USMAI Cataloging Policy Committee
November 3, 2008 Minutes

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

Change to Meeting Agenda

Discussion of the timeline for implementation of Aleph v.19 was added as a discussion item to the agenda.

Decisions and actions taken since last meeting

We sent out two messages to the Cataloging and Database Maintenance COI to remind the members:

1. To check the spelling of authorized headings and to attempt to control all access points in new OCLC master records in order to ensure high quality bibliographic records, and
2. To suppress bibliographic records in Aleph only if your library holdings are the only ones attached.

Virginia submitted Rx 4309 (Marcive records with multiple 035s) to request a report of all Marcive records with multiple 035s with double blank indicators as well as a count of the number of records involved.  See September 30 minutes for full explanation of problem.  Note: Arlene Klair reported on her discussions with several people from GPO and from Marcive concerning this issue in an email to the Cataloging and Database Maintenance COI dated Oct. 24, 2008.

Gordana corresponded with Alice Bahr concerning a new collection Salisbury was purchasing and the updated guidelines to request new loaders.  She shared the updated guidelines with the USMAI community and placed them on the CPC web page, replacing the obsolete ones.

ERIC2 Meeting Update

Gordana reported on the e-books subgroup draft document, “E-Book Life Cycle and Steps,” which she will send to the CPC. (Sent via e-mail on 11/4/2008). The document outlines what issues campuses should consider and which USMAI committees or task groups they should communicate with regarding e-book acquisitions and cataloging.

On behalf of the e-book subgroup, Gordana also drafted some suggested additions to the Electronic Collections Task Group (ECTG) questionnaire, which is used in evaluating potential new electronic resources. ERIC2 will probably discuss these additions at their next meeting and then send them to ECTG, asking them to review and then share the revised questionnaire with the consortium.

CPC Membership

Memberships for five current CPC members will expire at the end of this year: Gordana, Kathy, Kat, Rick and Audrey. Kat will not reapply this year. Gordana, Kathy, and Audrey will reapply for a full two-year membership. To help stagger membership terms, Rick will reapply for a one-year membership. Current members who are reapplying will need to submit their applications to their library directors, so institutional approval/support can be provided before the application is forwarded to CLD.

Gordana will inform Celia of the number of vacancies on the CPC, who intends to reapply and for how long, and what CPC feels are the minimum and desired qualifications for prospective CPC members. Celia will then solicit applications via the COIs.

We will postpone discussion on whether to appoint a co-chair to the CPC until our January meeting, after the new committee membership has been decided.

CPC Web organization

Kathy described the changes she made to the Resources on Catalog and Database Maintenance and USMAI Bibliographic Loaders pages after our last meeting.

Items on the Resources on CDM page were grouped under the headings we discussed previously and then put in alphabetical order (with the exception of a few especially important resources placed at the top of each group). The group approved these changes.

Kathy subdivided items on the Loaders page into Ongoing loaders, One time loaders, Drafts, and Other. She also added titles to the linked documents, so that the link text will match the titles on the linked documents. The group suggested moving the Monthly Extract of Bibliographic Records for Authorities link to the top of the page and then omitting the Other subdivision. The group approved the basic organization of the Loaders page, although further minor edits may be required once the document has been posted.

Springer E-Books Loader Specs Draft

The group reviewed the Springer E-Books Loader specs, which had been revised by Maria Fernandez at HS/HSL since the first draft was discussed at our Sept. 30 meeting. SFX targets were provided in this current iteration.

The following questions/comments were raised in our discussion:

• Could the record provider (OCLC, according to question #4 on p. 3) add the 852 tags for holdings to the records and do any other pre-processing of the records to save time/effort for ITD?
• Is HS/HSL requesting this as a one-time or ongoing loader? The answer to question #2 on p.3 says it is an ongoing loader, but the answer to question #3 immediately below says the package content is NOT expected to change over time.
• Could the Ongoing OCLC loader be used (with minor modifications for item and holding specs), rather than creating an entirely new loader?
• Does HS/HSL want a 950 loader stamp to be added to the records? (The group noted that this information should be provided under II.D. Local Data Tags, but the presence of the words “Super Holdings” in parentheses was potentially misleading and should be removed from the loader request form or changed to “including superholdings, 950 loader stamp, etc.”)
• Is HS/HSL only interested in using 050 call numbers, or should ITD also account for 090 call numbers when no 050 is present in record?
• Does an XPT tag need to be added to each record (with either $a Y to set holdings on OCLC after load or with $a N to indicate that holdings were already set on OCLC prior to load)?
• HS/HSL should consult with Laura Wrubel to see if using 956 $7 to link via Find It is called for in this case. This also led Vicki to ask whether retaining URLs in the records would be possible, with text identifying which campus the URL applied to provided in $3. Vicki also noted that $y  can be used to substitute text for the URL in an 856/956 tag, but this subfield is not active in Aleph v.18.
• The HS/HSL specs included ocn numbers for sample records loaded into Aleph Test, but CPC would prefer to have complete sample records included as an appendix to submitted loader proposals whenever possible to facilitate our face-to-face discussion.

Vicki will follow-up on the above with HS/HSL and ask Maria for more detail on the requested reports. These reports may require substantial additional programming time, which ITD will need to communicate to HS/HSL after the final specs have been submitted. HS/HSL can then determine whether all of the reports are worth any such possible delays.

Salisbury Slavery Source Materials Loader Specs Draft

The group reviewed the Slavery Source Materials Microfiche Loader specs submitted by Audrey on behalf of Salisbury. The specs were approved; however, the following questions/comments were discussed:

• If OCLC can pre-process the records, adding 852/876 tags for Salisbury’s items and holdings, could the Ongoing OCLC Loader be used instead?
• Does Salisbury want a 950 loader stamp to be added to the records?

Audrey thought that Salisbury had told Palinet they wanted their holdings reflected on OCLC but will check on this. (Audrey confirmed via e-mail sent on 11/17 that holdings will be set by Palinet.)

Audrey will also check with Yalan to see if it would be simpler and quicker to use the Ongoing OCLC Loader with items/holdings added via preprocessing by OCLC or with Salisbury adding items/holdings themselves manually after the record load.

Finding DVDs in the Catalog by Language

Gordana sent to the COI Kat’s proposal for a new index to find DVDs in the catalog by predominant language, and she received no comments or responses. Kat will submit an Rx asking ITD to implement the proposal. She still needs to contact UITG regarding what text to use on the OPAC search pages, but this won’t be necessary until after the index is created by ITD. In the meantime, Kat will send an e-mail to the co-chairs of UITG as an FYI.

Report on WorldCat Local Review

Virginia reported that the WorldCat Local Review Group will submit their report on the USMAI test implementation to CLD on Nov. 11. The group will be meeting later this week to discuss the report. They are using Google Docs to share reports and concerns, and they have created a spreadsheet that lists the various criteria they were asked to comment on. The group includes people from all over USMAI, with many assistant library directors represented.

The group began with an assumption that failure to implement PPH and single sign-on with WorldCat Local would be a deal-breaker for USMAI. They have since learned that neither PPH nor single sign-on will work, although implementation of single sign-on is a possibility in the future. Some changes have been made to the USMAI test implementation but local notes still cannot be displayed.

Kat referred the group to Celia’s message to the COIs from 10/31 updating the consortium on the WorldCat Local trial.

The original test implementation reflected only College Park’s holdings. Frostburg will be added to show how the implementation works with multiple USMAI libraries. Virginia will check on the status of Frostburg’s implementation and let us know where things stand.   

Aleph v.19

Yalan wrote to CPC on 10/31 informing us that ITD systems librarians are required to work with their assigned task/functional groups on the following: 1) reviewing the Aleph v.19 documentation; 2) listing new features, including what’s applicable and what needs to be implemented; 3) deciding whether we can skip v.19 and go straight to v.20; and 4) making a recommendation on an upgrade timeline, if possible. Yalan has a deadline of early Dec. so she has asked CPC if we can start working on this now and finish at our Dec. meeting.

Heidi reported that she has only had a chance to take a very quick look at the documentation for v.19. She said that authorizations may be a big area of change. Kat will take a closer look at the v.19 documentation, summarize the changes/new features, and e-mail this to the group ASAP. (Sent on 11/12).

Round Robin

Heidi reported that ITD was granted an exemption from the USM hiring freeze for the vacant systems librarian position. They will be doing phone interviews this week and hope to conduct on-site interviews before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Heidi also reported that ITD is adopting new software called SysAid for problem tracking. Miranda is looking at Rx’es and checking them against the reports they receive. Heidi asked the group to send her any suggestions we have for common tracking requests (e.g., awaiting reindex).

Rick suggested that CPC begin to develop (in consultation with other task/functional groups) consortium guidelines or recommendations on implementing the single-record approach with e-books. This will be added to the agenda for CPC’s next meeting.

Rick also followed up on a problem he first reported to the CPC via e-mail on 10/3 regarding Unicode alphanumeric directionality values. Jasmin Nof and Marlene Vikor also contributed to the discussion, with Marlene referring Rick to the related Rx #3192. The fix implemented in response to Rx #3192 was supposed to eliminate these unwanted directionality values on load. Rick had reported that the problem with his record load was due to the paired 245 fields not being properly linked in the master record; however, the directionality values still should have been stripped automatically on load. Rick will investigate further to confirm that the Rx #3192 fix works not just for CP but for all campuses.

Kat reported on the SRSG clean-up project (see CPC May 27, 2008 meeting minutes for more info). She has continued to work on the project and so far has de-duped several hundred serial records.

Vicki brought up a recent announcement from OCLC regarding changes in their policies governing use and sharing of bibliographic records. The new policies are scheduled to take effect in Feb. 2009. In response to immediate negative feedback from the cataloging community, OCLC pulled their initial announcement of the policy (http://marc.coffeecode.net/oclc_2008_11_02/). OCLC has since posted a new draft of the policy at http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/catalog/policy/policy.htm.

Kathy reported that the AUP was run successfully after the last AEX. The timing of these two regular services means that all of the records in the new base file we sent LTI in September have been through both processes. As usual, the AUP generated a huge unlinked headings report, the majority of which consisted of unlinked personal name headings.

Next meeting: Friday, December 5, 2008 at UMBC Tech Center.
Agenda topics:
Aleph v.19 implementation
Guidelines on single-record approach for e-books

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