USMAI Cataloging Policy Committee
December 7, 2007 minutes

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

Absent: Rick Davis (TU)

Decisions and Actions taken since last meeting

• Sephardic Loader specs were shared with the COIs for Cataloging/Database maintenance and Serials/Acquisitions for comment. We received no comments and passed the specs to ITD for processing.
• Rick Davis worked with Bill Sleeman to finalize the Ebrary loader specs. The specs were submitted to ITD for processing November 19. The specs were modified later when Bill notified Rick that the number of records to be loaded was substantially higher than originally expected.
• Gordana Ruth worked with Yalan Qi to allow CPC the ability to edit the USMAI loader status table.
• In preparation for the Cataloging Workshop held November 8, Vicki Sipe updated the Guide for USMAI Catalogers to reflect the new functionality of Version 18. Gordana Ruth worked with Beth Guay to update the Single Record E-journal Procedure document to reflect CONSER standard record practices.
• Several changes were made to the CPC web page including: adding a link to the USMAI loader status table, making the Aleph documentation section password protected, replacing V.16 documents with V.18 documents.
• Vicki Sipe submitted Rx 3520 to make the double blank code valid for the bytes 18-19 (form of composition).
• Yalan Qi contacted CPC to request training on the cataloging module. She will be the systems librarian for cataloging and database maintenance after the new systems librarian for Serials/Acquisitions is in position. She will be working with several catalogers on her training.
• Several Rx’s related to re-indexing (1898, 2324, 2515, 2516, and 3325) have been completed and are in test waiting for a re-indexing of the test database.

Eric2 Meeting report

Gordana reported that the SFX loader will be revisited. The current version is on the ERIC2 wiki. The clean-up of duplicate serial records will be done manually; automated clean-up poses some serious problems with access. Marlene Vikor is concentrating on the manual clean-up. URLs with subfield 7 for institutional codes are live in Aleph. The next steps for CPC are to update the documents for single records and Notes for URLs in CatalogUSMAI. Betty Day and her group are looking at services to update e-journal cataloging in Aleph.

OCLC Technical Bulletin 254

Virginia presented the major changes to the MARC record that were outlined in Technical Bulletin 254. She will submit Rx’s to start the process of adding tags and updating the indexes. Heidi will look at the changes for the SpFm (Special Format Characteristics) for maps to determine if these changes will affect indexing and searching. The Superholdings document needs to be updated to reflect the changes of local heading MARC tags.

LTI processing and unlinked headings

Kathy distributed authority processing statistics. She is not keeping track of the records not sent. Ben’s goal is to send 13,000 records a month, which include the immediate records plus some of those that have been waiting. The authority control profile for USMAI is available from the LTI website to those who have the password. Vicki suggested we get a copy and post it, password protected, on the CPC website. Kathy reminded the committee that LTI does not evaluate headings of 5 or less characters.

Kathy will send out an email concerning genre headings for an email discussion and decision.

Kathy spoke about the unlinked headings, some of which were problems. She reported what College Park was doing with the unlinked headings although she doesn’t have a final report yet on the amount of time spent identifying and correcting the problems. How much time to spend on this type of clean-up and whether it is worth the time still needs to be determined.

The question came up about consortial issues, what should be followed through and what could be left alone; and is there a way to break these issues up by institution.

Cataloging Workshop debriefing

Gordana reported favorable responses to the workshop. Every segment was well received by someone.

Reports from Aleph

The members discussed the type of reports they would like to see from ITD, after Gordana mentioned a discussion with Carlen Rushoff about the reports coming to ITD. The members agreed that, for cataloging only, Reports should be able to be generated from any tag or subfield in a bib record or holdings record with information combined with any information in an item record, to include a system number, possibly to expand to include personal information (i.e. cataloger’s login and activity). The committee also recommends that ITD develop a questionnaire, using a list of several questions, similar to those in the loader specs form, to determine what is wanted in the report and to generate the report.

CPC work plan 2007

The work plan was updated to reflect the accomplishments and the ongoing projects.

CPC members term of service

Both Vicki and Virginia expressed interest in continuing on CPC for two more years. We were to email Celia Rabinowitz for renewal. [NOTE: Vicki notified Celia who stated that the positions would be advertised to USMAI community and the two of us would have to re-apply.] We agreed that the other 5 members should have their terms staggered. The decision relating to which members should have their terms extended one or two years was postponed until December 2008.

Round Robin

Audrey reported she was unable to access the loader list. Everyone was encouraged to test the instructions to discover how pervasive the problem was.

Kat reported that the Serials Records Study Group was gathering information on multiple records, concentrating on the legacy records. Marlene came up with a list of recommendations, including outsourcing, manual clean-up or doing nothing. The report for CLD will be written in January. Kat also talked about the St. Mary’s de-duping projecting. Presently she is working on the triplicate records (about 5-10% of records involved).

Kathy and Gordana worked with Yalan, training her on cataloging and the cataloging module. Kathy mentioned that Yalan wondered about the bibliographic maintenance report when we could use superpasswords. Kathy corresponded with Arlene Klair about LTI processing.

Vicki will follow up on the Credo procedure and develop recommendations of what to do next. She’ll ask Yalan for a superpassword to assist Kat in the de-duping project. The documents from the Cataloging Workshop are ready to be added to the website.

Gordana will contact ERIC2 and UITG concerning John Coogan’s suggested changes for the 856 note. The next meeting will be Wednesday, January 16, 2008, 10-1 at UMBC Tech Center.

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