URSUS CATALOGING STANDARDS COMMITTEE

Minutes

February 6, 2009

Present: Sheila Bearor, Chair (LEG), Bretchen Brissette (PI), Kang Cao (ORO), Sharon Fitzgerald (ORO), James Jackson-Sanborn (MIN), Peggi Lovelsss (AUG), Judie Leighton (BPL), Lanny Lumbert (USM), Bryce Cundick (FAR), Elizabeth Phipps (USM), Mary Saunders (MSL), Marrianne Thibodeau (MAC), Lynn Wilcox (LAW), Jonathan Williams (SYS). Kathryn Donahue (FK) joined via teleconference.

Absent:  Beth Addison (PPL), Sarah Campbell (PPL).
 
1. Call to order - The meeting was called to order at 10:03 by chair Sheila Bearor.

2. Assignment of Secretary – AUG representative Peggi Loveless accepted the assignment of secretary in place of the representative from FAR.

3. Introductions – Committee members introduced themselves and welcomed new member Bryce Cundick.

4. Acceptance of September meeting minutes – Minutes of the September 26, 2008 meeting were accepted as written.

4a. Maine InfoNet Update – 3 parts to James Jackson-Sanborn’s report:

I.                    The contract with Innovative Interfaces has been renewed for the period of one year with options to renew. After negotiations the terms were much better than expected – 5% increase plus a 5% escalation clause per year after the initial year, with a 90 day opt-out clause. We currently have a verbal acceptance and have been billed but have no signed contract. Special thanks to Gary Nichols for his intervention.

II.                 The OverDrive audio project is in “Demo” mode now. Go live date is February 23rd with over 1000 titles. Training is available – see the calendar on the MSL page http://evanced.info/maine/evanced/eventcalendar.asp to sign up for training.

III.               Two recent vacancies – Deb Hensler’s position will not be filled. Jon Forest’s position has been frozen but exemption to hire paperwork has been filed so there is hope for the future of that position.

5. Indexes & Databases subcommittee report – 3 handouts were provided: a) Committee Report; b) Notes on Key Fields; and c) Procedures for Setting Up a Database Resource (Proposed for Standards Document) – The committee presented their report which was discussed. It was agreed to include the Procedures document (green sheet) as part of the Standards document with future discussion on section I. part D. Sharing of cataloging system-wide databases. Concern was expressed by Presque Isle and Augusta that the campuses with one-person staffs may not have the resources to participate.

There also was discussion of the procedures to follow when the status of databases change – i.e. free databases are no longer available, subscriptions end.

Jonathan will look into the possibility of changing the subject selection feature so that it is more user-friendly. The committee projects that the subject thesaurus will decrease in size.

6. Call # indexing (SYS) – The de-duping function does not appear to be functioning properly, resulting often in duplicate results. It was voted to not index call numbers in the bib records as most are more interested in results for item records.

7. 856 field links to book reviews (UMF) – Bryce asked about leaving 856 links to book reviews in bib records. We discussed that the standards document does not address book reviews per se, and agreed that promotional publisher-generated reviews should probably not be linked. Bryce will send examples to the committee for further discussion.

8. Springer e-books maintenance (UMA) – Sharon and Kang shared information about the Springer eBooks collection that Orono has purchased, which will be available system-wide. Kang outlined the process for downloading and editing the bib records that Springer is providing, which include an OCLC number but are not in MARC format. The records are run through a freeware program called MarcEdit (http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/html/about.html) to add MARC tags and create items records. The eventual size of the collection will be 30,000 titles.

As an addendum to this discussion, Jonathan mentioned that they are in the process of batch loading 500,000 ERIC document microfilm records in to URSUS and that we will soon reach the 3 millionth bib record. Capacity is 7 million.

9. Altered bib records (MSL) – Mary brought an example of a bib record that MSL had originally downloaded (.B36170847) which had started life as a monograph and been morphed into a serial record. Attached libraries will check to see what has happened.

[It was agreed to take Item 11. out of order to facilitate the lunch schedule.]

11. Including earlier form of heading in authority records with 4xx $w/2 (SYS    http://www.loc.gov/marc/authority/adtracing.html 

http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2007/2007-02.html 

Back Stage Library works does not appear to be updating Authority records when headings change – i.e a death date is added when an author dies.

10. Standards for cataloging digitized items (SYS) – Jonathan initiated this discussion “just to put it on our radar.” He asked “What are the issues we need to be thinking about for the future?” – copyright, collection development, call numbers, and “item” records were all discussed briefly. We questioned if the current model of our catalog is relevant for digitized resources. There was discussion of URL links in item records, which Lynn reminded us has a less-than appealing display at the current time. We will put this on the agenda for future discussion. This led into Sharon’s discussion of the next item…

12. NELINET presentations by Diane Hillman on the Future of Cataloging and Catalogers  (ORO) (link corrected!)

 http://www.nelinet.net/eaccount/EventDetail.aspx?eventid=00000890

Sharon highly recommended this presentation on what the future might look like for catalogs and catalogers. It sounded like a wiki-like approach to bib records. She suggested Googling “NSDL” to see an example of what the future holds.

13. Other business – There was no other business.

14. Next meeting – The next meeting will be Friday, May 1, 2009.