LC Cataloging Consolidates

Report on bibliographic control coming in November

By Jay Datema -- Library Journal, 8/15/2007

The Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, aimed to recommend changes to the library community and advise the Library of Congress (LC), held its third and final public meeting on July 9 at LC, focusing on “The Economics and Organization of Bibliographic Data.”

The conclusion of the meetings—and the library community's nudge toward a more search engine–friendly world—will come in a report issued in November. The likely outcome of the report will be further LC use of the PCC (Program for Cooperative Cataloging) for non-English-language materials, as the reorganization continues for LC catalogers.

Already, changes are afoot. LC, which reorganized acquisitions and cataloging into one administrative unit in 2004, will merge cataloger workflows in 2008, with retraining to take place over the next 12–36 months, according to Beacher Wiggins, LC's director for acquisitions and bibliographic control. New job descriptions will be created, and new partners for international records (excluding authority records) are being selected.

With several panels, invited speakers, and an open forum (including a public webcast), Deanna Marcum, LC associate librarian for library services, framed the discussion: “Worries about MARC as an international standard make it seem like we found it on a tablet.... Many catalogers believe catalogs...should be a public good,” she continued, “but, in this world, it's not possible to ignore economic considerations.”

Wiggins cited a 2005 Marcum paper that assessed the costs of cataloging at $44 million per year. LC has 400 cataloging staff (down from 750 in 1991), who cataloged 350,000 volumes in 2006.

Wiggins said concerns about precoordination of subject headings, seen as essential by Thomas Mann, an LC cataloger and author of The Oxford Guide to Library Research, would be addressed by streamlining the process of adding single word headings.

Mechael Charbonneau, director of technical services at Indiana University Libraries, gave some history about PCC, which was implemented to extend collaboration and to find cost savings in the late 1990s, when libraries faced budget crunches. Charbonneau said that PCC records are considered to be equivalent to LC records, “trustworthy and authoritative.” With four main areas, including BIBCO for bibliographic records, NACO for name authority, SACO for subject authority, and CONSER for serial records, international participants have effectively supplemented LC records.

PCC's strategic goals include looking at new models for non-MARC metadata, being proactive rather than reactive, being flexible, achieving close working relationships with publishers, and internationalizing authority files, which has begun with LC, OCLC, and the Deutsche Bibliotek.

Karen Calhoun, OCLC VP for WorldCat and Metadata Services, listed seven economic challenges for the working group: productivity, redundancy, value, scale, budgets, demography, and collaboration. Calhoun said new models for acquisitions are the next frontier, just as Fred Kilgour, OCLC founder, led libraries into an age of “enhanced productivity in cataloging.”

With various definitions of quality from librarians and end users, libraries must broaden their scale of bibliographic control for more materials. Calhoun argued that “narrowing our scope is premature.”

Teri Frick, technical services librarian at Orange County Public Library, VA, questioned Calhoun about OCLC replacing LC services for small public libraries, saying her library can't afford OCLC and any change to LC cataloging policy would have a huge effect. “OCLC is struggling with that,” Calhoun acknowledged. “I don't think we have the answers.”

Mary Catherine Little, director of technical services at Queens Library, NY, pointed out that her library, which has a multilingual and growing collection, prefers to get records from online vendors or directly from publishers; 90 percent of English-language records enter the catalog prior to publication. Little also said, “Uncataloged collections are better than backlogs” and many patrons discover high-demand titles in audio and video by walking around. Little called for community tagging, word clouds, and open source and extensible catalogs. “The Library of Congress has been behind, and the future is open source software and interoperability through cooperation,” she said.

Marcum cited LC's mission, which is “to make the world's creativity and the world's knowledge accessible to Congress and the American people,” and said LC's leadership role can't be diminished.

With LC's 100 million hidden items (including photos, videos, etc.), curators are called upon in 21 reading rooms to direct users to hidden treasures. However, “in the era of the web, user expectations are expanding, but funding is not. Thus, things need to be done differently, and we will be measuring success as never before,” Marcum said.