NASIG Newsletter

PRECONFERENCES

The Tao of Serials, 101 Things Non-Catalogers Should Know about Serials or Is It Continuing Resources?
Regina Romano-Reynolds, Library of Congress; Marla Whitney Chesler, Library of Congress.
Reported by Eric Elmore

This half-day presentation was designed to give non-cataloging personnel the basics and allow them to begin working in the complex and often changing landscape of serials.  The audience of roughly thirty-five attendees were primarily composed of librarians but also included a few vendor and publisher representatives.  The positions the attendees held ranged from catalogers to electronic resources and acquisitions librarians as well as academic society sales managers/representatives.  The two presenters took turns explaining the various sections of the program. 

The program began with an overview called the “New Bibliographic Universe.”  This was a brief, yet complete, description of what the scholarly publishing environment consists of and defined the various types of resources within the scholarly publishing arena.  Regina Romano-Reynolds spent the first part of the morning defining the various aspects of “finite resources,” such as monographs and successively-issued multiparts and loose-leafs, versus “continuing resources,” which consist of serials and integrating resources.  A significant amount of time was spent answering questions and discussing the differences between a “serial” and an “integrating resource.”  The overview concluded with a discussion of the CIP, Cataloging in Publication, and the differences that make CIPs unavailable for serials.

The second section of the workshop focused on the current and future cataloging rules which govern serials cataloging.  The discussion began by covering AACR2 and the rules for serial title changes and what constitutes major and minor title changes.    The presentation then continued with a discussion of OPAC display issues and problems which make it hard for non-catalogers to understand the terminology used in OPAC displays.  This section concluded with a discussion about RDA, Resource Description and Access, and included some future possibilities for serials cataloging.

The next portion of the workshop focused on MARC.  A brief historical introduction of the development of MARC laid the foundation.  This was followed by examples of raw MARC coding and MARC as displayed in an actual catalog record with all the fixed fields.  The examples were from the Library of Congress website.  The presenters went on to discuss the main MARC fields that pertain to serials cataloging.  Particular attention was given to the 130, uniform title; 022, ISSN; 856, url; and the later “linking fields” in the 7XX range.  The final topic in this portion of the presentation focused on non-MARC methods of description such as MODS, RDF and Dublin Core.

The fourth section of the program contained a discussion about electronic resources.  The presenters began by defining the difference between direct access CD-ROM, DVD, disc; and remote access, basically Internet; for electronic resources.  This section defined CONSER and discussed CONSER single records and aggregator/provider-neutral records.  The presenters then gave examples of integrating resources’ records with the fields visible. The attendees were able to see what one of these records looked like in a working catalog record.

The following section focused on Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR).  Definitions of work, expression, manifestation, and item were given along with diagrams showing the inter-relatedness of the entities.  Non-FRBR and FRBRized displays were then shown so that attendees would be able to see the differences and understand the concepts easily.

Section six focused on the ISSN and related standards.  The scope and definition of the ISSN were given along with the historical facts about the ISSN standard and its implementation.  The basic infrastructure of the ISSN centers was also explained.  The new ISSN-L, or linking ISSN, was described and details of its implementation were discussed.  The importance of the ISSN as the unique linking identifier for serials was stressed followed by discussions about the ONIX for serials, serial item and contribution identifier (SICI) as well as the digital object identifier (DOI) protocols.

Section seven was a humorous case study called “Serial Sam’s Excellent Serials Adventures.”  The presenter proposed several scenarios designed to test the attendees’ ability to pick out not only errors in factual content, but also conceptual errors that had been presented in earlier sections.  Discussion focused on what the errors were and what the correct options should have been.

Section eight was a very detailed examination of numerous catalog examples.  These examples included:  various types of materials such as: conference proceedings, annuals, e-journals, e-books, microform, and minor and major title changes.

The final section was a broader, encompassing look at the way librarians see and deal with serials in the “real world.”  Topics included the commitment and cost factors that librarians must consider when dealing with serials packages in “big deal” packages and normal acquisitions through their institutions and consortia.  Licensing issues and rights management were briefly discussed and the complexity of managing large numbers of e-serials.

Overall, this was a very informative preconference which gave the attendees a very broad overview of the complexity and depth of the issues facing serialists in the modern serials landscape.  Attendees who knew only a little bit about cataloging learned enough to talk intelligently with their catalogers back home and those who were more proficient in cataloging gained information about the complexity facing the serials’ specialists at their institution.