Bibliographic Services — McMaster University Libraries

It’s been a few months since we posted anything new.

In part, it’s just because we’ve been so busy. We’ve all moved into new quarters on the opposite side of our tech services floor and the cataloguers have begun their half-time reference duties. Add to that vacations and conferences, and we’ve been spread pretty thin.

In part, it’s also been that not a lot has happened in terms of cataloguing in the last few months. (We’ve been busy enough with other developments…) But now it all seems to be happening at once, so I’ll see if I can get a few updates posted.

On another note, I expect we’ll be moving to a new URL in the near future. With the Library’s transformation underway, Bibliographic Services has been phased out and the cataloguing function merged with acquisitions. I’ve hesitated to set up another blog until we finalize our new department’s name, but once that’s done look for the Bib Services blog content to migrate to a new home of its own.

We’ve had our new cataloguing procedure in place for a couple of weeks now (I was a little slow in blogging it).

In that time, Ros, Marcia, and Kim have done a terrific job of testing and asking lots of good questions. The cataloguers have met to discuss the process and have done some review of the books being sent over to cataloguing. Based on what we’ve seen and talked about, the procedures have been revised.

The most significant change is the handling of series, which made up the bulk of items received in cataloguing. With the first draft of the procedure, we asked for all series to be sent to cataloguing. This proved to be too broad a net, which would quickly outstrip our remaining cataloguing time. We’ve revised the procedure so that only those series lacking an authority record in Horizon (meaning we’ve not seen them before and don’t know how they’re handled) and straight series are sent to cataloguing. If an authority record for the series has already been imported, the series is classed separately (‡a=s in field 646 of the authority record), and the bibliographic record meets the completeness requirements (based on ELvl), the record will be accepted without further review and the book sent on for labeling. Hopefully that was clearer in bullet form in the procedure than it looks here…

The transformation of McMaster’s University Library is well underway, and Bib Services has seen some major changes.

We’re making progress on our shelf-ready arrangements and should have those up and running soon. In the mean time, with our numbers reduced and books still coming in, we needed to find a way to keep them moving along. As a result, we’ve significantly altered our approach to monograph cataloguing.

In the past, our decision on whether to accept copy cataloguing records was made based on where the record came from. Library of Congress records were accepted, others were passed on to Original Cataloguing for further review. We have abandoned that approach, and are now using the quality and completeness of the record as the basis for deciding which ones need further scrutiny.

Under our new procedures, we are accepting catalogue records that meet or exceed the BIBCO Core Record Standard for books. Since we import the bulk of our records from OCLC, we are looking at records with an Encoding Level (ELvl) of 4, I, or blank, indicating that they have Core or Full level cataloguing. This leaves a much smaller number of records that are automatically routed to cataloguing.

Making this change will allow our cataloguers to focus their attention on Research Collections and unique McMaster resources, scores, Canadian history and literature, e-resources, and other areas where their expertise and experience are needed.

The initial set of procedures developed for use by our acquisitions staff, who import records at the time of ordering, is outlined below. We are already modifying portions of this to allow more materials to pass with less review. It’s going to be a work in progress for a while, but will allow us to get resources out to our users more quickly than before.

• At the point of ordering, import a catalogue record from OCLC, matching the author, title, publisher, and date of the book to be ordered.
  • If there is more than one record for the item in OCLC, prefer the record with ELvl code I, 4, or blank.
• If any of the following are true, create a workslip note, “Send to cataloguing on receipt.”
  • The catalogue record’s ELvl code is other than I, 4, or blank
  • The catalogue record contains a series statement in field 440 or 490.
  • The catalogue record lacks a complete (both ‡a and ‡b are present) call number in either field 050 or 090.
  • The item is Canadian history or literature (Brian Prince).
  • The item will be located in Research Collections or Russell Archives.
• If there is no record in OCLC, create a brief record and add the workslip note from above.
• If none of the above applies, and the record’s ELvl code is I, 4, or blank, cataloguing is considered complete.
  • Continue to delete 856s containing “access” URLs.
  • You may send to cataloguing records that you find questionable, but we will generally accept as correct records with the specified ELvl codes.