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ACRL/NEC Serials Interest Group ProgramsStandards of Seriality: A Report from the ACRL/NEC Serials Interest Group Spring 2003 ProgramPatricia A. Hatch
Presents a summary report of the Association of College and Research Libraries New England Chapter’s Serials Interest Group’s Spring 2003 program, which dealt with the theoretical and practical issues concerning the serials standards. Topics covered by the speakers included the new serials chapter found in AACR2, the ISSN in the digital world, standards implementation by bibliographic utilities and the people committed to creating serials standards that improve access to critical information. This author’s summary report focuses on the key points made by each of the speakers in their presentations. More than 70 technical services Librarians from around the New England area gathered at the Harvard Medical School's Tosteson Medical Education Center in Boston Massachusetts for the ACRL New England Chapter Serials Interest Group’s Spring 2003 Program, which presented a panel of distinguished speakers who discussed serials standards and the people and processes that make them work. Judith Messerle, the Librarian of the Francis A. Countway Library at the Harvard Medical School, welcomed the participants and guests to the forum. Patricia A. Hatch, Library Analyst/Training Specialist at the Harvard University Library Office of Information Systems, then introduced the panel and gave the opening remarks. Gretchen Yealy, Serials Catalog Librarian,
Brown University Library According to the website for the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, a paper was drafted to review AACR2 to accommodate the concept of seriality following the International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR in 1997. After many meetings, drafts, papers, and revisions, new chapters were added to AACR2 in 2002 to clarify and broaden the definition of serials and added rules for the handling of integrated resources. This means that, for serials catalogers and serials librarians generally, the new millennium has brought with it new ideas and new challenges for dealing with continuing resources. Now that we have the changes to AACR2, serials librarians will need to learn about the changes, incorporate them into existing workflows, and do this in an era of staff shortages and lower budgets. The ACRL/NEC Serials Interest Group is pleased to present a panel of four leaders in the area of standards that have agreed to share with us information about these new standards, including how they are being implemented. They will also speak about those who attend the many meetings, draft papers, and approve the final versions of those standards. This subset of our profession is working cooperatively within the library community and with other stakeholders to achieve the goal of providing library users with access to these continuing resources: the resources that contain the latest research, fresh topics, and set the stage for future developments. Continuing Resources: the New AACR2 Chapter 12 Gretchen's talk centered around the recent changes to Chapter 12 of AACR2, which expanded the definition of seriality, now referring to "serials" as "continuing resources." The new chapter also revamped many of the cataloging rules dealing with title changes, looseleafs and electronic resources. Gretchen provided us with many excellent examples that demonstrated how the new rules should be applied to continuing resources. ISSN and the Digital Wonderland Regina Reynolds' discussion focused on the "ISSN in the Digital Wonderland", noting that the ISSN is being applied to many types of materials and is being used in a variety of creative ways. For example, ISSNs are widely recognized as a way of identifying continuing resources and their many manifestations. Electronic subscriptions of all types (not just serials) are utilizing the ISSN as a way of linking to resources. Products such as SFX and CrossRef rely on the ISSN to link a library's holdings to electronic journals. Materials being retrospectively digitized are also being given ISSNs The ISSN standard is now undergoing its five-year review. It is anticipated that one of the major discussions for the standard renewal is the question of giving different ISSNs for different manifestations of the same journal title, i.e., one ISSN for the print version, another for the CD-ROM version, and another for the online version. Some thought is being given to creating an ISSN base number with a suffix to denote the type of format that the library owns. Making Standards Work: Implementing MARC Format Changes Diane Baden gave an overview of how changes to MARC and other standards are incorporated into OCLC following their approval by national committees. The process can take anywhere from weeks to months, depending on the complexity of the change and the interrelationships to other bibliographic fields and values. OCLC will evaluate the changes, undertake the programming, test the programs to make sure that they work, publicize the changes to its members, install the new software, and provide training, if necessary. Diane provided the group with a case study of a recent change required by a MARC update and how many hours it would take to implement a small change: this tuned out to be 618 hours (@26 days) and a cost of approximately $30,000. It is apparent that every time there is a change, it is no small task for a bibliographic utility to implement the change into its system. Process and Community: A View of Content Standards Development for Serials Matthew Beacom, who currently serves as the American Library Association's representative to the Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of AACR, provided us with information on how the standards community works. The committees consists of members from the United States, Canada, Australia and Great Britain. The membership includes Library Associations and some national libraries. Matthew gave us an example of how the process worked using the new AACR2 Chapter 12. He remarked that before this process, the committees were basically reactive, concentrating on making small, incremental changes. When the Joint Committee commissioned papers on revising AACR2, a paper redefining seriality emerged and set the stage for a major revision. Individuals such as Jean Hirons and Regina Reynolds mobilized many people on the committees to work to change the definition of serials as continuing resources and create the new rules found in Chapter 12. Matthew concluded his talk with a comment on why we undertake the work of creating standards: first, because standards provide a benefit to the user for high quality information, second, because standards make library work shareable between institutions and finally, because standards make our work sustainable; by following a standard, migrating to new technologies become much easier. Conclusion Patty Hatch thanked the participants for their presentations. Many librarians who attended the program were pleased with the presentations and felt that they had a better understanding of how new and forthcoming serials standards affect their work. This is another area where those who deal with serials, now called "continuing resources", will have to stay on top of new developments. The planning committee members for this ACRL New England Chapter Serials Interest Group Program were: Patricia A. Hatch, Chair, Library Analyst/Training Specialist, Harvard University Library Office for Information Systems; Joseph A. Gabriel, Director of Technical Services, Gutman Library, Harvard University, Marie Lasher, Head of Collections, McQuade Library, Merrimack College, Noelle Ryan, Serials Librarian, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Roberta Schwartz, Head of Technical Services, Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. |
