatives, and task group members, or the benefits accrued from this work to the national and international library community.

BIBCO membership has remained steady. The BIBCO training materials are currently being revised by a working group of the Standing Committee on Training. The release of these materials in early FY2009 is likely to stimulate training activity among current and prospective members. One BIBCO institution reported that they conducted BIBCO training internally in FY2008, and many others arranged or attended training for SACO, NACO, and NACO series. It is encouraging to read of new hires being prepared for BIBCO cataloging even though several institutions reported staff losses due to retirements and funding constraints.

The language coverage noted in BIBCO reports this year are worthy of the United Nations. One participant lists UN documents as a collection they include in their BIBCO work. The expansion of Enhance and BIBCO work to different formats accounts for increased BIBCO production at many libraries. Digital collections are becoming more important in many narrative reports, and a few mention converting traditional cataloger titles into "Metadata" positions.

The BIBCO Operations Committee meeting in May 2008 had reports from two new task groups. One will create Guidelines for Multiple Character Sets to add non-Latin data to bibliographic records. The other, the Provider-Neutral Monograph Task Force, is refining practices to reduce the proliferation of duplicate records in OCLC for monographs that appear both as individual print items and in multiple aggregator packages of electronic files. Cynthia Whitacre solicited ideas from OpCo participants about enhance and enrichment capabilities in OCLC. After the announcement of a PCC policy on series in August 2008, the topic of record updates resurfaced in the form of a serious discussion of BIBCO core and full level records. Talk of the usefulness of minimal level or BIBCO standard records as possible alternatives also surfaced in the PPC discussion list.

References to automated tools for cataloging are mentioned in the narratives from some BIBCO members. OCLC began using non-Latin characters from bib records to create selected fields in name authority records in July 2008. One library cites the use of vendor-supplied post-cataloging series authority records. The trend toward new types of materials and new methods of providing access continues, and provides a challenge for the BIBCO program.

With permission from the contributor Sherman Clarke, here's a quote to stimulate thinking in the coming year:

We collectively need to have a model that allows us to do some of the building of BIBCO records mechanically or through accretion of metadata from institutional records or other record loads. OCLC already does considerable building of the master record from incoming records; what we need is something more like the metadata that is becoming usual in NewGen environments. If someone adds a tag or review or picture, that becomes available in the master cluster. Not a BIBCO record, but a BIBCO cloud of metadata for a particular manifestation of a work/expression.

Compiled by Carolyn Sturtevant


BIBCO FY 2007 Annual reports by library:

Arizona State University:

Despite the retirement of two of our most productive BIBCO catalogers, Arizona State was able to contribute over 600 BIBCO records, both new cataloging and upgrades to existing records. Original catalogers continue to use BIBCO core as the standard. We hope to fill one or both of the vacant positions, but until we do, our contributions will remain around 500 records per year, depending on receipts. Submitted by Rebecca Uhl

Brigham Young University:

We held a series workshop during Oct. 2007 and have increased the number of people submitting SARs for review. We also held a NACO training workshop in Jan. 2008. Both of these activities have had a positive influence on the number of authority records being produced by BYU staff. Over the last year we have formalized a new level of staff we are calling Cataloging Specialist that has as one of its responsibilities the creation of name and series authority records. We hope that this will allow us to continue to be a serious participant in the PCC. We have not expanded the number of BIBCO catalogers this year, however, we have been able to meet and exceed our goal for bibliographic records contributed to the BIBCO program. We are in the process of conducting a workshop using the SACO training materials and should be finished with that by the end of 2008. We are also having John Mitchell and Paul Frank come to provide us with the Classification Training at the end of Oct. 2008. We hope to increase our BIBCO participation during 2009. Submitted by John Wright

Center for Research Library (CRL):

In FY 2008 we completed a multi-year cataloging project: Foreign doctoral dissertations. This collection consists of mostly unique and rarely held materials from more than 115 countries in 80 languages. It includes 120 dissertations from Nobel laureates. Nearly 800,000 dissertations were cataloged since the beginning of the project in 2002.

A number of smaller scale cataloging projects (mostly publications in microform) were also completed this year: Middle American cultural anthropology (120 items cataloged); Left in Britain (275 items cataloged); American and British children's literature, 1850-1869 (808 items cataloged); Brazil ministerial reports (20 items cataloged); Publications of the Public Record Office of Great Britain and miscellaneous materials previously uncataloged due to CRL's policy (1649 items cataloged)

There was a significant rise in patron-initiated requests for materials coming to CRL this year. This can be attributed to the amount of records created at the Technical Services Dept. and their representation in more consortia catalogs. Item records also created in our Dept., helped patrons to initiate requests without utilizing interlibrary office of their institution.

The increased amount of requested materials also affected our digital production services. CRL began digital delivery in 2006. By June 2008 the total number of scanned pages exceeded 1 million.

It is also worth mentioning that we had a complete Integrated Library System upgrade, and a new design of our Catalog that includes English and French dual-language interfaces.

Last but not least: Andrew Elliott, our Cataloger became a member of the BIBCO Operation Committee. We hope that his cataloging skills and experience with new technologies will benefit this very important program. Submitted by Serafima Dukhan

Cleveland Public Library:

Columbia University:

This has been another good year for Columbia as we continue to be fully staffed. Our BIBCO contributions decreased somewhat since staff continue to be involved in projects and we are not cataloging the majority of our electronic or rare materials as BIBCO records.

Robert Rendall and Alex Crosier attended PCC series training in Washington and we continue to be committed to creating SARs for many series. Several years ago we developed a policy for series tracing and authority work which may be of interest to others at this time when the value of series authority work is in question.

We reconfigured the cataloging position held by Melanie Wacker into a Metadata Coordinator. While this has caused our BIBCO contributions to drop somewhat, we are very pleased to be experimenting with providing some level of authority control to our local digital projects. Working with both new and legacy projects, we have had to develop new skills to do the rigorous research necessary to resolve conflicts and establish names for rare and unique materials. Since doing traditional authority work for large digital projects is not sustainable, we are learning where to expend our efforts.

We have expanded our PCC cataloging of belles lettres to several additional languages including modern Greek and Romanian and are moving full speed ahead in adding non-Latin scripts to authority records under Susan Summer's guidance. We are cataloging more Polish material as PCC and thus our NACO headings in that area have increased. The Law Library at Columbia has joined the NACO Law funnel. Natasha Gelber was hired as our non-print cataloger and we have greatly increased our NACO contributions for headings found on AV materials.

The East Asian Library continues to contribute PCC and NACO records for Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts and has begun to contribute NACO records for Tibetan materials for the first time. We were short-staffed for the past year, but achieved a 35% increase in our contribution of PCC records and an 82% increase for our NACO records. We'll recruit a full-time Korean Cataloger soon and expect to see major growth in our Korean records for the coming year. Beginning in July, we have actively added CJK scripts to the 4xx references of our NACO records and believe this practice is important for enhancing access to our records. Submitted by Kate Harcourt, and by Charlene Chou for the East Asian Library

Cornell University Library:

Cornell University Library entered a new era earlier this year with the appointment of Anne Kenney as University Librarian. Anne succeeds Sarah Thomas, who left Cornell in 2007 for Oxford University. The new appointment brought a restructuring of the Library's administrative team. Scott Wicks has been named Associate University Librarian for Central Library Operations, which includes technical services as well as preservation, interlibrary loan, and management of the Library Annex, our remote shelving facility. Scott had been serving as interim Assistant University Librarian for Technical Services for over a year. We do not foresee any significant changes to technical services as a result of the reorganization.

Cornell contributed just over 4000 new BIBCO records for the 2007-2008 recording period. Our BIBCO efforts focus particularly on materials in Thai, Spanish, and Portuguese, although we contribute records for items in other languages as well. We maintain our participation in the ECIP program, supplying bibliographic records for forthcoming Cornell University Press titles; these records are also BIBCO contributions. Finally, Cornell continues its involvement with the PCC more broadly. David Banush will become chair of the PCC Policy Committee on October 1, 2008; his term will end in September 2009. Submitted by David Banush

Duke University

This year we trained a new cataloger in NACO and BIBCO, and she attended the Series Institute at LC in the spring. I completed my last year on the BIBCO OpCo, and served as co-chair of the PCC Ad Hoc Series Review Task Force, which submitted a discussion paper in December, and final recommendations in April. The Steering Committee responded in August. Now that SARs can be created post-cataloging, we have started contributing them as part of the follow-up to our vendor-supplied authority control. We are in the process of becoming an ECIP partner, to provide CIP for Duke University Press books. Our level of contribution continues to be high, and we are pleased to participate in cooperative cataloging. Submitted by Amy Turner

Eastman School of Music

During FY 2008, Sibley Library's BIBCO contribution showed a moderate increase over last year's levels, as expected, and we are hoping to further increase our contributions in the coming year. As in the past two years, a number of special projects have kept some of our catalogers working in areas not conducive to BIBCO contribution. However, in the coming year we will be focusing more effort on upgrading existing records to PCC level, in addition to maintaining our current level of contribution of original records. We will also seek to reduce a backlog of sound recordings, some of which will be ideal candidates for core records. Submitted by Linda Blair

Harvard University

Harvard's BIBCO contribution for fiscal year 2008 remained at roughly the level of the previous fiscal year. Again this year the bulk of our contribution consisted of submissions from our Tozzer Library with its collections supporting the study of anthropology and all subfields, including archaeology, cultural/social anthropology, biological/physical anthropology, and anthropological linguistics as well as noted collections relating to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. In addition to BIBCO, Harvard continues to contribute to the other PCC programs. Submitted by Bruce Trumble

Harvard University -Yenching Library

Indiana University

During the 2007-2008 federal fiscal year, Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington Campus, contributed 6,335 BIBCO records. Of these, 415 were Core Level records, and 5,920 were Full Level records. These figures include estimated totals for September, 2008:

  • 83% (414 Core Level and 4,826 Full Level) of our BIBCO records were cataloged by our Wells Library Technical Services staff who work on monographs in non-Western languages. These were in Slavic and East European languages, non-Slavic languages of the Former Soviet Union, Arabic, Bengali, Chaghatai, Hindi, Mongolian, Persian, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Turkish (Ottoman & Republic), Urdu. Our Korean and Hebraica catalogers continue to submit records for review to the Library of Congress. We have a new Japanese cataloger who is finishing up her NACO review, and we expect her to begin BIBCO review sometime in the next fiscal year.
  • 6% (385 Full Level) of our BIBCO records were cataloged by our Wells Library Technical Services staff who work on monographs, primarily in Western European languages.
  • 8% (525 Full Level) of our BIBCO records were for materials being cataloged at the Cook Music Library. These include materials in several different languages cataloged on the score and book formats.
  • 3% (1 Core Level and 184 Full Level) of our BIBCO records were for rare book materials cataloged by the Lilly Library, our rare books and manuscripts library.
Submitted by Jacqueline Byrd

Indiana University School of Law, Indianapolis

We are currently on pace to have approximately a 15% increase over last year's BIBCO production. Our BIBCO output continues to focus on legal materials (especially those pertaining to Indiana) and United Nations documents. Submitted by Chris Long

Joint Forces Staff College:

National Library of Agriculture

The National Agricultural Library (NAL) has been a BIBCO participant since 1993. Six catalogers are involved in BIBCO activities (ranging from cataloging publications for the program to reviewing the catalogers' work). As of August 31 of this fiscal year, NAL cataloged 570 publications for BIBCO. Monographs as well as Internet resources were contributed.

NAL joined the ECIP program and began contributing records in March 2006. NAL contributes ECIP titles as part of the BIBCO program. Of the 570 BIBCO titles cataloged by NAL this year, nearly 400 are ECIP titles. Submitted by Donna Collins

National Library of Medicine:

BIBCO Contribution

  • The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has contributed a total of 5,561 records to BIBCO for FY2008, October 2007-August 2008.
  • Core level records represent 93% of the contributions to date. NLM continues to contribute records for print monographs, audiovisuals, and monographic electronic resources to the BIBCO program.
  • In all, 3,108 CIP titles or 56% of NLM's total BIBCO contributions were the result of NLM's continued participation as a partner in the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication (CIP) program.

Cataloging and related activities

The 2008 edition of the NLM Classification was released on April 24, 2008. It incorporates all additions and changes to the schedules and index from April 2007 through March 2008, including those made as a result of the systematic review of the WA and WB schedules. The PDF version also was updated with 2008 classification data. The NLM Classification is available online. A new updated version of the classification poster is freely available from NLM in both an 18x24 in. version and an 8.5x11 version.

In January 2007, the NLM Digital Working Group submitted its report on the functional requirements and recommendations for next steps in building an NLM Digital Repository. This year, a second Working Group has been evaluating digital repository systems and software. The group has installed and tested two open source systems, Dspace and Fedora, as well as Ex Libris's DigiTool product. The group expects to make a recommendation and selection by fall and to implement the chosen system by late 2008.

NLM continues to investigate the use of the Medical Text Indexer (MTI) software, currently used by NLM indexers, to assist catalogers in the selection of MeSH headings. A group of NLM catalogers has tested the software's suitability for cataloging needs, and this initial testing suggested that MTI would, in fact, prove useful to catalogers. Mapping from LCSH to MeSH was added to take advantage of the LC subjects that already appear on many copy records. In addition, an interface was added that will allow catalogers to easily view the suggested MeSH terms and add them to the bibliographic record. Testing continues, and NLM hopes to implement the MTI for catalogers by the end of 2008.

NLM loaded bibliographic data for Images in the History of Medicine. Users can limit their searches to records for images and link directly to the images from the catalog.

NLM staff has been preparing online training courses in the use of MeSH for cataloging and use of the NLM Classification. When completed, these courses will be available for self-paced learning on the NLM Cataloging Website, and will also be made available to the PCC, as well as groups in ALA and MLA who may offer instructor-led training classes based on the content.

Standard Review and Cooperative Activities

As of Oct. 15, 2007, NLM authority records are being exported in UTF-8.

NLM has collaborated with the CPSO-Unicode Task Force to implement LC's proposal and short and long term approaches for adding non-Roman data to authority records in the LC/NACO Authority File. OCLC began pre-population of the Authority File in July of 2008.

NLM continues to represent the Medical Library Association in the review of Resource Description and Access (RDA). The Library reviewed and commented on chapters 2-4 and 9 in January 2008. NLM also worked with LC and NAL to develop a Joint Statement on Resource Description and Access, which was issued on May 1, 2008. The statement sets forth the libraries' plans to test RDA and make a joint decision on implementation. The libraries will solicit additional partners for the testing and evaluation, which is expected to begin in mid-2009 and continue through the end of 2009.

NLM is an advisory board participant for the OCLC Next General Cataloging Project. The project is investigating the possibility of capturing ONIX metadata upstream from publishers and vendors and using it to enhance the metadata in WorldCat.

In early 2008, LC, NAL and NLM staff issued a statement on the review and revision of the Joint Collection Development Statement on Veterinary Science and Related Subjects.

Chong Chung participated as a volunteer in the CJK NACO Funnel Project and provided NACO training to a librarian at the Fresno County Free Library, Fresno, CA, and began training another librarian at the University of Southern California.

Personnel

Effective September 14, 2008, Barbara Bushman assumed the position of Assistant Head of Cataloging. Ms. Bushman previously was head of Unit IV of the Cataloging Section.

Debra Thangarajah, Iris Lee, and John Doyle were selected as senior Technical Information Specialists in the Technical Services Division Office. Ms. Thangarajah and Mr. Doyle come from positions within NLM, while Ms. Lee comes to NLM from the National Agricultural Library's Acquisitions and Collection Development Branch. Submitted by Karen Detling

New York Public Library

New York University

NYU has now migrated from Geac Advance to Ex Libris Aleph, with Day One on the new system in mid-July 2008. While we were able to catalog titles entirely new to the database, many cataloging workflows had to cease for a time between early May and late summer. Some things are now becoming routine and some are less so but we hope that BIBCO contributions will increase soon. Our principal BIBCO cataloger has been working on a special project that is mostly not BIBCO-able. Our participation in other PCC programs was also less during the migration but we are mostly back on the NACO, CONSER, and SACO path.

Our normal workflow includes taking much copy from OCLC WorldCat and a recent discussion on the PCCLIST talked about the nature of minimal records and BIBCO standards. We collectively need to have a model that allows us to do some of the building of BIBCO records mechanically or through accretion of metadata from institutional records or other record loads. OCLC already does considerable building of the master record from incoming records; what we need is something more like the metadata that is becoming usual in NewGen environments. If someone adds a tag or review or picture, that becomes available in the master cluster. Not a BIBCO record, but a BIBCO cloud of metadata for a particular manifestation of a work/expression. Submitted by Sherman Clarke

New York University, School of Law

New York University Law School Library remains a steady contributor to all the cooperative PCC programs. In FY 2007/2008, we contributed about 400 BIBCO records, mostly records for law books written in English, German, and various Romance languages. We are continuing to do full series authority control, including the contribution of series authority records for all our PCC contributions, whether full or core. In addition to our BIBCO cataloging, we also participate in CONSER and SACO. Last year, we were quite active in the Inherently Legal Subject Heading Project, contributing many cross-references to SACO for law subject headings. Due to ongoing funding issues, we have been unable to hire any full time or part time additional professional help; consequently, we have been unable to increase our BIBCO cataloging contributions as we had hoped. However, we have been able to participate in a broad range of other PCC activities; our library is active in several PCC task forces, and doing ongoing NACO review for several libraries. Last April, we provided one of the NACO Series trainers for the Series Institute held at the Library of Congress in late April 2008. George Prager recently completed his service as a BIBCO COOP representative. Submitted by George Prager

Northwestern University

At the beginning of this FY, Northwestern University Library's Catalog Department, previously responsible only for monographs, was reorganized to include serials catalogers and renamed the Bibliographic Services Department. The reorganization did not change the number of people contributing to PCC efforts; in fact, it was a very good year for BIBCO and NACO at Northwestern. Seven catalogers contributed a total of 2161 BIBCO records, 85% of them full level and 15% core level. Among the BIBCO are 45 Electronic Cataloging in Publication records we created in partnership with LC for Northwestern University Press publications. Sixteen catalogers contributed a total of 4926 NACO records. Both the BIBCO and NACO totals are new record highs for NUL. It will be a challenge to match that next FY, though, as two of our most experienced catalogers will have retired. Submitted by Michael Babinec

Oberlin College

For the fiscal year 2007/08, BIBCO contributions from Oberlin College increased by forty-three percent, despite two vacancies (including the loss of one cataloger after a brief battle with cancer). The increase is mostly attributed to a change in the way new catalogers are trained. Rather than work on records found in our local OPAC, new catalogers are trained using OCLC printouts, and are encouraged to upgrade to full level any OCLC copy at Encoding level I or below. This generates a good deal of program records, helps the catalogers to focus more clearly on the important elements of a bibliographic record, and makes training somewhat easier by focusing on international standards rather than what may or may not work locally. Our next hire will be trained in the same fashion, and we hope to continue this upward trend in BIBCO statistics. Submitted by John M. Sluk

Ohio State University

This year we have contributed 525 records (261 Full and 264 Core). This was very difficult for the Cataloging Department as we lost one staff and one librarian position.

Despite the difficulties, we managed to be part of the Arabic and CJK NACO funnels. They both are up and running and our staff started to contribute to the program. The Non-Roman language coordinator has been already listed as the NACO contact for the CJK materials. We are engaged in a new initiative to set up a NACO Funnel for Ohio. Several libraries expressed their interest in participating in the NACO program and we hope to have this funnel established by the end of the year. Our Authority Control Coordinator is planning several sessions to train other staff at OSUL on how to create NACO records. As a result of this initiative, we expect to increase our BIBCO contribution substantially. Submitted by Magda El-Sherbini

Oklahoma State University

Oklahoma State University BIBCO contributions for 2007/2008 were down by 15% from the previous year. We were faced with staff turnover in both professional cataloger and cataloging technician positions. In addition to several new hires, one cataloger position was left unfilled for 5 months, and one cataloging technician position has been vacant for nine months. Although the staff changes, other than the cataloger position, did not have direct impact to the BIBCO activities, training for these new staff members greatly relied upon the experienced catalogers. This has inevitably affected their ability to devote time and effort to BIBCO contributions.

Another negative impact of staff turnover was that the remaining staff members were required to take on additional responsibilities in order to maintain as much as possible the services and operations of the department. As with other libraries, we also spent a considerable amount of time on the cataloging of electronic resources and various database maintenance projects. In spite of all of these challenges, we continued to find ways to improve the access of materials for our patrons. Last year, a new security system was implemented for CD/DVDs, especially for books with CD/DVDs as accompanying materials. This new system allows patrons to have easier access to these materials but also provides better security for them. As always, our commitment to the BIBCO and the PCC programs remains strong. With a new cataloger in training, it is hoped that we will be able to increase our BIBCO production in the coming year. Submitted by Co-ming Chan

Princeton University

All the PCC programs Princeton participates in (BIBCO, SACO, and NACO) have increased to varying degrees this year. These programs were emphasized during our last appraisal cycle and some refresher SACO trainings and messages were given during the year.

Professional cataloging staff became more deeply involved with metadata creation and review for our digital library initiative this year following last year's training program. All of our new Arabic and Persian catalog records now include original script. We are using OCLC's wonderful transliteration tools to generate original script data in combination with some locally-designed macros to further improve conversion accuracy. We have started an in-house project to retrospectively add Arabic script to all existing records, and hope to do a similar project for Persian language material. We are adding JACKPHY script references to authority records on a regular basis.

We have several large-scale projects underway-Princeton is participating in the Google Books project, we are barcoding material in our main library which lack barcodes, and as part of a master plan for the main library, we will be reclassing material from our local Richardson call number system to the LC classification system. It is a very busy time for cataloging at Princeton! Submitted by Joyce Bell

Queens Borough Public Library

Our productivity was up in all areas, thanks to a well trained staff and minimal turnover. We continued to make important contributions with NACO records for non-Roman names and titles. We also added approximately 30 geographical names for places on Long Island, NY. We collaborated with colleagues at Kent State to make available a new thesaurus of Spanish language subject headings: Queens Library Spanish language subject headings (MARC relator code "qlsp") Submitted by Yuan-shang Constance Hsi

Saint Louis University School of Law

Smithsonian Institution Libraries

We added a new professional staff member who has just completed NACO training and will eventually be contributing BIBCO records. Our BIBCO production has remained steady this year, compared with FY 2007. Expected increases in NACO and BIBCO production did not materialize this year because of other local issues that consumed much time and effort, such as a major data migration project involving RLIN records. However, with new staff in place and major migration and data clean-up projects behind us, we should see some increases in FY 2009. Submitted by Lowell Ashley

Stanford University

Despite a departure of an independent BIBCO cataloger last November, Stanford's BIBCO catalogers contributed in the past twelve months over 7000 bibliographic records, primarily for monographs in Western European, Hebrew, and Slavic languages. As PCC Core remains our default level for original cataloging, it represents over 50% of SULAIR BIBCO contributions.

In December 2007, Stanford began participating in a new cooperative project, the ECIP Cataloging Partnership Program. To this date, two ECIP catalogers have contributed ca. 100 BIBCO records for monographs published by the Stanford University Press. Submitted by Joanna Dyla

State University of New York at Buffalo

Diane Ward and I are once again very pleased to submit this brief statement regarding our 2007/2008 BIBCO contributions. At SUNY Buffalo we are very happy and honored to participate in the program and, although our personnel resources are in a state of flux, we believe in and support the program's mission. From previous reports you have seen that because of our shrinking personnel resources the number of our catalogers participating in BIBCO has been decreasing. This past year we have contributed a total of 472 full level records. A significant number of these were contributed by Diane Ward, the Principal Cataloger for our world renowned Poetry Collection, whose expertise is 20th and 21st century English language poetry. On a much smaller scale I continue to contribute original records in English and Romance languages and on enhancing existing copy and vendor records on a variety of topics. We are hopeful that in 2008/2009 we will see increased personnel resources and with it an increase in our institution's contributions to this most important cooperative program. Submitted by Serafino Porcari

Texas A&M University

The Cataloging Unit at Texas A&M University has undergone many changes during this past year, but we are glad to report that our commitment to the BIBCO program continues. The library's preference for full-level BIBCO records persists; however, this past year showed an increase in both the number and percentage of core-level records. They totaled 184, a 49% increase over the previous year, and represent 22% of our total BIBCO production (as compared to the previous year's figure of 10%). Our full-level record count stood at 664, which is a 23% decrease from 2006-2007. Our overall BIBCO production of 848 titles shows an 11% decrease from the preceding year.

Numerous changes in personnel and priorities occurred this year: one cataloger started contributing BIBCO records, while another was on sabbatical for the year; and three new catalogers joined the department, involving many of us in training. Additionally, our library is currently searching for a new Head of Cataloging.

New initiatives undertaken by the department this year include the following: (1) We have joined the ECIP program, cataloging titles issued by the Texas A&M University Press and affiliated publishers (our production so far is approximately 35 records). (2) Upon request from the Cushing Library, our repository of rare and special collections, both original and copy catalogers have been more assertively cataloging these materials.

We are pleased to report that our library supports the Program for Cooperative Cataloging in all of its components (NACO, including series; SACO; BIBCO; and CONSER). Submitted by Jon Marner

Tulane University

At Tulane University's Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, recovery has continued to be a priority two to three years after Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of our basement. Cataloguing librarians have been participating in the intensive recovery project to reinstate restored books and in the identification and selection of replacement materials.

In addition, other factors have limited our BIBCO contributions this year. We currently have two cataloguing librarians in training, so most of the principal cataloguer's time and part of another librarian's time have been dedicated to that training. Support staff turnover also placed additional demands on librarians. As was the case last year, collecting priorities continue to generate increasing amounts of pressing cataloguing of nonprint materials, for which we do not yet have OCLC Enhance status. Decisions about our Enhance participation await the arrival of a new Head of Cataloging (currently a vacant position).

As of 31 August 2008, we had contributed 192 BIBCO records for the fiscal year, both original cataloguing and upgraded OCLC copy. This figure represents a slight increase from our contributions at the same point last fiscal year. Submitted by Rebecca Malek-Wiley

United States Government Printing Office

During Fiscal Year 2008 the Government Printing Office increased its BIBCO output from the previous year. This year's total was a large increase from last year's total as GPO had a GPRA (Government Performance and Results Act) goal to increase cataloging output. In addition, GPO added a total 415 NACO records; 352 NACO records were new and 63 existing NACO records were updated. Thirty-four new SACO records were created, and 3 SACO records were updated. GPO created 20 new series and updated 6 series. GPO sent added two new catalogers to the staff this year. GPO also sent three catalogers to LC's NACO training this September. Submitted by Jennifer K. Davis

University of California, Berkeley

Berkeley currently has 11.0 FTE monographic original catalogers, 7.0 of whom are contributing to BIBCO. Catalogers have contributed records in most Western European languages, as well as, Hebrew, Arabic and Persian. During the period October 2007 through August 2008 we contributed a total of 292 full records to BIBCO. The last two years the Technical Services Department has undergone a review with an outside consultant and spent the bulk of last year implementing many of the changes. One of the The Original Cataloging Division of Technical Services at the University of California, recommendations coming from the report was the hiring of a new Head of Serials Cataloging position. In January 2008 Lisa Rowlison-Ortiz was hired for this position. The serial and document catalogers were merged into the Division in September 2007. We have a total of 5.0 FTE serials/documents catalogers. Of these, three are original catalogers. All catalogers in the Unit began participating in the UC CONSER Funnel in May 2008.

Another recommendation coming from the Technical Services Review was the creation of a new Data Control Unit and the hiring of both a head of the Unit and an assistant (two new positions to the Department). In January we hired Dana Jemison as the new head and in March Steve Lafollette joined the Unit as Dana's assistant. The Unit is responsible for the wide variety of maintenance coming into the Department.

Another major change coming from the review was the shifting of the original catalogers from the back end of the cataloging process to the front end. They can now prioritize and make decisions on what required a full MARC record and need to be cataloged first. Those items that are not handled by the original cataloger then go to the copy catalogers who have the option of creating brief records which later will be upgraded via OCLC's Bibliographic Notification Service. This new work flow has allowed us to keep current and start handling our very large backlogs.

We appreciate the chance to participate in the Program. Our participation has enhanced Berkeley's cataloging quality, has brought our catalogers closer together, and broadened our goals in making us feel closer to being on a "national team". Submitted by Armanda Barone

University of California, Los Angeles

UCLA's BIBCO statistics have dramatically increased by 76% to 1710 (from last year's 1310). This increase is particularly notable in light of several vacant positions in the Monographic Cataloging Section during the past fiscal year. In November 2007 Nora Avetyan received a permanent appointment as Persian & Armenian Cataloger. In June 2008 Iman Dagher arrived in our department as Arabic Cataloger. We look forward to additional BIBCO and NACO contributions from our new catalogers. Due to an increased workload of both traditional material and non-MARC project work, as well as a decrease in the overall Library budget, last year's department goal to contribute at least 70% of the new original-title cataloging to BIBCO had to be adjusted to 50%. We look forward to continued strong contributions to the BIBCO and NACO programs during the upcoming fiscal year.

During the past fiscal year we have received Regular Enhance Status for cataloging Music Scores in OCLC. We then applied for and received National Enhance so that we can do BIBCO level cataloging for these materials. We also have submitted to OCLC an application for Regular Enhance Status for cataloging Sound Recordings. We have requested National Enhance Status for those as well. Our Music Cataloger has joined the NACO Music Funnel and has started contributing records. Submitted by Caroline Miller

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is still laboring under a shortage of professional catalogers and so our BIBCO production was lower than expected. We are hoping to return to a somewhat higher level of productivity in the coming fiscal year. Submitted by Pat Williams

University of Colorado, Boulder

During FY2008, BIBCO contributions from the University of Colorado at Boulder (CoU) totaled more than 1200 titles, a significant increase in the number of our contributions in the past few years. The appointment of new catalogers and changing duties of other catalogers resulted in the higher total. All of our contributions were at the full level and included both original records and enhanced less-than-full and vendor records in OCLC. Many of the materials cataloged were non-English language books from our current workflow and older backlogs. Catalogers working on several collections in our Special Collections Department contributed a number of BIBCO records. One of those collections provided the opportunity to submit SACO proposals for geographic names for mountains. Plans for the next fiscal year include in-house NACO training. Our commitment to the BIBCO program remains strong and we look forward to continued productivity in the coming year. Submitted by Windy Lundy

University of Dayton

The University of Dayton continued its participation in the BIBCO program during FY 2008. A new cataloging staff member was hired and trained in BIBCO and NACO production. The University Libraries' faculty and staff continue to be actively involved in the strategic planning of OhioLINK, the Ohio academic libraries' consortium. It is possible that changes made at the statewide consortial level could impact local BIBCO/NACO participation. Submitted by Emily Hicks

University of Florida

Our BIBCO contributions FY08 totaled 869. In fy07 we contributed 944 BIBCO records, a decrease of 75 or 8%. Of the FY08 total records contributed 673 or 77% were FULL (includes original and enhance) and 196 or 23% were CORE (includes original and CORE). From the beginning of our BIBCO participation, original BIBCO FULL has been by far our strength over original and ENHANCE CORE. In FY08 we continued to be consistently strong in the original/FULL category. After setting BIBCO as the default for creating original records last year, I'd hoped to see a slight increase in FY08 totals. That didn't happen for us last year but I'm not surprised. Our decrease in total records contributed as BIBCO could simply be attributed to the availability of incoming cataloging projects appropriate to catalog BIBCO.

In July of this year, we used the PCC's BIBCO Training material to conduct a BIBCO review session for our catalogers. We reviewed the BIBCO principles, concepts and parameters and worked with examples of BIBCO records, both full and core. The BIBCO examples provided for our use in the BIBCO Participant's Manual, along with examples from the training material were very useful. One of our Catalog Librarians commented that the examples would be even more helpful if the "before" and "after" BIBCO examples included the fixed field coding that identifies a record as BIBCO. Overall, and most importantly, my aim was to try to get catalogers in a BIBCO competent comfort zone where making a judgment call to create an original or enhance BIBCO record based on the amount of time needed to create or adjust the record to BIBCO standards would become routine.

In FY09 we will become a partner in LC's Electronic Cataloging in Publication Program (ECIP). Joining the program will help us reach our goal to increase our BIBCO contributions in FY09 by 10%. Hopefully, my commitment to in-house BIBCO review for any new BIBCO contributor will be enough to encourage some of our non-BIBCO catalogers to contribute cataloging records as BIBCO, resulting in broader participation among our subject team original catalogers. Submitted by Priscilla Williams

University of Hawaii, Manoa

Through the first 11 months of FY2008, The University of Hawaii at Manoa has contributed 242 full-level BIBCO records. 144 of these were for English-language books and textual electronic resources, 79 for Japanese-language books, 14 for Chinese-language books, and 5 for French-language books. We expect to maintain or exceed these numbers in FY2009. Submitted by Michael A. Chopey

University of Maryland

The number of PCC records we contributed appears about the same as last year - somewhere around 600 records. We had some positive developments in FY08 in terms of staff training, involvement, and direct contributions to the national programs:

  1. In October of 2007, Alice LaSota, our music cataloger, attended the ALCTS/PCC workshop for series authority trainers, called Fundamentals of Series Training.
  2. Last January, Kathy Glennan, also a music cataloger, achieved independence for contributing name and series authority records to the NACO Music Project.
  3. Our AV cataloger, Richard Leigh, contributed over 230 name authority records while under revision within NACO AV funnel.
  4. In spring of 2008, Ken Tanaka, our Japanese cataloger, began to contribute BIBCO records, which had a healthy impact on our overall contributions.
  5. Our Hebrew cataloger, Jasmin Nof, is well on her way toward becoming a very productive PCC contributor: she attended a series authority workshop at the Library of Congress last April and was recently encouraged to begin her BIBCO review process. We hope to see the results of that training in the next fiscal year.
  6. Gordana Ruth participated in the work of the PCC Ad Hoc Series Review Task Force and accepted the offer to serve as a member of the BIBCO Operations Committee through September of 2009.

Submitted by Gordana Ruth

University of New Mexico

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Three years beyond a migration to a new system, UNC's staff are now in the process of a reorganization of the Technical Services division, moving some catalogers out of the Catalog Department and moving them into Monographic Services (formerly Acquisitions) to create a FastCat work flow and some into a new department, E-Resources and Serials Management. Staff were also impacted by the loss of Kristin Martin, e-resources cataloger, who took another job, and Frieda Rosenberg, who retired after 28 years of service. However, the staff greeted a new cataloger, Thuy-Anh Dang, Media Resources Cataloger, and have created a new position for a Metadata Librarian. Documenting the American South's Oral History project continued to provide an area where catalogers could create PCC records. Electronic resources continued to create an area for CORE BIBCO records. The early surge of BIBCO statistics dropped as staff changes and reorganization issues required the staff's attention. Submitted by Wanda Gunther

University of Oregon:

The University of Pennsylvania

We experienced a reasonably smooth transition from OCLC to RLIN, followed by Enhance training. We are still figuring out work-flow issues-- kinds of work we do via OCLC, kinds we do via Voyager. Otherwise, the year has been quiet. Submitted by Jean E. Craig

University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin contributed just over 1,500 BIBCO records during 2007/2008 which is a historical high for us. This figure represents an almost 100% increase over the previous year and includes estimated values for August and September. This level of productivity was accomplished despite the retirements of three senior catalogers and demonstrates the continued interest across our cataloging staff in performing BIBCO-level cataloging. All of our contributed records were full-level.

Much of our production increase is a result of a significant activity from our Middle Eastern Program team who catalog Arabic and Persian languages principally. We continue to focus on our contributions of Latin American monographs and National Level Enhance records. We look forward to another productive year. Submitted by Tim Strawn

University of Washington

The University of Washington continued its participation in all PCC programs and continues to be one of the biggest contributors to the SACO program. In 2008 the UW Libraries received OCLC enhance status for scores, and intends to also apply for enhance for sound recordings. Cataloging of music materials was centralized in Monographic Services. The Music Library Listening Center no longer does its own cataloging for most of its materials (the exception is locally created recordings from the Music School). At some point in the future, we also expect to join the NACO Music project.

Adam Schiff, Principal Cataloger, was appointed to the BIBCO Operations Committee and attended its meeting at the Library of Congress in May 2008. Adam has continued to focus much of his time on RDA as the Chair of the RDA Examples Group 2. Much of the summer of 2008 was spent finalizing examples for RDA and getting them input in the online authoring system in time for the fall 2008 release of the complete draft of RDA. Adam is also serving on a joint PCC-LC task group to consider the Library of Congress Rule Interpretations and their relevance for RDA.

A new manuscripts/special collections materials cataloger began work in summer 2008. She will need NACO and BIBCO training. We also expect to hire a new international studies media cataloger late in 2008. Submitted by Adam L. Schiff

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Our BIBCO workflow has been the same, with the addition of series authorities records following our training. Submitted by Victor F. Gorodinsky

Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt continued to participate in all PCC programs and, in addition, to support the PCC by supplying a NACO trainer and reviewer. Contributions to NACO remained high but did feel the affect of the catalogers spending more time on metadata projects. Purchases of monographs noticably slowed, sometimes replaced by electronic book purchases with supplied bibliographic records. BIBCO contributions remained small, with most being upgraded vendor records or member copy that needed corrections. We also used our national enhance authorization for other corrections that do not show in our statistics. However, much of our cataloging was for films or other formats that we cannot enhance. Metadata projects, such as the Vanderbilt University webcasts and electronic archives took up much more time of the catalogers this year. It is unlikely that trend will reverse.

We are committed to continue to support the efforts of the PCC as long as our administration remains supportive of our doing so. We will continue to create new PCC level records and new authority records as needed to contribute our small part to make up for the decrease of records coming from the Library of Congress. Submitted by Mary Charles Lasater

Yale University

Yale's contributions rose by almost 60% this year thanks again to our new emphasis on core record creation. Last year's hopes for cartographic contributions did not bear fruit and we are again searching for a map cataloger. BIBCO participation remains popular here and new catalogers are always eager to begin contributing. Our goal for next year is 3000. Submitted by Robert Killheffer

Total BIBCO contributions by library
Library FY08 FY07
1. Arizona State University 411 1,043
2. Brigham Young University 2,691 1,654
3. Center for Research Library 374 460
4. Cleveland Public Library 13 42
5. Columbia University 5,734 4,372
6. Cornell University 3,965 3,998
7. Duke University 1,124 1,377
8. Eastman School of Music 83 21
9. Harvard University 1,453 1,151
10. Harvard-Yenching Library 157 107
11. Indiana University 6,288 4,644
12. Indiana University School of Law, Indianapolis 404 318
13. Joint Forces Staff College 1,092 1,311
14. National Library of Agriculture 620 447
15. National Library of Medicine 6,357 6,070
16. New York University 202 238
17. New York University, School of Law 477 282
18. Northwestern University 2,111 1,580
19. Oberlin College 539 276
20. Ohio State University 525 689
21. Oklahoma State 373 402
22. Princeton University 4,915 3,282
23. Queens Borough Public Library 410 225
24. Saint Louis University School of Law 90 73
25. Smithsonian Institution Libraries 159 143
26. Stanford University 6,581 6,391
27. State University of New York at Buffalo 489 432
28. Texas A&M University 906 976
29. Tulane University 181 162
30. United States Government Printing Office 4,960 4,932
31. University of California, Berkeley 103 42
32. University of California, Los Angeles 1,710 1,179
33. University of Chicago 6,367 7,342
34. University of Colorado, Boulder 1,350 247
35. University of Dayton 367 300
36. University of Florida 869 827
37. University of Hawaii, Manoa 273 73
38. University of Maryland 576 531
39. University of New Mexico 0 0
40. University of North Carolina 809 800
41. University of Oregon 0 12
42. University of Pennsylvania 1,309 1,124
43. University of Texas, Austin 1,511 788
44. University of Washington 1,932 1,971
45. University of Wisconsin-Madison 3,142 2,181
46. Vanderbilt University 228 143
47. Yale University 2,702 1,238
Grand Total 76,572 65,939

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  November 19, 2008
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