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Alejandro Garza Gonzalez | 3 Jul 17:31
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Short article comparing current metasearch interfaces

I realize this might be a tad off-topic but... I recently posted a short
comparative article on my blog about current metasearch interfaces, from
info gathered at ALA.

   http://stupendousamazing.blogspot.com/2007/06/metasearching-ala.html
--
_________________ ___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
*Ing. Alejandro Garza González*
Director, Tecnología e Innovación, Biblioteca
Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey

Tel.: 52(81) 8358-1400 ext. 4037 Fax: 52(81) 8328-4067
Enlace Intercampus: 80 689 4037
http://biblioteca.mty.itesm.mx

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o acuerdo, sino hasta que sea confirmado en documento por escrito que
contenga la firma autógrafa del apoderado legal del ITESM. El contenido
de este mensaje de datos es confidencial y se entiende dirigido y para
uso exclusivo del destinatario, por lo que no podrá distribuirse y/o
difundirse por ningún medio sin la previa autorización del emisor
original. Si usted no es el destinatario, se le prohíbe su utilización
total o parcial para cualquier fin.

The content of this data transmission must not be considered an offer,
proposal, understanding or agreement unless it is confirmed in a
document signed by a legal representative of ITESM. The content of this
data transmission is confidential and is intended to be delivered only
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disclosed through any means without the authorization of the original
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Martha deWaal | 4 Jul 09:27
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Interested in adding value to your subject headings? - Find out more at...

Apologies for cross-posting

Knowledge Transfer for the Future : a Post WLIC/IFLA 2007 Seminar 24
August 2007

Are you spending an extra day in Durban after the WLIC/IFLA 2007?
Don't know what to do?

Join the LIASA Interest Group for Bibliographic Standards and find out
more about RDA, FRBR, DDC, Metadata and subject headings projects.
Speakers and topics:
Joan Mitchell - Dewey Decimal Classification system
Dr Barbara Tillett - Resource description and access (RDA)
                         - Functional requirements for bibliographic
records (FRBR)
Pat Liebetrau - Metadata
Patrice Landry - Value-added subject headings projects

Date: 24 August 2007
Venue: ICC, Durban

Registration closing dates and costs
Regular: before 13 July 2007: R450,00
Late: before 3 August 2007: R600,00

Contact persons: Welna van Eeden (veedeiw <at> unisa.ac.za) or Nonnie van
Wyk (vwykac <at> unisa.ac.za)

Registration form available on the LIASA IGBIS website:
http://www.liasa.org.za/interest_groups/igbis.php
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Tom Keays | 6 Jul 21:10
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Code4Lib Journal call for submissions

Call for Submissions

The Code4Lib Journal (C4LJ) will provide a forum to foster community
and share information among those interested in the intersection of
libraries, technology, and the future.

Submissions are currently being accepted for the first issue of this
promising new journal. Please submit articles, abstracts, or proposals
for articles to c4lj-articles <at> googlegroups.com (a private list read
only by C4LJ editors) by Friday, August 31, 2007. Publication of the
first issue is planned for late December 2007.

Possible topics for articles include, but are not limited to:

* Practical applications of library technology. Both actual and
hypothetical applications invited.
* Technology projects (failed, successful, proposed, or in-progress),
how they were done, and challenges faced
* Case studies
* Best practices
* Reviews
* Comparisons of third party software or libraries
* Analyses of library metadata for use with technology
* Project management and communication within the library environment
* Assessment and user studies

Above all, C4LJ encourages creativity and flexibility, and the editors
welcome submissions across a broad variety of topics. Anything that
supports the mission of C4LJ is welcome.
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Ted P Gemberling | 10 Jul 00:24
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Calhoun at FoBC

Karen Calhoun's talk today at the Future of Bibliographic Control
symposium is available as a pdf, 

http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/meetings/LC_WG_Bibliographic_Con
trol_Briefing-Calhoun_1.pdf

and I wanted to throw out some questions about two passages. 

Budgets

"Pressure on technical services staffing budgets is occurring at the
same time as ARL materials expenditures continue undiminished. This is
an important point, because technical services staffing is declining
while the number of materials needing processing is not. Furthermore,
the manpower for processing physical resources (books, serials,
audiovisual materials) continues to demand a large share of technical
services' salaries and wages; ARL libraries continue to acquire tens of
thousands of printed books each year; and 85% of WorldCat is still books
(e-books account for less than 1% of this number). 

"My intuition suggests that some sort of tipping point is coming. The
large expenditures on e-resource aggregations (and the necessity of
making them accessible to users) have already had a dramatic impact on
the practice of serials librarianship, bringing new automated techniques
for record creation and maintenance and demanding new job descriptions,
skill sets and tools. The enormous wave of change that passed through
serials librarianship in the last ten years has not yet reached
monographs cataloging in any significant way, but I believe it will." 

What is Calhoun saying here? I doubt that she's suggesting libraries are
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Jonathan Rochkind | 10 Jul 00:31
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Re: Calhoun at FoBC

I'm curious to hear from a serials cataloger what the "enormous wave of
change that passed through serials librarianship in the last ten years"
is. Apparently it involved "bringing new automated techniques for record
creation and maintenance and demanding new job descriptions, skill sets
and tools," writes Calhoun.  So, I guess she's saying a similar thing is
going to happen with monographic cataloging, but we'd need to know what
happened with serials cataloging to know what she's saying exactly.

Jonathan

Ted P Gemberling wrote:
> Karen Calhoun's talk today at the Future of Bibliographic Control
> symposium is available as a pdf,
>
> http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/meetings/LC_WG_Bibliographic_Con
> trol_Briefing-Calhoun_1.pdf
>
> and I wanted to throw out some questions about two passages.
>
>
>
> Budgets
>
> "Pressure on technical services staffing budgets is occurring at the
> same time as ARL materials expenditures continue undiminished. This is
> an important point, because technical services staffing is declining
> while the number of materials needing processing is not. Furthermore,
> the manpower for processing physical resources (books, serials,
> audiovisual materials) continues to demand a large share of technical
> services' salaries and wages; ARL libraries continue to acquire tens of
(Continue reading)

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Erin Leach | 10 Jul 16:48
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Re: Calhoun at FoBC

Long time reader, first time commenter...

When I read this, I wonder if she's referring to the fact that
institutions can buy vendor-generated MARC records for electronic
serials.

I'm a serials cataloger and my institution just purchased
vendor-generated MARC records for our electronic serials holdings. Each
month we get a file with new records, records that have been changed,
and records to be deleted. These records have a generic note in the 856
field, where our holdings statement used to be, and a URL that
re-directs users to our A-Z list. The A-Z list is now where our holdings
information sits and where the URL to the resource is. Having these
records allows us to have individual records in our catalog for all of
the titles we have access to at any given time--including aggregator
databases. After each monthly record load, I do cleanup to our catalog.

These records have certainly provided a change in my job description. I
have moved from cataloging electronic serials and updating holdings
statements to doing cleanup after monthly record loads.

I suppose, if we assume that this is what Calhoun means, that catalogers
will move from creating and editing records in a global database of
shared records to doing database cleanup when purchased records are
added to their catalog. I'm not sure how this is revolutionary, though,
as libraries are already buying vendor-generated records for monographs.

Erin Leach
Catalog Librarian
Washington University in St. Louis
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Shana L. McDanold | 10 Jul 18:53

ALA ALCTS Serials Section announces a name change

[Please excuse cross postings]

The Section formerly known as Serials is now the Continuing Resources
Section.

The new name reflects trends in our profession, the materials that we
work with, and the digital information environment.

Do you subscribe to, license, organize, provide access to, or create
continuing resources?  Then come join us!

Here's our new Mission Statement:
* *
*ALCTS Continuing Resources Section*

*Mission:*  To contribute to library service and librarianship through
development of theory and practice concerning continuing resources in
all formats; to initiate and support studies, reports, discussions and
publications; to encourage specialized education programming, and
training for practitioners in the fields of continuing resources
management; and to coordinate the activities within the Association for
Library Collections & Technical Services and within the American Library
Association with respect to continuing resources in all formats.

Thanks!
--Shana

--
----------
Shana L. McDanold
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Charley Pennell | 10 Jul 22:12
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Re: Calhoun at FoBC

I would think that it might have something to do with issues like
licensing, "sliding windows" of holdings availability, the replication
of journal titles within multiple databases, the movement of various
iterations of full-text in and out of aggregator packages & databases,
synchronization of bib data, holdings, and/or URLs in multiple locations
(A-Z lists, e-records vs. print records in OPACs, SFX, ERMS, etc.),
authentication, proxying, and various other complicating matters.

While there are some parallels with serials (licensing, packages,
synchronization/maintenance, authentication) I don't see monographs ever
becoming as complicated to manage as journals. E-monographs are more
stable, don't tend to change title, get abridged or added to databases
(conference pubs notwithstanding), are not "continuing" (constantly
added to), and are more amenable to provision of subject access.  Many
of us have already been dealing with monograph file maintenance issues
for much longer than we have serials maintenance, what with major
microform sets, GPO SLS/SLM records, e-books, ETDs, superseded editions,
version control, and so on.  What more can they throw at us?

    Charley

Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> I'm curious to hear from a serials cataloger what the "enormous wave of
> change that passed through serials librarianship in the last ten years"
> is. Apparently it involved "bringing new automated techniques for record
> creation and maintenance and demanding new job descriptions, skill sets
> and tools," writes Calhoun.  So, I guess she's saying a similar thing is
> going to happen with monographic cataloging, but we'd need to know what
> happened with serials cataloging to know what she's saying exactly.
>
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Ted P Gemberling | 11 Jul 03:29
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Re: Calhoun at FoBC

Thanks for the responses. I guessed it was something like what Erin
described. Erin, what kind of cleanup do you do after the loads? Does
this mean having to accept a lower quality record than you would've had
otherwise? What have been the gains and losses from this arrangement?

I understand one problem with "cleanup" of such records is that if the
vendor, such as Serials Solutions, changes them in any way, your changes
will generally be lost. You can ask them for certain general kinds of
things, but you can't really "customize" individual records for the most
part.

As I think Charley suggested, though, the situation with monographs,
even e-books, doesn't seem to be very comparable. Since they're not
"continuing resources," after you acquire them, the records themselves
should be stable and open to any cleanup you need to do. Though it is
true, as with e-journals, that access to e-books is generally dependent
on an external vendor.

I worked in a library that bought monographic records from vendors for
e-books and microfiche titles. They did require quite a bit of
"cleanup": sometimes the original cataloger had done a pretty cursory
job of subject analysis. Subject headings were real generic, as if the
records had been done "on the fly."

Sometimes they completely misstated the subject content of titles. For
example, a number were microfiches of religious tracts belonging to the
Anti-Slavery Collection, held at Oberlin College. Some had nothing to do
with slavery, never mentioned it at all. They were on traditional
religious topics like the need for salvation. But the cataloger had put
"Slavery" on as the subject heading. Apparently, he wasn't sure what
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Erin Leach | 11 Jul 16:27
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Re: Calhoun at FoBC

Ted,

Most of the cleanup comes because we moved from a single record approach
to serials (print and online on the same record) to a dual record
approach (one record for print and one for electronic). When we did the
initial load of records, there were almost 10K records that had to be
cleaned up. Electronic records were suppressed in our catalog and
information relating to the electronic version was stripped out of
print+online records.

After each month's load, my supervisor runs a report to see what records
were duplicated in the monthly record load. After loading records for
seven months, it's finally evened out to anywhere between 20 and 80
records per month. For each of these records, I either suppress or strip
the record depending on the type.

For the most part, the records we buy are equal in quality to what is
already in our catalog. When we set up our profile, we were able to
specify that we wanted CONSER records when available and then what kinds
of records we wanted when they weren't. We don't edit the records we get
because, as you point out, they can come and go from month to month and
any changes we make would be lost.

Since there is often lag time between when we get access to an title and
when it arrives in our monthly record load, there are times when I
duplicate my work. I sometimes have to catalog a title and then do the
cleanup the following month, but we want our users to have access to a
title as soon as we can.

For us, the biggest gain in purchasing the records was that it freed up
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