Blog About Technical Services

For those of you who have not seen this announcement yet I'm posting it here. Minitex staff visited the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm, MN fall 2007. They had such a rich and unique collection in their library and archives. You can view the pictures by visiting our Flickr site. We hope that this is only a temporary closing. You can stay up-to-date by visiting the Mn Discovery Center website.

CHISHOLM - The Ironworld Development Corporation Board of Directors today announced that Minnesota Discovery Center (formerly Ironworld), a 660-acre museum, entertainment venue, research library and park in Chisholm, MN, will temporarily be closed to the public, effective Friday, November 20, 2009, at 5 p.m.

The July/August SAMMIE newsletter had a great review (p.2) of a very helpful resource:
CREW: A Weeding Manual for Modern Libraries

Weeding can be a daunting task, but this book provides a LOT of very practical guidance that will help you through the process, such as specific strategies for weeding children's or AV collections, how to dispose of weeded materials, and an epilogue encouraging the hesitant weeder. It is aimed at public libraries, but would be useful to others as well.

As noted in the SAMMIE review, the Texas Library and Archives Commission has generously made the book available online through a Creative Commons license. Go here to access it:
http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/crew/index.html

And if you're an OCLC member, whenever you withdraw an item, please remember to delete your holdings from OCLC. ILL staff everywhere will thank you!

Several Minitex staff traveled to NDLA's Annual Conference in Dickinson, ND this year. Though it's been over a month since the conference, I would like to share some of the photos our staff took. We also wrote an article about the conferences we presented at and attended in the Oct/Nov Minitex/OCLC Mailiing. More photos from SDLA and MLA to follow soon!

Roadside attraction off 94 between Bismarck and Dickinson, North Dakota

Front of Dickinson Public Library

Inside Dickinson Public Library

Minitex staff Anne Hatinen in front of fireplace at Dickinson Public Library

Table display at Dickinson Public Library dessert reception

If you missed the free webinars "RDA and OCLC" that were presented during the last couple of weeks, you can view the recording here.

OCLC has also scheduled one more live session, which will take place on Nov. 19, 12pm (central). You can register for that here.

There is a brief write up about the webinar and the post includes screenshots of some of the poll results from those attending the two webinars. It can be found on Karen Calhoun's blog, Metalogue.

The Library of Congress recently released the results of its analysis of the creation and distribution of bibliographic data in U.S. and Canadian libraries.

The Library commissioned R2 Consulting LLC to search and describe the current marketplace for cataloging records in the MARC format, with primary focus on the economics of current practices, including existing incentives and barriers to both contribution and availability.

Paired with the study online is a report of an internal working group indicating how recommendations from "On the Record: Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control" may be implemented at the Library. Both reports are available on the LC website here.

R2 summarizes its 10 findings concerning Library of Congress cataloging and how it supports bibliographic-description needs across the U.S. and Canada. Below are the first five findings from the R2 Study. This should make for an interesting read! Read the other findings and the full report here.

1.
Library of Congress cataloging continues to be widely valued: Libraries, vendors, and cooperatives speak with their actions. There is heavy reliance on LC's output throughout all segments of the profession and industry. This is demonstrated by 500,000 searches per day against LC's Z39.50 servers and WebOPAC; by extensive re‐sale and re‐use of records distributed by the MARC Distribution Service (MDS); and by the variety and scale of use across all library sizes and types, and all vendor sizes and types. LC records are the cornerstone of the entire market. School and public libraries are especially reliant on them, but all market segments have built services on the foundation of inexpensive and easily obtainable LC records.

2.
The Library of Congress subsidizes portions of the market: LC catalogs many titles that ultimately are not retained in its collections. As a result, LC bears significant costs from which it receives no direct benefit, for activity that is not explicitly in support of its core users. The 1902 law that governs distribution of its records deliberately excludes the cost of production from the pricing for those records. There is no revenue to offset those costs, other than the value of the free copies of the CIP books provided by publishers. The market relies to a surprising degree on LC's willingness to bear these costs and forgo this revenue. If LC were to redirect its catalogers' efforts solely to materials deemed necessary by its users, CIP production would diminish significantly. Other organizations would need to assume those costs. At present, libraries and vendors enjoy the largely unrecognized benefits of an LC subsidy.

3.
LC records are significantly underpriced: Not only does LC bear a disproportionate share of the costs associated with producing records for titles it may not retain, the law governing its sale of those records allows only the cost of distribution (plus 10%) to be recouped. The cost of production is assumed to be part of LC's ongoing operations. Such low prices contribute to the impression that cataloging should cost less than it actually does.

4.
Cataloging backlogs continue to grow in many areas and market segments: As outlined in the library survey responses, non‐Roman languages, maps, and DVDs pose particular problems. But to our surprise, many libraries are also losing ground on mainstream materials such as English‐language monographs.

5.
There is adequate cataloging capacity in North America to meet the collective need: This finding surprised us, especially given the aging of the profession and imminent retirements. However, a conservative interpretation of survey data shown on pages 9‐10 strongly suggests that there are more than enough catalogers to handle everything. In the academic market alone, for instance, the survey indicates that more than 8,000 original catalogers are employed. If each original cataloger produced on average one record per work day (or 200 per year), that would indicate capacity for 1.6 million original records annually. Unfortunately, that capacity is not well distributed, disciplined, or coordinated, despite decades of experience with cooperative cataloging.

Registration is open for the last two webinars on institutional repositories to be held this fall.

• November 10 on Datasets presented by MacKenzie Smith
• December 16 on Partnerships presented by Marilyn Billings

Forthcoming in 2010

• February 10 - Bob Gerrity on Selecting the Platform
• March 24 - Marisa Ramirez and Nancy Fallgren on Metadata
• April 28 - Sharon Farb, Bonnie Tijerino, and Catherine Mitchell on Consortial Implementation
• May 19 - Leah Vanderjagt on What we Thought Then and What we Know Now

Check out the ALCTS Conferences & Events page for more information and other webinars that we are offering in the spring.

"You want me to select for WHAT?" A Webinar on Selection
Join presenter Virginia Kay Williams, Acquisitions Librarian at Wichita State University on December 2 from 1 to 2pm Central for "You want me to select for WHAT? Getting started in a new area." Registration opens December 5.

Upcoming e-Forums

"The Art of Conversation: Improving Communication between Technical Services and Public Services" to be held November 18-20, 2009.
Moderated by Sarah Simpson, Technical Services Manager at the Tulsa City-County Library, and Keri Cascio, Branch Manager at the St. Louis City-County Library District.

To access the e-Forums, register for the list at ALCTS Discussion List Web site; click on Association for Library Collections and Technical Services under the ALA Division heading; click on the list name, alcts-eforum@ala.org; enter the email address where you'd like to receive the messages; username and password are required to register. Instructions for obtaining a login and password may be found on the list homepage. Participation is free and open to anyone.
Web Course

Fundamentals of Collection Development begins again on November 30 and runs through January 1, 2010. Learn more or sign up now.

Cataloger's Desktop is moving to a new platform on November 2nd . LC is offering a series of webinars to make the transition easier for Desktop subscribers. Have a look at the following and register today for any that interest you. They will be recording each to make them available at other times.

Cataloger's Desktop 3.0: What's new -- Presenter: Bruce Johnson
Tuesday, October 27th, 1 PM EDT Duration: 45 minutes
Click here to register

Cataloger's Desktop 3.0: Que es nuevo -- Presentora: Patricia Hayward
jueves, 29 de octubre, 10 am EDT Duración: 45 minutos
Hage "clic" aquí para registrar

Account management & Logging in the first time -- Presenters: Bob Berberich & Byron Copley
Thursday, October 29th, 1 PM EDT Duration: 15 minutes
Click here to register

Setting up your Preferences -- Presenter: Colleen Cahill
Wednesday, October 28th, 1 PM EDT (Duration: 30 minutes
Click here to register

Getting the most out of Search -- Presenter: Joan Weeks
Tuesday, November 3rd, 1 PM EDT Duration: 30 minutes
Click here to register

Saving Bookmarks and Searches -- Presenter: Joan Weeks
Friday, November 6th, 1 PM EDT
Duration: 30 minutes
Click here to register

System Requirements
PC-based attendees - Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista
Macintosh®-based attendees - Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

Additional Cataloger's Desktop training resources are available online

The Cataloger's Desktop Development Team
Bruce Chr. Johnson
Policy & Standards Division
The Library of Congress
Washington, DC 20540-4263 USA

For those of you who remember the old days of dedicated OCLC terminals, complicated cable arrangements, blinking modems... We found this poem in some old files. It was written by Becky Bell sometime in the late 70s.

(note: Fred Kilgour was the founder of OCLC and "Paul" was a technician there.)

Dirge for OCLC
OCLC, built by Fred
Now our terminal is dead!
Worked for months without a hitch,
Should we throw it in a ditch?
Computer systems built for us
Now they've left us in disgust!

Circuits blew, the screen went blank
Paul asked us if we heard a clank.
No more cursor flashing green
We no longer have a screen.
OCLC, built by Fred
Oh, my Lord, it just turned red!

Does the poem take you back? Share some of your funny OCLC memories with us!

Registration is open for NISO's October webinar on Bibliographic Control Alphabet Soup: AACR to RDA and Evolution of MARC, to be held on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 from 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. (Eastern Time).

Librarians, ILS vendors, and commercial cataloging service providers--as well as a wide variety of related service providers--all know that the proverbial, heavily acronym-spiced "bibliographic control alphabet soup" involves the intelligent and well informed use of many ingredients. Chief in these are constantly evolving standards, combined with more than a sprinkling of creativity and insight. Three expert metadata chefs will analyze and discuss specific alphabetic ingredients already in use or soon to be implemented in the bib control kitchen.

Diane Hillmann (Director of Metadata Initiatives, Information Institute of Syracuse) will provide an overview of RDA Elements and Vocabularies: a Step Forward from MARC. RDA elements and vocabularies represent the distillation of library descriptive knowledge, optimized for use within an environment that speaks XML, RDF, and linked data, and expressed in an FRBR-aware manner.

Barbara Tillett (Chief, Policy and Standards Division, Library of Congress) will review There to Here to There -- AACR2 and RDA. Learn how what started as AACR3 evolved into an entirely new approach with a new name.

William Moen (Associate Professor, School of Library and Information Sciences, University of North Texas) will discuss results from the IMLS-sponsored research project: Data-driven Evidence for Core MARC Records. The project team examined 56 million WorldCat bibliographic records and analyzed patterns of use by catalogers of available fields/subfields.

For more information and to register, visit the event webpage. Registration is per site (access for one computer) and includes access to the online recorded archive of the webinar. NISO and NASIG members receive a discounted member rate. A student discount is also available. Can't make it on the 14th? Register and gain access to the recorded archive for one year.

ALCTS, ALA's Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, has a series of Web-based courses that we think look interesting.

Fundamentals of Acquisitions, Fundamentals of Electronic Resources and Acquisitions, and Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management are all Web-based, self-paced sessions that take place over 4-week periods. They are tailored for librarians and para-professionals in all types of libraries who are new to the topic area, and include interaction with instructors and classmates.

At a reasonable rate of $109 for ALCTS members and $129 for non-members, they look like they'd be very helpful to anyone stepping into new responsibilities in these areas. (And the Collection Development course was developed by Peggy Johnson, of the University of Minnesota Libraries!)

Go here for course descriptions, schedules and registration.

If you do attend one of these sessions, or if you have taken one in the past, please let us know what you think!