Website for 23rd Annual NASIG Conference

The url for NASIG's conference homepage has recently changed to http://www.nasig.org/2008_conference_program.cfm

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.

"Catalog/Cataloging Changes and Web 2.0 Functionality: New Directions for Serials" by Rebecca Kemp

Kemp discusses the organization and presentation of serials data in library catalogs with a particular interest in the relationships between serials. Included is a brief discussion of the application of FRBR concepts to serials and how these concepts along with the use of identifiers (some yet to be created) and superwork records (to fully outline the history of a serial title) could provide a useful framework for the organization of serials data. She also calls for the simplification of cataloging rules, looking to RDA for flexibility for future cataloging needs and citing the CONSER standard record as an improvement currently underway. Outsourcing is another means she cites to simplify the cataloging process. She argues that simpler records have the dual advantage of being more understandable for users and more efficient to create. Another aspect she considers in catalog design, specifically the implementation of web 2.0 functionality. She briefly addresses mash-ups, user-created metadata (a.k.a. tagging), user reviews, and personalization through recommender services as ways of bringing web 2.0 into library catalogs. She also touches on improvements in search technology such as relevance ranking, metasearching, natural language searching, faceted searching, and clustering. How can these advances help users searching for serials titles or articles? Kemp outlines five scenarios for locating known and unknown items, including mock-ups of catalog results screens. Overall, Kemp attempts to cover a lot of ground in this article and as a result does not provide comprehensive coverage on any of the topics included.

Kemp's article can be found in The Serials Librarian, vol. 53, no. 4 (2008), pages 91-112.