PCC BIBCO-at-Large—Summary
ALA Midwinter, Seattle
Sunday January 21, 2007
The BIBCO-at-Large group began their meeting immediately following the
CONSER-at-Large session in this same room. It's a convenience so that the
reporters from OCLC and the PCC Standing Committees serve the needs of both
BIBCO and CONSER attendees simultaneously. The sign-in sheets held 53 names.
Update from the ALCTS Task-Force on Non-English Access
Rebecca Mugridge (Penn State U), PCC Chair-elect attended a meeting on
January 20, representing the PCC. The Task Force’s report includes nine
recommendations. The audience at the Saturday morning meeting had given
comments and had asked about the need for the Task Force’s work. The TF
offered many reasons. Ann Della Porta (LC) reported to the TF about LC's
policy of using 4xx and 7xx fields for nonroman scripts rather than 880
fields. Della Porta was scheduled to report also to ACIG on Sunday
afternoon. The ALCTS TF will sift through comments on their report,
correct factual errors, publish the revised version, and appoint additional
task forces to continue development on each issue.
OCLC Update, Glenn Patton (OCLC)
The OCLC Update Presentation offers a more complete
treatment of the issues summarized below.
Integrating the RLG Union Catalog
OCLC has begun the process of merging the RLG Union Catalog into WorldCat.
The RUC is a clustered database and the first stage of the merging is to
process the primary cluster records against WorldCat. New records are added
if no match is found. Some WorldCat records may be replaced if the incoming
record has non-roman script, data too valuable to lose. By January 21, 2007,
about 18 million of the 50 million primary cluster member records had been
processed in 10 days of loading. OCLC will add holdings data and
Institution Records (representing individual institutions' versions of those
records) later in the spring.
Authority history
OCLC has made available a new feature, the Authority History functionality,
allowing searchers to view superseded versions of records for LC name and
subject authorities. It became available in the Connexion browser in
November and in the client version 1.70 in early December. To support this
functionality, OCLC has merged its existing history file (dating from 2001)
with RLG's much more comprehensive one (dating back to the mid-1980s) to
make a complete file.
Upcoming Connexion enhancements
Look for Institution Records, SCIPIO, and authority generation
via Z39.50 in Connexion 2.0, scheduled for June 2007
Transitioning NACO activity
Patton called to mind the refrain often sung by his colleague
Ed Glazier, encouraging NACO contributors with Authority records in the RLG
save file to contribute them soon, because they won't go anywhere when the
RLG database is integrated fully into WorldCat. There are several hundred
in the file, perhaps even more than a thousand languishing in the save
file. NACO users will need OCLC NACO authorizations
Transitioning BIBCO activity
BIBCO activity will require transition from RLG to OCLC as well.
BIBCO members using RLG will be required to apply to OCLC for National Level
Enhance status. This step has been helpful to orient newcomers to the
WorldCat/Connexion cataloging environment. OCLC will expedite the review
process for new National Level Enhance participants. If BIBCO members plan
to batchload their PCC bib records (a practice more common among RLG than
OCLC BIBCO institutions), they should discuss it with their OCLC
batchloading contact.
The group posed questions for Patton:
Q: How does OCLC handle OCLC/RLG duplicates?
A: OCLC has made significant enhancements to matching algorithms
but no automated process is perfect so some duplicates may result.
Q: Is the Authority History feature available for series?
A: Yes
Q: What is the estimated time for loading the remaining RLG
records into WorldCat?
A: OCLC hopes to load all by the end of March 2007.
Q: Is there a plan to map of institutional symbols and codes as
records migrate to WorldCat from RLG?
A: RLG Library Identifiers have been mapped to OCLC symbols
(with the help of the libraries involved if necessary). RLIN record IDs
will be retained when institution records are created.
PCC Standing Committee on Automation--Gary Charbonneau (Indiana)
(taken directly from the SCA 4th quarter 2006 report)
The Monographic Aggregator Task Group has submitted its
MARC Record Guide for Monograph
Aggregator Vendors based on comments received on the draft
version, which had been previously posted to the PCC web site. The task
group, consisting of chair Kate Harcourt (Columbia), Becky Culbertson (UC
San Diego) and Kit Herlihy (California State San Marcos), is now ready to
be discharged with thanks. However, Kate and Becky will be performing one
additional service, and that is to make a brief presentation on the guide
to the ALCTS Publisher-Vendor-Library Relations Open Forum in Seattle.
The Task Group on Normalization has submitted the final version of its
report, entitled Authority File Comparison Rules. This task group is also
ready to be discharged with thanks. Task group members are: Gary Strawn
(Northwestern University), chair; Tatiana Barr (University of Florida);
Robert Bremer (OCLC), Larry Dixson (Library of Congress); Helen Gbala; and
Ed Glazier.
As both of its active task groups have now completed their work and as
the committee has received no additional assignments from PCC, the committee
will not meet at Midwinter in Seattle.
PCC Standing Committee on Training--Caroline Miller (UCLA)
The online course "Introduction to SACO" being prepared by John Mitchell
(LC) is slated for completion by June 2007.
A few additional revisions will be added to the SACO Participants’
Manual. It will be published online in the near future, and will not
be a print publication.
The TG developing the ALCTS/PCC "Fundamentals of LC Classification"
course did a run-through on Friday, and thanked the University of Washington
for hosting the session. They will analyze the results on evaluations to
revise the course materials.
The TG developing the ALCTS/PCC "Fundamentals of Series" course met on
Friday as well. Both groups will lead ALCTS-sponsored preconferences at ALA
Annual in Washington, DC.
In late October 2007, members of each TG will lead an Instructor
Development Seminar (IDS) to equip those who will volunteer as trainers for
future sessions. Prospective trainers will be encouraged to attend the
preconference as part of the preparation to conduct classroom instruction.
These courses are designed for any library staff interested in the topic,
and neither the training sessions nor the instructor positions are limited
to PCC partner libraries.
The Continuing Education Training Materials group (CETM) is charged with
monitoring the non-PCC training manuals and assembling groups to update
courses as needed. Two such groups are active now, updating the "LCSH" and
the "Rules & Tools" training manuals.
Standing Committee on Standards—Mechael Charbonneau (Indiana), PCC
Chair
The PoCo and the PCC Steering Committee considered recommendations of
the previous SCS chair 1) to look at the committee’s charge, and 2) to look
for representation from various areas of the library community. Although
no chair has been named, Mecheal Charbonneau has appointed Peter Fletcher
(Tulane) as the CC:DA liaison from the SCS. Charbonneau met with continuing
and new members of the SCS at ALA MW to identify priorities. The immediate
needs are:
- to review the SCS charge and recommend needed changes
- to draft a charge for a Series Task Group (Mechael will contact
volunteers).
Displays for Records with Vernacular and Romanized Scripts—Gary Strawn
(Northwestern), David Bucknum (LC), David Williamson (LC)
The goal is to develop tools to help catalogers and systems provide
improved displays for records with vernacular and Romanized scripts.
Specifically, they have been developing applications to work with Voyager
to:
- pair romanized and vernacular fields in bib records by reordering the
fields using a subfield $6
- read romanized fields in bib records and to provide paired fields in the
vernacular using a transliteration utility
- read the romanized headings in bib records, search and find the
authority, then add the vernacular form from the associated 880 as a
reference in the authority.
Gary Strawn's presentation demonstrated a new feature for the Cataloger's
Toolkit allowing users to switch back and forth between vernacular and
Romanized versions of bibliographic records or fields within a record. The
current version offers the choice of eight different languages.
Romanization tables run behind the scenes to make these changes possible.
Users can adapt the process to their own local needs.
David Bucknum (LC)--LC currently catalogs its nonroman serials in OCLC,
and its nonroman monographs in RLG. The problems with this approach are
that it requires catalogers to use more than one cataloging client, the bib
records must be imported daily into the local LC database, and the
bulk imports must be monitored for data integrity. Hence, LC is looking
for a more efficient method of cataloging records with nonroman characters
in the future, and plans to develop an application similar to Gary Strawn's
that automatically pairs fields and provides a transliteration utility. LC
also plans to develop additional language modules to meet its needs (e.g.,
HAPY). The application will allow LC to test both OCLC and Voyager to find
the best fit for LC's cataloging environment. Cataloging practice and policy
will need to be addressed before any such tool could be implemented fully.
There are differences in practices among teams at LC working with nonroman
scripts that must be resolved. LC plans to address the HAPY language records
first, and then examine the feasibility of working with the CJK languages.
David Williamson (LC)—Williamson concentrated his work on nonroman
characters in authorities. Since it’s possible to generate an authority
record from a bibliographic record, why not use this capability with
nonroman scripts? His presentation was a video showing a sequence of actions
happening in the system as the program worked its magic. It is a very quick
process for a machine to find a heading in a bib record and to add a
nonroman cross reference to an authority record. This program is just in
the work file of Voyager now, and it hasn't been applied to the reference
evaluation part of authority record generation yet. Although LC hasn't
decided yet if they will employ this tool, its success shows that automation
can help make cataloging of nonroman language materials more efficient.
David Williamson has tested this new tool on all JACKPHY languages. It is
just a prototype at this time. All of these tools give us a chance to
consider improvements and to partner with groups such as the Non-English
Access Group. Williamson's presentation is not included in this
BIBCO-at-large summary.
Q: When will this tool be available?
A: LC must decide on policies regarding the inclusion of
nonroman script in authority records. Then it would be possible to
populate records in the LC database.
Q: Is this available in Voyager:
A: Gary's toolkit is available in Voyager.
Q: Can the vernacular characters added to authority records be
indexed for retrieval?
A: Yes, the LC Voyager system can index for 4xx and 8xx 880s.
Two test records illustrate different treatments.
Q: Will an 880 field in a bib record become a 7xx field in an
authority record?
A: This is another policy issue to be determined before this new
tool can be implemented.
Q: More questions on this same theme: Does LC provide a 7xx field
for the provisional form of a heading and also for the simplified form of
the heading? Can the system allow two different 7xx headings for Cyrillic
names, since they can be represented in two different forms?
A: Yes, these are the issues.
Q: Aren’t there still problems with Unicode in Voyager?
A: Yes. Voyager uses Unicode values for sorting, and this is
not logical to Chinese characters. RLG has more instances of spaces
between characters than OCLC. Voyager's matching processes see the OCLC and
RLG representations of the same heading as two different strings.
Q: Could these new tools take the alternate forms of a heading
found in bib records created under different standards and put the variants
into the authority record instead of the bib record?
A: Work with authority records will be something for the future,
since the LC migration from RLG is a higher priority now.
Comment from the audience: There are different practices within different
language groups. One university in the PCC includes nonroman characters in
Cyrillic and Arabic records, (and possibly Hebraic), and wants to be able to
code them as BIBCO records. They would like the PCC to adopt a policy that
is more uniform across languages to enrich all records similarly.
Reply from the auduence: The PCC needs to consider these things. Once a
practice can be applied to authority records, can it be done in bib records
as well?
PCC/LC Coop activities--Carolyn Sturtevant (LC)
The BIBCO-At-Large presentation is
supplemented with the notes below.
LC's Acquisition and Bibliographic Access (ABA) Reorganization planning
continues, awaiting full administrative approval and funding in the LC
budget before any changes can be enacted. LC is among the government
agencies working under a continuing resolution this fiscal year so far. In
the reorganized ABA, the Cooperative Cataloging Team is likely to be grouped
with the current Instructional Design and Training Division (IDTD). The
newly formed units will have new names and leadership.
In the Library Services Strategic Plan that is being crafted, there is a
group assigned to focus on measuring effectiveness of services to publishers,
universities, and users. There is an emphasis on accountability, and on
gauging user satisfaction with products and services. The new performance
assessment rating tool will undoubtedly be applied to PCC programs when it
is adopted.
Staff change: Tricia Van Ryn has left the Coop Team because she will be
working in the new National AV Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA when it
opens. Veteran LC cataloger, Roberto Sicre, is on detail in Coop Team.
CDS has no additional staff since their recent numerous retirements, but we
learned that they may be able to increase their staff in the future. CPSO
staff may have changes in coming months.
The Library of Congress' Acquisitions and
Bibliographic Access (ABA) website has been redesigned and is found
using a new uniform resource locator.
· It is organized by topics of interest rather than by divisions or
offices in the Library of Congress organization chart
· It replaces the current Cataloging, Cataloging Policy and Support
Office, and Acquisitions web sites, and also includes links to cataloging
and acquisitions-related material on other Web sites maintained by the
Library.
· LC web developers welcome comments from users.
· PCC pages are in line to be refurbished, but we can't offer a
timeline. Select the link "Cooperative Programs" to access the PCC Web site
and its component programs NACO, SACO, BIBCO, and CONSER.
· The PCC Statistics page carries monthly reports allowing
contributors to monitor the number of records sent in each component program
· Selecting the link for "Products for Purchase" takes viewers to the
current CDS site, not yet redesigned.
· Choose either "General, Descriptive Cataloging" or "Subject Headings"
links that were formerly found on the CPSO Web site.
· Some searches may be redirected automatically to the new Cataloging
and Acquisitions home page; others may require users to change bookmarks.
The Coop Team will send more information as the transition continues.
Coop Staff did revisions to NACO training materials for OCLC libraries
this year. RLG materials were not revised. These issues will prompt
further revisions:
LCRI 26.1 4xx qualifiers for acronyms if needed to break conflicts
Migration from RLIN to OCLC for NACO contributions
Possible changes in DCM Z1 with regard to special treatment of some
libraries' NARs)
It's likely that the Coop Team will host a Train-the-NACO-Trainer
session at LC in Washington, DC this calendar year. Stay tuned for more
details.
CJK NACO Project
Dr. Shuyong Jiang (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) will
serve as Funnel Coordinator for this new group, assisted by Ms. Jiping Wu
(LC). In their Boston meeting in March, CEAL will have an introductory
session about the new CJK NACO Project. New
members may be recruited from libraries that did not choose to become
separate institutional members of the PCC. Veteran CJK contributors may
become involved in the professional activities of the CJK NACO project as
opportunities arise to develop documentation and contribute to policy decisions.
BIBCO:
We will seek volunteers to help with revisions to BIBCO materials:
BIBCO Participants' Manual
BIBCO Training Manual
Integrating Resources appendix needs revision for both BIBCO and
CONSER needs
- The chair of the Standing Committee on Training has suggested that BIBCO
and CONSER documentation be harmonized to decrease the number of practices
that are dissimilar
- Topics of non-English Access, multi-script records, and transliteration
will be addressed at other ALA meetings; LC has a "Unicode Group" looking at
a number of issues that are inter-related
- The treatment of non-roman scripts in authority and bibliographic records is
not always in synch; mechanics show possibilities, but policies must be
defined before new practices are adopted
PCC NACO Series
LC continues its support with documentation and training by Judy Kuhagen and
other LC and non-LC series trainers/reviewers; the Coop Team will host
sessions in mid-May at LC for members of NACO-independent institutions who
wish to contribute series records to the PCC databases and for those who
wish to serve as PCC Series trainers. Watch for announcements for both
events.
Training sessions at LC, 2007—
· We are checking the calendar for the best dates to host NACO
training at LC, and hope to offer a Train-the-PCC-NACO-Trainer session.
· May 15 Train-the-PCC-Series-Trainer at LC.
· May 16-18 is PCC Series Training
· October 30—IDS (Instructor Development Seminar) for Fundamentals
of LC Classification-—prospective trainers are encouraged to attend this
preconference at ALA Annual as a pre-requisite. Both the Fundamentals
course and the IDS are open to non-PCC participants as well as PCC
participants.
· October 31—IDS for Fundamentals of Series--prospective
trainers are encouraged to attend this preconference at ALA Annual as a
pre-requisite. Both the Fundamentals course and the IDS are
open to non-PCC participants as well as PCC participants.
SACO:
Adam Schiff will incorporate some suggested changes to the SACO
Participants' Manual draft, including LC Class Web proposal
instructions. The SPM will be issued electronically soon on the PCC site,
and will not be issued as a print publication.
John Mitchell, developer of the online course Introduction to SACO,
plans to complete work on the course by ALA Annual in Washington, DC. It is
intended to replace the workshops formerly offered at ALA by the PCC.
CLW Update
Two new courses will be offered at ALA Annual, 1) Fundamentals of LC
Classification, and 2) Fundamentals of Series. The Continuing
Education Training Materials committee (CETM) will monitor class material
for the 5 metadata/digital courses and the 4 ALCTS/PCC cataloging courses
among the CLW offerings. The LCSH and the Rules & Tools
courses are being revised.
Articles about PCC in TechKNOW
· Roger Miller (Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County)
wrote an article about becoming a NACO library, entitled:
"Developing Authority
Expertise: The NACO Experience at the Public Library of Cincinnati and
Hamilton County"
· Margaret Maurer (Kent State U), chair of Continuing Education
Training Materials (CETM) has followed Miller's article with another:
"The Program for Cooperative Cataloging’s Mysterious Alphabet Soup:
PCC, BIBCO, NACO, SACO, CONSER and SCCTP Unveiled.
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