USMAI Cataloging Policy Committee
August 26, 2008 Minutes

Present: Rick Davis (TU), Kathy Glennan (CP), Heidi Hanson (ITD), Gordana Ruth (CP, chair), Kat Ryner (SM), Audrey Schadt (SU), Vicki Sipe (BC, recording), Virginia Williams (FS). Guests: Yalan Qi (ITD), Bill Sleeman (ML), Laura Wrubel (ITD).

Decisions and actions taken since last meeting

The URL tagging and notes in catalogUSMAI (10/9/03) and the Single Record for Journals: Processing Document have been updated to reflect the recommendation of ERIC2 Task Group concerning the URLs and the Find It button. The updated versions are available on the CPC webpage.

A few things were brought to our attention:

• Marlene (welcome back Marlene) passed along a posting from ALEPH list about converting an Excel file into an Aleph readable format. http://hdl.handle.net/2268/494
• Rick brought up the question of RSS feeds capability in Aleph v. 18.
• Arlene mentioned that some of the codes for the 007 tag for the video recording format are considered invalid or obsolete in Aleph.

Ebrary Loads: Issues and Solutions

Yalan Qi, Bill Sleeman and Laura Wrubel attended the meeting to participate in this discussion. Rick Davis attended via phone conferencing.

Over recent weeks there has been a flurry of activity and discussion over the loading of Ebrary records (e-book resources) for Maryland Law (ML) and Towson (TU). The ML set represents about 3,500 records. TU set represents about 35,000 records. All of the ML records are included in the TU set. An arrangement had been arrived at that would allow all records to be loaded into the system without URLs in the bib. Access would be provided via SFX. Approximately 501 of the ML set are not accessible via SFX. TU set is still being processed by ITD to determine how many are not currently in the SFX Knowledge Base (KB). ITD has sent the ML titles to Ex Libris for addition to the KB. ITD will send the TU titles to Ex Libris as soon as possible, certainly within the next two weeks. Both ML and TU titles sent by ITD to Ex Libris for addition to the KB will be monitored by ITD for turnaround time. How long it takes Ex Libris to add titles to the KB is an important piece of information for planning future loads and assuring access. In the meantime, the titles unavailable via SFX can be accessed via the Ebrary web site.

In addition, there were titles in both sets that did not contain ISBNs. The ISBN is the match point used by SFX to assure access. ML set had 60 records without ISBN. TU set contained 649 records without ISBNs. ML and TU will go back to the vendor to get these records fixed.

The ML records are already loaded in the live database. The TU set will be loaded in live before 2 Sept. Turning on the access in FindIt and indexing may cause a small lag in access to the titles. However, except for the problem records noted above, the Ebrary titles should be accessible via FindIt within the first few days of Sept. Special thanks to Laura Wrubel, Yalan Qi and other ITD staff who have worked on this set. Special thanks to Bill Sleeman and Rick Davis who have persisted in finding solutions.

There will be further discussion on updates from the vendors on these record sets. Updates are available on a monthly basis from Ebrary. Rick Davis and Bill Sleeman will be providing numbers and types of changes (deletions/adds) to Laura Wrubel. Bill felt that he could make the adjustments to his set as the numbers seem to be small. TU will probably have much larger numbers and will likely request an automated update solution. Expect further conversations between TU, ITD and CPC once the data has been gathered.

Follow-up on Loaders by CPC: The Ebrary loader raised several issues for future consideration. Gordana Ruth wrote a draft addition to the Requesting New Bibliographic Loaders document based on the Ebrary discussions. Among additions being considered are: more thorough description of the collection proposed for loading, no local notes to be added by loader (local notes limits usefulness of loader of other institutions), generic 538 notes (to facilitate use by other institutions), and providing details on updates from the vendor to the initial load. The document is under discussion by CPC and will be sent to COIs for comment after CPC has concluded its discussions. During this discussion it was noted that in the case of the Making of Modern Law load, the donor requested a specific note be added to the records. There was agreement that exceptions will probably need to be accommodated in the future, but we need to work hard to limit exceptions.

As a result of the Ebrary experience, ITD has requested that there be only one loader per record set. If several libraries are loading records from a single vendor, the requests need to be consolidated into a single loader that will meet the needs of all libraries. CPC will attempt to facilitate this request in its role of vetting the loader requests. An unanticipated difficulty with these sets was the lack of ISBNs in the records. A suggestion was made that record sets for e-resources be processed prior to loading to report out all records missing the ISBN. These records could then be 'fixed' prior to loading. This type of pre-processing of record sets for match points might allow for smoother loads overall. ITD was encouraged to investigate the possibility/value of such pre-processing.

Authority processing by LTI consideration. LTI interrupts any load exceeding 30MB and requires approval by the institution for processing to proceed. ITD has placed an automated limit of 12,000 records per set on our monthly authority processing exports to LTI. Records over the 12,000 limit are queued for sending in the next set to LTI. Current records are always sent first, with records queued being added each month up to the imposed limit of 12,000 records. The load of 35,000 Ebrary records will exceed our monthly limit of 12,000 records. It is not known how many records are currently queued for processing by LTI. CPC requested that this be investigated by ITD. Yalan will take questions about the limit and the number of records in the queue to the ITD meeting for discussion.

Notes on SFX: Currently the process of adding new titles to the SFX Knowledge Base is slowed at least in part by Ex Libris providing only monthly updates to the KB. The next version of SFX, due out sometime next year, will allow for updates more frequently than once a month.

CPC charge

There was much productive discussion on the revised charge sent to CPC by Celia Rabinowitz and her answers to follow up questions. Kathy Glennan will produce a draft based on the discussion and send it out to CPC members as soon as possible.

CPC Web organization

Kathy Glennan provided mock pages for the CPC page and the Resources on Catalog and DataBase Maintenance (CDM) page based on our conversations. The CPC page is envisioned as the place for documents supporting committee work. All links to documentation currently in use and training would be moved to the CDM page. We also discussed reorganizing the USMAI Documentation page. We would place a link on the CDM page to each group of materials on the USMAI Documentation. Making the loader specifications, superholdings documentation, etc. more visible and easier to find. Kathy is going to produce another round of mock pages based on today's discussions.

Finding DVDs in the catalog by language

Kat Ryner presented a request from her campus for changes that would allow for a very restricted search limit on language. The request grows out of a need to find DVDs by specific languages for use by language students. Language limiting in our system currently relies on information from the 008 and 041. This search can retrieve many materials where the sought after language is dubbed or made available via subtitles. Staff at Saint Marys would prefer a more targeted search based on 008 searching only. The suggestion was made that SM submit to CPC a request for the creation of a new index.

440 fields and LTI processing

At the ALA Annual Meeting in Anaheim, the Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information Committee (MARBI) voted to make the 440 field obsolete. Implementation awaits revision of MARC documentation and notification by Library of Congress. In light of this decision, LTI sent out an e-mail advising institutions to review the series field handling decisions contained in our contract with them. Our current LTI processing is that when a 490_0 or 440 field is found in a record, it is converted to a 490/8xx pair that is searched against authority records. If a match is found, the pair is retained. If no match is found a 490_0 is returned to 490_0. 440 fields do not revert to 440, but remain as 490/8xx pairs. Our current specification effectively eliminates 440 fields in the database. Therefore, the MARBI decision requires no action on our part to come into compliance.

Updates

• Expanding Sublibrary/Collection/Material/Item (SCMI) status combination reports from Aleph: The SCMI report is currently generated monthly and identifies combinations and indicates combinations that are invalid. It does not identify which items include the invalid combinations, making it difficult to correct the items improperly coded. ITD has offered to produce a variation on this report that will include barcodes of items with invalid combinations and the accompanying bibliographic system number. CPC members queried institutions as to who would be interested in such a report. There were enough positive responses that CPC feels ITD should generate such reports for each and every USMAI institution.
• Indexing changes for titles: A discussion begun in May by Beth Guay in RX#3411. Searches for titles contained in fields 611, 711, 810 and 811 will fail if there is a subfield g or n. Information occurring in these subfields will be included in a TTL or TRT indexed search and will appear before the title. See RX#3411 for specific example. CPC decided in May to test the deletion of the subfield g and n from the TTL and TRT indexes to see if such a fix would work. And to request a report to see what the scope of the problem might be. In test, Vicki deleted the subfield n from the record cited in RX#3411. The deletion 'fixed' the retrieval in a title search. Heidi is to get a count and report out how many 711s with subfields n and t we actually have in the database. Further action will be based on scope of problem and ease of solution.

Round Robin

Heidi-

• Systems Librarian search has begun.
• ILS team leader search is on hold at the moment.
• ITD has posted directions on how to create a predefined search box. Web authors can check out the possibilities at http://usmai.umd.edu/userinter/cataloglinks.html
• ITD is looking at Aleph Version 19 this fall and will make a recommendation to CLD as to date of implementation. ITD conclusions will be shared in Oct with Task Groups and Campus Contacts.

Virginia-

• Updating of 7xx and 8xx tags from Technical Bulletin 254 contained in RX#3904. The 7xx tags are taken care of, but 8xx tags stalled. Linda Seguin was working thru this RX but is now back at UMBC. Heidi will look at this RX.
• New World Cat Local review group is forming.

Gordana-

• Safari records. Of the 100 records, 70 were without ISBNs. Possibility of harvesting missing 020 from URLs. Many records that had ISBNs, had the ISBN in a subfield z. ITD can now handle this issue. There was a requirement for a 710 to be generated and this request has been dropped. The 856s will be stripped from records before loading.

Next CPC meeting

September 30, 2008 10:00-1:00 at UMBC Tech Center

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