BIBCO-At-Large Summary Report

The first BIBCO-At-Large meeting took place on Sunday, January 31st, 1999 from 11:30 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. at the Crowne Plaza City Center during the ALA Midwinter meeting in Philadelphia. Ana Cristán, Acting BIBCO Coordinator, facilitated the meeting which attracted an audience of more than thirty librarians.

The meeting focused on the timely processing of SACO subject heading and classification proposals. Other agenda items of practical concern included the monitoring of the quality of bibliographic records in a shared environment, maintaining BIBCO documentation, and the recruitment of additional BIBCO trainers.

Attendees brainstormed on methods for expediting SACO subject and classification proposals. Discussion centered on balancing the need for maintaining editorial consistency of classification and subject headings with the needs of local constituencies for timely approval of proposals. Despite BIBCO guidelines allowing participants to assign cutter numbers without regard to how LC might assign a cutter, concern was expressed about using numbers in a bibliographic record that had not yet been approved for addition to the LC classification schedules for all to use. For those libraries wanting to be "in sync" with the classification used at LC, Cristán explained that LC's implementation of the new ILS will provide participants with the opportunity to browse LC's shelflist online. It is expected that this capability will allow participants to send a cutter classification proposal knowing that the proposed number will not conflict with what is currently used at LC and that it will become the number printed in the LC classification schedules. Even a whole or decimal number proposal can be submitted with this very same confidence.

In the meanwhile, Ruta Penkiunas, Acting Coop Team Leader, offered to expedite class numbers not associated with accompanying subject proposals. Other suggestions to improve the turn-around time of proposals was adding sufficient 670 documentation to justify the proposed heading and the cross references. Unlike creating authority records for NACO, subject heading proposals may seldom contain only the 670 for the item in hand. Providing more SACO documentation in the BIBCO training material was also suggested and to that end, Kate Harcourt (Columbia University Library) will share information on Columbia's homepage about its in-house SACO procedures, whereby reciprocal links can be established to the SACO and BIBCO homepages.

A suggestion was also made to design a SACO Participant's Manual; Adam Schiff volunteered to work on a draft copy to be ready by the April 1999 Operations Committee Meeting. Other discussion included encouraging attendance at the SACO workshops, giving priority to SACO proposals submitted by BIBCO library participants and the mechanism for implementing that suggestion, giving advanced SACO training to those libraries contributing large numbers of proposals, and the possibility of having BIBCO trainers review subject proposals.

The issue of monitoring quality in a shared environment concentrated on the most expeditious means to correct or report errors in Program records. Given that OCLC's Enhance guidelines require that a library must own an item before making "enhancements" to the bibliographic record, it was suggested that a list of BIBCO contacts be posted on the BIBCO homepage. BIBCO liaisons can contact each other directly to address quality issues, and thereby avoid having to appoint a specific person or institution to be in charge of policing the database(s). Robert Bremer (OCLC) reminded participants that OCLC has a mechanism in place for submitting error reports from its membership. A member may simply send an email to bibchange@oclc.org or fill in the Bibliographic change report as found on the OCLC web site.

Cristán announced that a call for volunteers to expand the pool of BIBCO trainers would be issued soon and reminded the attendees to visit the BIBCO homepage frequently; documentation on the web is dynamic, with changes being made as new information is developed or updated. She also promised to follow up on the progress of these issues during the BIBCO Operations Committee at the annual meeting in April.