PCC ANNUAL REPORT

Fiscal Year 2001

Under successive chairs Marjorie Bloss (Center for Research Libraries) and Larry Alford (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), the Program for Cooperative Cataloging the past fiscal year saw a welcome expansion of PCC-related activities in new areas of the globe as well as a deepening of participation within current member institutions.

NACO membership now stretches from the United States and Canada to the United Kingdom; from South Africa and Hong Kong to New Zealand; from Mexico to Argentina and Brazil. There is evidence of a new interest in SACO participation from areas that had previously thought of the PCC as a NACO-centered organization; SACO proposals were received from as far away as Botswana and Singapore, and an LCSH workshop conducted somewhat closer, in Italy.

BIBCO

In FY01 BIBCO libraries contributed 73,115 new bibliographic records, this is an 11% increase over FY00 and reflects an increase of 1% in core record contribution. This year BIBCO partners reported many staffing fluctuations and reorganizations; nonetheless, 23 libraries exceeded their estimated, and in some cases, previous contribution levels. There are currently a total of 43 BIBCO libraries that over the life of the program have created a total of 199,215 full level program records and a total of 87,558 core records for a grand total of 286,773 contributed to the pool of shared cataloging available for use by the global library community. One new library New York University Law Library joined the program in FY01. Duke University and the State University of New York--Buffalo libraries are scheduled for training in the first half of FY02.

This year's BIBCO Operations Committee (OpCo) focused on identifying how and what types of metadata materials are being processed in BIBCO and CONSER institutions; a discussion of the impending approval of the MARC format encoding level "i" for integrating resources and its impact on BIBCO and CONSER cataloging; and a decision to seek approval for extended terms for the BIBCO OpCo members from the current 2 year term to a 3 year staggered term. Another major activity of the OpCo was to provide input and review to the draft BIBCO Participants' Manual which is being edited under the auspices of the Standing Committee on Training.

Both BIBCO-At-Large meetings continued to be well attended. The meeting held at ALA Midwinter conference consisted of a brainstorming session led by Jennifer Bowen (Sibley Music Library, Eastman School of Music) to develop a utility wish list of desired database enhancements. At the summer ALA conference the BIBCO-At-Large meeting focused on the Final report of the BIBCO Core Record Study conducted by David Banush (Cornell University). The report's recommendations for the future direction of the BIBCO Program and its marketing will be presented to the PoCo at their November 2001 meeting for consideration.

Major accomplishments of the BIBCO Program in FY01 include:

1. An FAQ on LC classification for BIBCO Libraries was posted to the BIBCO home page
   
2. A web-based notification form was posted to the BIBCO home to report that a PCC record is available in the utilities for "in-process" items held by LC
   
3. The Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of AACR accepted the recommendation of the BIBCO Working Group on Series Numbering to change the wording in Appendix B of AACR2 to allow for more efficiency in series tracing with regard to numbering and an LCRI for early implementation of this rule has been implemented.

CONSER

During 2000/2001, CONSER and its affiliate programs continued to grow and flourish. Two new members joined, the University of Chicago as a full member and New York University as an associate member. Libraries continued to participate in the Publication Patterns Initiative and a new course was added to the Serials Cooperative Cataloging Training Program. CONSER began to document practices based on the new rule revisions of AACR2 Chapter 12.

The CONSER Operations Committee annual meeting was held May 2-4, 2001 at the Library of Congress and included a day devoted to new member orientation.

CONSER-At-Large meetings were held at both mid-winter and annual ALA. The CONSER-At-Large mid-winter meeting (held January 14, 2001) featured a "visioning" exercise which pointed out organizational strengths, weaknesses, and future challenges and provided useful input for strategic and operational planning. Consult the Summary of the Meeting for further details.
Jean Hirons continued as CONSER Coordinator. During the fiscal year Carroll Davis was detailed to the CONSER Specialist position at the Library of Congress, and subsequently replaced by Les Hawkins, who was appointed in March.

AACR2, MARBI, and Integrating Resources

The Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of AACR (JSC) gave basic approval to the revised chapter 12 of AACR2 at their April 2001 meeting. Publication of the final version is expected in 2002. In July, Jean Hirons began working with a group of LC staff to revise the CONSER Cataloging Manual and other documentation to incorporate changes from the revised chapter 12. CONSER was one of the sources of two approved MARBI Proposals that relate to the implementation of the revision.

CONSER members participated on the Task Group on Implementation of Integrating Resources whose Interim Report focuses on the needs for training, documentation, maintenance of records, and the distribution of records associated with implementation of the new rules.

Electronic Resources

Update 11 (Fall 2000) to the CONSER Cataloging Manual included a revision of Module 31 "Remote access computer file serials" by the CONSER "E-serial Specialists." Guidelines for treating serial titles that are covered in more than one journal aggregator package were documented. Guidance on selecting which and how many URLs to record in 856 fields was included, as was information on general maintenance of 856 fields. CONSER members participated on the PCC Task Force on Multiple Manifestations of Electronic Resources. The Task Force issued its Final Report in April 2001. As a result of the report, the PCC is providing a clearinghouse of aggregator record sets available from vendors and other sources.

Publication Pattern Initiative

CONSER and non-CONSER participants in the Publication Pattern Initiative added and modified more than 2700 patterns during the year. On February 27, 2001, OCLC loaded publication pattern and related holdings data from Harvard to 39,491 CONSER records. Other milestones this year included the development of the Guidelines for Input of Captions/Patterns and Holdings Data by Frieda Rosenberg (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) with the help of Ellen Rappaport (Albany Law School), Ruth Haas (Harvard), and Diane Hillmann (Cornell).

Linda Miller (LC) led a group that completed a survey of vendors, produced a number of MARC discussion papers related to the MARC 21 Holdings format, and organized an ALA preconference held in June on use of the format.

Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program

During the year 42 workshops sponsored by the Serials Cataloging Cooperative Training Program were given throughout North America. The Serials Holdings Workshop, developed by Frieda Rosenberg and Thom Saudargas, was made available in early 2001. Twenty-nine trainers were introduced to it at a train-the-trainer session given at LC in January 2001.

Work on two new courses began during the year. The Advanced Serials Cataloging Workshop is being developed by Kristan Lindlan (University of Washington) and Meg Mering (University of Nebraska). The Electronic Serials Cataloging Workshop is being developed by Steve Shadle (University of Washington) and Les Hawkins (LC). The courses are timed to be available with the publication of the revised AACR2 in mid 2002.

NACO

A total of 53 libraries received NACO training: 42 new PCC members and 11 libraries receiving expansion training, resulting in training for 175 catalogers. Five libraries gained independence in personal names, while 13 libraries achieved full independence. Seven libraries were declared independent for series.

NACO participants contributed 143,031 new name authority records, and 9410 new series authority records, and modified 40,621 name and series authority records for an 11% increase in activity.

CJK participants assisted in the manual review of about 8400 undifferentiated personal names records from the LC Pinyin conversion. These name authority records presented a special problem as they reflected an authority situation too complicated to be handled by machine conversion.

Two new funnels were created, the Ohio NACO funnel and the Connecticut Project, to join the eight already active. Funnel activity has been remarkable this year, with 29 new member libraries joining an 47 additional catalogers from current member institutions already participating.

A considerable amount of time was devoted to ameliorating documentation for NACO training. The NACO Participant's Manual, 3rd edition, was revised and readied for publication.

SACO

During fiscal 2001, SACO participants sent 2630 proposals (including changes and classification numbers) for subject review to the Cooperative Cataloging Team; 2168 of these were sent forward to the Policy Office. By the end of the fiscal year, 2603 subject headings; 388 subject changes; 2043 new classification numbers and 92 classification changes were added to LCSH and LCC.

The first edition of the SACO Participant's Manual was published, in electronic and hard copy formats. The establishment of the SACOlist opened communication channels to its participants.

The African American Subject Funnel Project (AASFP) made strong progress in expanding its membership. Funnel membership increased to 13 institutions.

To increase the quality and quantity of subject proposals, SACO workshops, presentations, and multi-day seminars for over 200 catalogers were conducted at a variety of venues in the U.S. and abroad: ALA conferences, at the Library of Congress, at PALINET, at the CORMOSEA meetings, at CEAL, and in Florence, Italy.

PCC STANDING COMMITTEES

Standing Committee on Automation (SCA)

In FY01, the SC on Automation, under leadership of Karen Calhoun (Cornell) saw several task groups complete their work, including OCLC's Batch loading Task Group (also chaired by Calhoun). This TG was a reconstituted group that re-examined the OCLC batch loading process with a view to maximizing the work of BIBCO participants. The Final Report and recommendation was approved by PoCo and the recommendations sent forward to OCLC for disposition.

The Task Group on Automated Classification (chaired by Gray Strawn, Northwestern) also completed its charge and submitted its Final Report and proposals to the PoCo for further action. This TG sought to encourage software vendors to enhance their products to assist with the generation of classification and call numbers.

Another reconstituted TG, the 2nd Task Group on Journals in Aggregator Databases (chaired by John Reimer, UCLA) submitted its Final report.

All reports of the SCA activities and associated task groups are available on the Program for Cooperative Cataloging on Automation Home Page.

Standing Committee on Standards (SCS)

The SC on Standards agreed to synthesize survey Models A & B (the former on core original cataloging, the latter on core copy cataloging) and go forward with data gathering under survey Model C (effectiveness of core records for users). The final report entitled "User Perspectives on the PCC BIBCO core record standard" was submitted to the SCS in late September and will be discussed at the November PoCo meeting. SC on Standards chair, Ann Caldwell, developed a charge and a list of potential members for a task group to assimilate AACR2 revisions for integrating resources into the PCC and drafted a charge for a new task group that examined the relationship between the local authority file and the national/international authority file. For a full report of the SCS' activities and associated task groups, consult the Program for Cooperative Cataloging on Standards Home Page.

Standing Committee on Training (SCT)

The SC on Training, chaired by Carol Hixson, looked at continuing education from all areas of the PCC, revisited the Web Based Training Task Group charge and made changes to its membership. The SCT is also revising a draft of the BIBCO Participants Manual. Members of the SCT collaborated with members of CONSER on the Task Group on Implementation of Integrating Resources and have subsequently submitted their final report. For a full report of the SCT activities consult the Program for Cooperative Cataloging Standing Committee on Training Home Page.

Complete annual reports for each program are available on their respective web sites.