CONSER At-Large Meeting Summary from June 27, 2010, Available

A summary of the CONSER At-Large Meeting held at the ALA Annual Conference on June 27, 2010, is now available on the CONSER website.  Topics covered include:

• Open Access Journal Project
• OCLC's CONSER database scan
• CONSER documentation and training
• RDA testing
• ISSN update

The Serials Librarian Announces New Editors

The following announcement was posted on SERIALST:

Dear All,

Early this summer marked the retirement of Jim Cole, both from librarianship at Iowa State University and from his editorship of the peer-reviewed journal published by Taylor and Francis, The Serials Librarian.

Now co-editing SL are Louise Cole of the University of Kingston in London (no relation to Jim!) and Andrew Shroyer of California State University at Los Angeles.

We welcome submissions of new content for SL, and any thoughts you may have about the nature of the journal or directions for the future!

Please forward any articles you have authored for SL (as well as your thoughts) to our shared email address: editorserialslib@gmail.com.

This is a time of exciting developments and milestones in the evolution of journals and serials. The continuing transition to electronic forms, the devising of big package deals for providing serial publication content, the struggle to adapt the library organization to the demands of e-resources, the advent of open access journals and the testing of RDA, for instance, are all both unsettling and exhilarating processes for serials librarians. We want to ensure that The Serials Librarian provides its readership with relevant readings, knowledge of breakthroughs, good practical pointers and a forum for healthy debate of all the issues.

This is a first effort at serving as a journal editor for each of us. Thank you for your support as we manage this transition.

--Andrew and Louise

ALCTS CRS CRCC Forum Presentations Now Available

The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS), Continuing Resources Section (CRS), Continuing Resources Cataloging Committee (CRCC) has posted presentations from their Monday Update Forum held at the ALA annual conference in Washington, DC, this year.

The two featured speakers were:

• Tina Shrader, a representative from the National Agricultural Library on the Task Group coordinating the official testing of RDA
• Renette Davis, who shared thoughts on preparing staff for testing RDA at the University of Chicago

Presentations are posted on the ALA website and on ALA Connect.

Full minutes of the meeting will also be posted on ALA Connect.

via OCLC-CAT

588 Field: Source of Description Note

Now available on the CONSER website, information on the new source of description note:

• Draft instructions for the MARC 588 field (pages from the CONSER Editing Guide)
• PowerPoint slides from a recent webinar
  
• Archived webinar
  

CONSER Operations Representatives Meeting

Outcomes and Action Items from the CONSER Operations Representatives Meeting, held May 6-7, 2010, have now been posted on the CONSER website. Topics covered include:

• ISBD punctuation
• Implementation of new MARC coding
• Multiple character set guidelines
• Open Access Project Task Group report
• Lack of one-to-one correspondence between print and online versions due to changes in title change rules
• Linking field issues
• Changes to uniform titles
• RDA testing
• ISSN-L
• And more!
  

"Record Authentication as a Barrier: Reflections on Returning to CONSER" by Christopher H. Walker

Christopher H. Walker's humorous essay on his career in serials both entertains and makes some relevant observations on the frustrations faced by catalogers in non-CONSER institutions who discover mistakes and needed updates to CONSER-authenticated bibliographic records in OCLC's WorldCat database. He concludes:

CONSER authentication remains valuable as a guarantee that the bibliographic description is the work of one or more catalogers with significant training. But because serials continue to develop and change until they cease, it may be time to look for strategies, as a cataloging community, to share more widely the burden of keeping those records up-to-date.

This article is published in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 2 & 3 (Feb. 2010), pages 161-168.
DOI: 10.1080/01639370903535684

"Doing More with More: The UC CONSER Funnel Experience" by Valerie Bross

"Doing More with More" outlines the process undertaken by libraries in the University of California system to create a CONSER funnel. The experiences of the UC Funnel and the lessons learned shared by Bross provide useful information to other groups that might consider creating a similar funnel.

This article is published in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 2 & 3 (Feb. 2010), pages 135-160.
DOI: 10.1080/01639370903535676