USMAI Cataloging Policy Committee Meeting Minutes
September 13, 2007

Present: Rick Davis (TU), Kathy Glennan (CP), Heidi Hanson (ITD), Gordana Ruth (CP, chair), Kat Ryner (SM, recorder), Audrey Schadt (SU), Vicki Sipe (BC), Virginia Williams (FS)

General

• Gordana will be out of the country from Sept. 20 through Oct. 4; other CPC members should keep that in mind if issues arise during her absence.
• Minutes of the meeting of July 13, 2007 were approved.
• Audrey was welcomed to CPC as its newest member.
• Because SU is now represented on CPC, Virginia will no longer be SU’s cataloging liaison.

Decisions/actions taken since last meeting

• Vicki submitted Rx3325 to remove 6XX fields with 2nd indicator 4, 5, or 6 from the index and suppress from public display.
• Kat is the CPC representative on the new Serials Study Group (SSG), a newly forming ASTG sub-group charged with studying the conversion of existing serial records to the one-record format. First meeting is September 21.
• Virginia worked with Yalan Qi (ITD), Beth Guay (CP) and Marlene Vikor (CP) to provide serial title records and to test to make sure the 022 and 935 tags in the holding records were validated, indexed and retrievable for the singer records for multi-format equivalent-content journals. See Rx2567 for details.
• Vicki worked with ITD on the New Titles List algorithm to exclude e-journals.
• Rick surveyed COIcatdbmaint and COIseracq on the possibility of including four more material type codes in the New Titles Material Types exclusion list. There were no objections and the four codes were incorporated into the New Titles List algorithm.
• ERIC-2, CPC and ITD discussed the need to vet the specifications changes needed for the next NetLibrary load to the COIs. It was decided that the original NetLibrary loader was written with the expectation that there would be changes in future loads, so it was not necessary to submit the changes to the COIs. The NetLibrary records were tested and loaded into live at the end of August.
• CPC approved the revised Evans loader specs to include College Park’s microform holdings and submitted it to ITD for implementation.
• ITD added the Authority Loader and Authorities Reload (Bib Clean-up) reports to the Reports of Interest page.

ERIC2 report

• Heidi reported that Linda Seguin (BC) is working on Xrefer records and writing documentation on bringing them in to the catalog without a new loader. ERIC2 is working on a serials MARC record project, having phone interviews with various vendors (Serials Solution, EbscoNet, MarcIt); they will review the responses in November and will make a recommendation to CLD. Regarding Verde, Gordana will forward the Florida Center for Library Automation’s report on their consortial Verde implementation.
• The e-book forum will be held October 9th from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the UMBC Tech Center. Members of every task group are invited; Heidi will be the facilitator. Each task group will report on what they are working on regarding e-books. The point of the meeting is for representatives from the various task groups to discuss ideas and solutions. CPC’s report should include: evaluating and inspecting loaders and potential purchases of MARC records; this is done on a case by case basis and is dependent on the source and size of the record collection. At the appropriate time CPC will document best practices for the cataloging of e-books, similar to the document written for the “single record for journals” processing document now available at the CPC web site. CPC anticipates that the forum will inform us all on what best practices might be. How do we as catalogers see issues, challenges and solutions with e-books as a whole? Issues include single versus separate records; authority control issues and LTI; and batch loading versus loading of individual records.
• Discussion turned to the e-book cataloging option using a single record for both print and electronic versions. Gordana spoke of an example at CP, Methods of entomology, and the difficulties encountered with it; CP is acknowledging that there are different options for different scenarios. There is the issue of the quality of records purchased as a batch. Vicki recommended that all read the report of the Harvard Libraries Electronic Books Task Force, which identifies requirements for implementation of a program for electronic book acquisition at Harvard. In a nutshell, while everyone would prefer a single record for multiple formats, it doesn’t always work that neatly (e.g. NetLibrary) and realistically there is no one “catch-all” solution. A link to the Harvard report is available at the ERIC2 wiki. While it is laudable to attempt a single record approach, it is not realistic considering the increasing numbers of batch loads. There is an economic advantage to purchasing batch records but with that comes the possibility of loading duplicate records; the issue must be decided on a case-by-case basis. Heidi reminded us of the danger of overloading the authorities programming when a large batch load of MARC records comes in; perhaps we could negotiate with LTI for special projects rather than exceed our monthly cap/threshold with LTI.

LTI processing FAQ and reprocessing documents

• Kathy updated the relevant documents based on our last discussion. CPC approved the documents. Kathy will request that they be placed on the CPC web site, and send email notification to COIall. She will keep a “living document” on the wiki. The issue of authority fields in superholdings is outstanding. Planning documents indicate that this would be pursued, but somewhere along the line with LTI superholdings were purposefully excluded; as a result, headings in superholdings are not being processed for authority control. While it is likely that LTI doesn’t process non-standard headings, superholdings also contain perfectly valid LC headings that should be under authority control (e.g. Leonard Bernstein, anime). Should we get a report on how many headings in superholdings are in the database? Should we survey campuses on past and current practices with superholdings? No conclusion was reached. Speaking of local headings, Virginia reported on OCLC Technical Bulletin 254, which announced major changes with local tags including tag number changes and new tags for local information. CPC needs to identify these tags, request that ITD add them to the Aleph index, and update our documentation. Virginia will submit a detailed Rx change request.

Post AV18 upgrade recommendations, loaders, and Rx follow-up
Marlene’s email dated May 30:

• Rx2865: closed in the testing phase because the functionality hadn’t been supported in AV16; Vicki will re-submit as a new cataloging Rx
• Rx2926 and 2942: collapsed into 2926 and currently listed as pending; Vicki will request an update
• Objects icon: CPC will not take this up
• Item history display: recommend to Marlene that she submit an Rx
• Label on item form: Heidi will follow-up as that may have been part of the New Titles work plan and wasn’t done simply due do oversight
• UMDprint label: Yalan has made a public offer of ITD assistance and has pursued with those who responded so far (e.g. BC); other institutions are encouraged to take Yalan up on her offer to help implement

Yalan’s email dated 8/3:

• NetLibrary free: done
• NetLibrary: done
• Evans: approved and at ITD for implementation
• Marcive electronic changes: Marlene’s suggestion of excluding bib levels s and i may be a more elegant solution that the one first proposed to COIall; Gordana will send another COI email requesting comment
• Sephardic editions: since we don’t know what this loader is, Heidi will check with ITD
• Rx685 and 1026 Xrefer/Credo: this will be discussed at the next ERIC2 meeting; the September SFX update will include Credo titles
• Rx3016: closed

Rx follow-up from Vicki:

• Rx3377: exclude material types (Rick)
• Rx2124: quasi-record encoding level changes; Audrey will email SU examples to Vicki
• Rx2324: add 655 with indicator zero to the SUL index; Heidi will follow-up
• Rx621: title normalization problem was reported to ExLibris as PRB12777; Heidi will follow-up
• SH2: As Vicki received only positive feedback from the COI, she will resubmit an Rx
• Closed since July meeting: table and index changes, authority load/reload reports, language code change, 880s issue, removal of material type 4318

Cataloging in AV18 workshop

• Vicki reported on feedback to the idea of a training session. Arlene Klair (CP) suggested adding a component on government documents. There are 30 potential attendees from 8 campuses (not even including CP and BC). It is evident that a cataloging workshop, or some other kind of support, is needed for AV18 cataloging. Vicki will base AV18 training documentation on that created for USMAI AV16 training, and ExLibris and Harvard documentation for AV18. With the assistance of the rest of CPC, Vicki will generate a list of topics to include in the session. Time and location was discussed [finalized after CPC’s meeting: the workshop will be held on Thursday, November 8 at the Special Events room at McKeldin, CP].

Aleph indexing questions

• Regarding Yalan’s email from August 6, it is suspected that these issues were either resolved or dropped; Heidi will follow-up.

OCLC collection set (CALI records) request

• Rick will notify ITD to load the records into the test database.

Specs for ACLS humanities e-book loader

• CPC approved the HEB specs submitted by Marlene on August 3. Gordana will send a message to COIcatdbmaint and COIseracq for comment.

Super-users

• Kat successfully tested a super-user login; she will request that Yalan implement in live.

New business and information sharing

• Gordana created a chart to monitor loader requests and actions; she will send an email and post it to the wiki.
• Kat is working with Kathy Heil (CE) on updating their serials records.
• Heidi reported that she will probably be included in a user interface/digital technologies team at ITD. ITD is advertising for a new systems librarian; this person will work on acquisitions/serials as part of the Aleph team. Yalan will hand off acq/ser work to the new systems librarian and she will work more on cataloging and loaders. Given all this, it is likely that Heidi will step down from CPC and Yalan will join CPC as its ITD representative.
• Kathy reported that a fix is in for the dance heading problem; ITD has a 600+ record file from LTI with corrected subject headings; it needs to be loaded. This should be done before the next semi-annual AUP is run. Kathy will follow-up with ITD.

Future CPC meetings and agenda items

• Tuesday, October 23, 10 a.m. at the UMBC Tech Center
• Friday, December 7, 10 a.m. at the UMBC Tech Center
• Agenda items for 10/23 meeting:
  • Vicki’s proposal for overlay hierarchy change (email of 1/11/07)
  • Follow-up on e-book forum of 10/9
  • Potential “loader liaison” assignment and reevaluation of campus liaisons
  • Preparation for November 8 cataloging workshop

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