More on the CONSER Standard Record

The Report of the CONSER Standard Record (CSR) Monitoring Group has been added to the May 2008 Operations Meeting Agenda. Discussed are possible changes to the standard record guidelines and other proposed updates to the documentation.

FRBR for Serials

"FRBR for Serials: Rounding the Square to Fit the Peg" is another report included in the agenda for the CONSER/BIBCO Operations Meeting to be held May 1-2, 2008. The report is essential reading and is composed of three parts:

"The first part gives the new definition of the serial work; the second presents the proposed serial authority structure, and the third covers the proposed serials cataloging concept of the work segment record."

The proposed serial authority record is used to track the history of title changes for a publication. The proposed "work segment" MARC record blends expression-level and manifestation-level data.

Authentication Codes and Encoding Levels for CONSER Serial Records

CONSER recently issued the agenda for the CONSER/BIBCO Operations Meeting to be held May 1-2, 2008. Included is a link to the report, "Report and Recommendations of the PCC Working Group on Authentication Codes and Encoding Levels for Serials and Integrating Resources." The report includes discussion of the treatment of the "new CONSER record," also referred to as the "CONSER standard record" or as an "access level record." The working group makes both short-term and long-term recommendations. In conclusion, they state:

We recognize that in many ways the underlying goals of the group that developed the new CONSER record are very close to the goals used when creating the core level record: providing guidance on elements essential for access, identification, and retrieval, and relying on cataloger expertise and judgment to know when additional elements are needed for a particular item. However, we are deliberately not recommending the use of encoding level “4,” because we want the concept of the new CONSER record to be viewed with a fresh eye in this new environment, both by administrators and catalogers. The focus of the core record development was on “what can we omit from a record?” The focus of the new CONSER record group was on “what do we need in a record?”

Survey: Serial Holdings Statements

Jean Sibley of Mississippi State University is conducting a brief survey on the use of serials holdings statements.

I am doing a study on holdings statements for
serials - the way they display in the OPAC and
their usefulness to patrons considering the time
and effort expended by Serials staff to update
them. If you would, please take a few moments to
answer a short survey (10 questions)  about how
your library creates and maintains holdings
statements.  Here is the link.

Your participation is completely voluntary and
the survey responses will be anonymous. Results
of this survey will be used in a research
article on current trends in holdings statements.

I would greatly appreciate your response. Feel
free to contact me with any questions you may
have.

Thanks, Jean

B. Jean Sibley
Assistant Professor/Serials Librarian
Mitchell Memorial Library
Mississippi State University
Mississippi State, MS 39762
662-325-7666

via SERIALST

CONSER Editing Guide Update - April 2008

Those of you working with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean serials will be interested in the latest update to the CONSER Editing Guide. Replacement pages for Appendix O: Creating Records with Data in Nonroman Script for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Serials are now available on the CONSER homepage.