LC CATALOGING NEWSLINE

PCC 2003 Policy Committee Meeting

The 2003 annual PCC Policy Committee (PoCo) meeting was held at the Library of Congress on Nov. 6-7 and attended by the members of the Steering Committee and Policy Committee. Each bibliographic utility provided an in-depth report on the current state of database migration at the respective organizations, and specified times that implementation for planned improvements are expected.

One major focus of the PoCo meeting was the decision to change requirements for CONSER Associate and Enhance membership levels. The minimum record level contribution for Associate members will be lowered to 100 record transactions a year. This lower level allows CONSER Enhance members to participate at the Associate level if they wish and contribute authenticated records to the CONSER database.

The PoCo members decided that the SACO membership should become formalized into a SACO Program structure. This decision was based on the work of the SACO Program Task Group which had submitted its final report prior to the PoCo meeting. The program parameters will be developed for review by the Steering Committee.

Each PCC Standing Committee provided a report of its activities to the PoCo meeting attendees. Included in their respective reports were the highlights from each of the task groups for which each standing committee is responsible. Of particular interest are the final reports from the Task Group to Survey PCC Libraries on cataloging of remote access electronic resources http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/tgsrvyeres_final.pdf [December 2003], chaired by Jacqueline Byrd (Indiana University, Bloomington), as well as the PCC Standing Committee on Standards/Standing Committee on Training Joint Task Group on International Participation in the PCC :http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/tgip.html [December 2003]. Both of these reports provide insight and provoke much thought as to the form and direction in which the PCC is moving.

The election of PCC Chair-Elect was one of the final orders of business that was conducted by the PoCo. Roxanne Sellberg, Northwestern University, was elected unanimously.

PCC Participants' Discussion Group Meeting

Colleagues attending the ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Diego are invited to the semi-annual PCC Participants' Meeting to be held in the U.S. Grant Hotel, Pavilion Ballroom, on January 11, from 7:00-8:30 pm.

The agenda includes opening remarks presented by PCC chair, Carlen Ruschoff (University of Maryland, College Park) followed by Operations Committee updates by Ana Cristan (BIBCO) and Les Hawkins (CONSER). Brief announcements from the chairs of the Standing Committees on Automation, Standards, and Training will cover decisions taken during meetings held by these three groups during the Midwinter Meeting. Ruschoff will then brief attendees on actions of the PCC Policy Committee taken at its November 2003 annual meeting and plans for 2004.

Following these reports, the meeting will feature a discussion on the topic: "Building Consensus and an Operational Plan for PCC Contributions". The Library Executive Council at the University of Maryland asked catalogers to examine participation in PCC. Ruschoff will summarize the discussions that have taken place thus far and the operational plan for record contributions that has resulted. The implications of the work of the PCC Assessment Task Group on this topic will be highlighted. Questions for discussion: Would the model used by Maryland be helpful to others in examining their participation in PCC? What are the obstacles to contributing PCC records that catalogers experience? What changes could be made that would encourage catalogers to contribute more of their records as PCC level records?

Preparing 21ST Century Cataloging and Metadata Professionals

"Preparing 21st Century Cataloging and Metadata Professionals: A Workshop for Educators and Trainers", cosponsored by ALCTS (Association for Library Collections & Technical Services), ALISE (Association for Library and Information Science Education), LC, and OCLC, will be held on Friday, Jan. 9, 8:00 am-5:00 pm, in conjunction with the ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Diego. Organized by the ALCTS/ALISE Task Force for Preparing Cataloging and Metadata Educators and Trainers, this symposium is targeted to library and information science educators and continuing education and training providers. It will highlight strategies for integrating metadata and Web resource cataloging into library and information science and continuing education courses and curricula. Attendance is limited and registration ($25) is by application. To learn more, visit the ALCTS web site at: http://www.ala.org/alcts/events/ [December 2003], or contact ALCTS at 312-280-5037. This is an off shoot of the LC Action Plan on Bibliographic Control of Web Resources.

LC Portals Applications Issues Group

On Nov. 24, 2003, the LC Portals Applications Issues Group (LCPAIG) sponsored a program titled "Finding It Faster: Portal Applications For Information Discovery and Retrieval." More than 250 staff listened to five members of LCPAIG describe how portal and OpenURL application tools operate, summarize their potential in helping staff find materials easily and quickly and informed staff of LCPAIG's testing and market analysis of several portal and OpenURL products. A panel composed of other LCPAIG members answered questions from the audience at the conclusion of the program.

The Powerpoint presentations prepared by these speakers are available on the LCPAIG Web site at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/lcpaig/paig.html [December 2003]. A link to the Webcast of the entire program will soon be placed on this site as well.

LCPAIG recently redesigned and enhanced the content of its Web site. It currently has an extensive list of Web links to federated search portal and OpenURL products and vendors, numerous reports and electronic materials on portals and OpenURL prepared by major library organizations and standards organizations, and citations and abstracts of nearly thirty articles about portals and OpenURL. In addition, LCPAIG has composed a special section on their Web site called "Starting Out with Portals and OpenURL" which provides a general introduction to these topics. It includes definitions and links to recommended articles and other material about OpenURL and portals on the Web. The URL of the LCPAIG Web site is: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/lcpaig/paig.html [December 2003].

Recent Beat Activities

The Library's Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT) notes several new initiatives and upgrades to existing projects.

The newest of these is a significant advancement in the ECIP (electronic cataloging in publication) Tables of Contents Project. Using programming by three BEAT Team members, this project now has the capability to create a web-based TOC for virtually all ECIP records that contain table of contents data. These data will be created programmatically, and a hot-link in the table of contents to and conversely from the underlying record in the LC catalog is made for every item. The new programs handle most diacritical marks and also enrich the table of contents Web display with the LC subject headings that have been applied by cataloging staff.

This process is one of the two modes in which the ECIP TOC Project operates. In the other, table of contents data are added to the body of the catalog record by catalogers and staff during the course of the regular ECIP cataloging process. With the addition of the new capabilities, LC cataloging staff will continue to add table of contents data to the catalog record according to guidelines for such work. (Currently about one-third of all ECIPs receive such treatment). This means that for some titles, data will be available on the Web as well as within the record itself.

Additional information about the ECIP Tables of Contents Project is available at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/beat/ecip.html [December 2003].

This project continues to make links from the LC catalog to full electronic texts of items represented in the LC collections. Two recent additions are noted below.

In the most recent initiative, 379 titles represented in the Library's collections were linked to The California Digital Library ( [December 2003]) to eScholarship texts that have been made publicly available through the Library.

In another addition to this project, BEAT has added links to bibliographic records for more than thirty-five titles from Indiana University, Bloomington, Victorian Women Writers Project. This collaboration with Indiana University, Bloomington links to items in a project that aims "to produce highly accurate transcriptions of works by British women writers of the 19th century, encoded using ... SGML. The works ... include anthologies, novels, political pamphlets, religious tracts, children's books and volumes of poetry and verse drama."

Additional information about the Web Access to Works in the Public Domain Project is available at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/beat/pub.domain.html [December 2003], and fuller descriptions of BEAT projects as well as information about BEAT are found at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/beat/beat.html [December 2003].

New Catalogers

Kristin Anderson has joined Technology Team I as a cataloger. She received her BA in German from Oberlin College and her MLIS from San Jose State University. She has managed one-person technical libraries at Borland, the software company, and at a Boston-area optical networking firm. From 1998 to 2000, she served on a nuclear power documentation indexing team at the Westinghouse Energy Center in Pittsburgh. She interned as a map cataloger at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She spent two years in Nicaragua as a Spanish interpreter.

Jennifer A. Baum has joined the Physical Sciences Team as a cataloger. Prior to coming to the Library, she worked as a digital librarian in the private sector for five years. She provided analysis and expertise on managing nearly twelve million records housed in four homegrown systems, as well as approximately eight million records exchanged in a cooperative partnership featuring multiple vendors, systems, and formats. She also taught courses on advanced search engine techniques, Boolean searching, and effective research on the Web. To facilitate staff access to key information, she designed and maintained multiple user interfaces and intranets.

Chantal E. Fabre is a new cataloger in the Technology Team II. She has an MA in French language and literature from the University of Virginia and has had extensive experience teaching French and Latin. She received an MLIS from the University of Washington in 2002. As a 2001 intern at the American Library in Paris, she provided reference services and prepared specialized documents for use with electronic periodical indexes. She is a member of the American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, International Association for Language Learning Technologies, and the American Association of Teachers of French.

Julia Wisniewski is a new cataloger in the Art and Architecure Team II. She earned her MSLS in 1984 from the Catholic University of America. During the past fourteen years she cataloged art books and electronic resources at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her article sbout her personal Web site was published in Art Documentation. She has a BA and an MA in art history from the University of Maryland, College Park and wrote her thesis on the "temptation of Christ" scene in the Book of Kells.

LC CATALOGING NEWSLINE (ISSN 1066-8829) is published irregularly by the Cataloging Directorate, Library Services, Library of Congress, and contains news of cataloging activities throughout the Library of Congress. Editorial Office: Cataloging Policy and Support Office, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540-4305. Editor, Robert M. Hiatt; Editorial Advisory Group: Julianne Beall, John Byrum, Roselyne Chang, Jurij Dobczansky, Les Hawkins, Albert Kohlmeier, Susan Morris, Geraldine Ostrove, William Starck, Valerie Weinberg, David Williamson, and Roman Worobec. Address editorial inquiries to the editor at the above address or rhia@loc.gov. (email), (202) 707-5831 (voice), or (202) 707-6629 (fax). Listowner: David Williamson. Address subscription inquiries to the listowner at dawi@loc.gov.

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