Association for Asian Studies

Council on East Asian Libraries

Committee on Technical Processing

Annual Meeting Minutes

 

March 25, 2009, 10:40 am-12:30 pm

Sheraton Hotel (Chicago Ballroom 10)

Chicago, Illinois

 

Introduction

 

The Chair of the Committee on Technical Processing, Sarah S. Elman, welcomed the presenters and the audience. She then reviewed the program agenda and introduced each speaker before the first presentation.

 

 

Notable Differences between AACR2 and RDA Provisions (Presenter:  Hideyuki Morimoto)  [Presentation slides]

 

This is one of CTP’s programs focusing on RDA, a newly developed content standard to be better equipped in digital environment that will replace AACR2, current cataloging standard. Mr. Morimoto, the presenter, is the chair of the RDA Review Task Force under the Committee on Cataloging: Asian and African Materials, CCS, ALCTS, ALA. He has been very actively involved in RDA development. In this presentation, Mr. Morimoto shared his rich knowledge by providing detailed comparisons of notable differences of AACR2 and RDA. His comparison follows AACR2 structure from description to access, familiar by many catalogers. For details, see his full presentation slides.

 

 

Non-Roman text in name authorities (Presenter:  Philip Melzer) [Presentation slides]

 

*These notes are to be used with the PowerPoint presented by Philip Melzer.

 

OCLC and other NACO nodes launched a very important project last year (it is conventionally called pre-population project) that programmatically added nonroman references to personal and corporate names in the National Name Authority file.

 

Philip Melzer’s presentation consists of several parts as follows:

 

1.      The current NACO personal and corporate name records after the pre-population project contain two new features: two catalogers’ notes and fixed field 008/29 with code ‘b’.

 

2.      A few important sites for the information on this project:

http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/nonlatingeneral.html

http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/nonlatinfaq.html

http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/nonlatin_whitepaper.html

 

3.      A brief guideline on how to deal with the pre-populated record from The Library’s Policy and Standards Division (PSD)

 

a.       Obvious errors:  (ppt headings: Suh, Dae-Sook, Wang, Nianci, and Chang, Hak)

Do correct only for obvious errors. When in doubt, do not take any action (ppt heading:  Paegin Munhakhoe).

 

b.      Variant forms:

Do retain all of the cases below.

 

Simplified vs. traditional form of Chinese character (ppt heading: Liu, Jialing)

Variant Korean Hangul forms (ppt heading: Yi, Sun-sin)

Korean references with/without spaces (ppt heading: Yi, Chol)

 

c.       Differentiated personal name with several different nonroman forms added:

Any NAR coded as a differentiated personal name (ff 008/32 = a), but that represents more than one person after pre-population, can be edited in one of two ways:

 

§         If you have resources or information to create additional authority records, please do so by transferring references and leaving the code ‘a’ in the ff 008/32 as a differentiated personal name.

 

§         If you don’t have time or resources to resolve the differentiation issues, just leave the 400s as they are for the time being and make sure to change the ff 008/32 code to ‘b’ to make it an undifferentiated name record (ppt headings: Kitamura, Takashi, and Wang, Li).  The record for Wang, Li has been cleaned up using whatever resources are available. But the record remains an undifferentiated name record.

 

d.      MARC8-repertoire characters that are very similar:

These variant MARC8 characters appear to be identical but the coding is different. Since OCLC went through the duplication detection process, there should not be any duplicate references. Therefore, don’t assume they are incorrect. If in doubt, report the situation to PSD or OCLC (ppt heading: Otemae Joshi Daigaku. $b Shigaku Kunkyujo).

 

4.      PSD requests your input

The Library of Congress will seek a mechanism to get feedback from the library community and will announce when it is ready. In the meanwhile, Philip asked the library community to send questions and comments to David Reser, PSD (policy@loc.gov), or Jiping Wu at the Cooperative Programs Section (jiwu@loc.gov).

 

5.      LC particularly requests feedback for the following questions;

 

§         What should be the policy for including nonroman data in 670 fields?  Give nonroman form for name citation only in subfield ‘b’ or title citation in subfield ‘a’ also?

 

§         Philip explained the format of the 670 that LC staff agreed upon for the time being.  (ppt heading: 670 Guangxi wen shi zi liao xuan ji)

 

§         Which form shall we provide in the Higher body in reference? Roman form or nonroman form? Why? (ppt heading: Korea (South). $b Nongnimbu. $b Nongsanmul Yutongguk. $b Chaeso Tukchakkwa)

 

§         Which form shall we provide in the name-title heading?  Should we provide nonroman in the name part too? Why? (ppt heading: Lu, Xun, $d 1881-1936. $t Lu Xun ri ji)

 

§         Should we provide nonroman in the $c and $d part for the name heading record?  Why? (ppt headings: Chang, $c Huibin, $d d. 1701, and Huang, Zhaizhong, $d jin shi 1822)

 

§         Should we provide nonroman for the qualifier in the heading? Why? (ppt heading: Nan kai da xue (Tianjin, China))

 

§         Should we send a message to OCLC to correct the corresponding bib record after correcting an erroneous reference on a NAR with 667 Machine-derived non-Latin script reference project?

 

6.      CEAL members are asked to consider working with the CJK NACO Project to clean up the nonroman references in certain authority records as follows:

§         forming a cleanup project of your own

§         thinking of how cleanup projects might best be formed

§         suggesting priorities for cleanup

§         identifying which records need to be corrected

 

 

Cataloguing in the Digital Era: Introduction to WMS (Workflow Management Systems) (Presenter:  Li Sun) [Presentation slides]

 

Li Sun started her presentation providing the background that with the developments in library technology environment, there has been an explosion of information and availability of articles, databases, and online resources.  Consequently, there has been a decrease in the number of users who physically come to the library and borrow physical volumes.  As a result, there has been an increase in the demand for provision of remote access and some other innovative reference services.

 

In terms of cataloguing, she observed that around 99% of libraries currently have some kind of digital project initiative; 79% of libraries are current users of non-MARC metadata.  Cataloging positions have been redefined, and there is an emergence of a new generation of metadata librarians.

 

With the shift from traditional cataloging to metadata cataloging, several challenges are imposed on organizational structure and library infrastructure (funding, personnel). Librarians coming into the field of cataloging need to bring in new skills and further engage in team work within and out of their organizations. 

 

In the latter part of her presentation, Li Lun gave a brief demonstration of Open WMS (Workflow Management System) used at Rutgers highlighting the following features:

  • Unicode compliant
  • Full METS support
  • Web accessible
  • Allows open source for free download
  • Easy customization
  • Able to ingest to Fedora
  • Files may be edited after uploaded
  • Templates can be created with RUCORE (Rutgers’s software)

 

The WMS is used to organize Rutgers’s digital collections.  It is not integrated in their library system; so users have to search for digital collections separately.  Li Sun mentioned that although they run separately, it is possible to import the WMS records into the library system and make the records available in the catalog.

 

 

Managing the Approval Plan for the Chinese Collection: a Library of Congress Experience (Presenter: Ming-sun Poon) [Presentation slides]

 

Dr. Poon started his presentation by introducing the audience the types of acquisition modes the Library of Congress employs for its Chinese collection: approval plan, desiderata catalogs, acquisition trips and gift/exchange. The focus of his presentation would be on approval plan.  He then gave a Library of Congress’ definition as what approval plan was. 

 

The LC has seen some benefits from using the approval plan: making use of vendor’s connection with publishers, streamlining selection process for staffs and reducing acquisitions paperwork.

 

Dr. Poon then explained how the approval plan works at the Library of Congress: first setting up collection profile, setting up agreement with vendors, then vendors send catalogs electronically, Asian Division Recommending Officers examine the catalogs and make selection decisions, decisions then are sent to Acquisition Specialists, who in turn send the selection decisions to the vendors. At last the vendors ship materials based on the selection decision.

 

What kind of decisions the Recommending Officers need to make in the process? Accept selections provided by the approval plan, de-select from selection, accept recommendations or reject them and add selection that isn’t included in the approval plans. 

 

Dr. David Shambaugh of the George Washington University wrote in an evaluation report on the LC’s Chinese collection and recommended the following areas as its selection priorities: Foreign policy and international relations, American studies & Sino-American relations, Chinese Communist Part and domestic politics, military affairs and national security, economic development.  Dr. Poon added the continuation of areas of strength.

 

Even though the approval plans work smoothly for LC, there is always room for improvement: the collection profiles could be more detailed, a hotline with the vendors could be maintained, and vendors should be fully informed of the collection policies in order to make changes quickly.

 

At the end of the presentation, Dr. Poon pointed out what the recommending officers could do strategically with the approval plan: take actions quickly, don’t be shy in de-selecting titles from the approval plan and add new titles liberally.  Accepting the approval plans modestly and making use of other acquisition modes.

    

 

A win-win approach to NPO in economically hard time (Presenter: Hikaru Nakano) [Presentation slides]

 

Hikaru started her presentation by showing the audience a map of the Japanese language schools in the United States including Alaska and Hawaii.  These private schools are designed for kids with native Japanese speaking parents who want their kids to have a Japanese speaking environment.  They can be easily found near universities or companies.  The social function of these schools is serving as community centers for Japanese immigrants and expatriates.

 

These schools’ revenue comes from different sources: Japanese government support, tuition, Box Tops for Education (groceries coupons saved for the schools), Funding Factory (online fund raising program by recycling products to earn school technology, equipment or cashes), Good Neighbor Program and selling used books.

 

The used books serve as a good way for the university libraries to find out what the communities are interested:  trends, gaps in their collections, research and interest areas.  However these books are not important for the Japanese people to bring them back to Japan.

 

What the schools do with these books? They sell them. They first select the books they want to sell, receive vendor applications, process invoices, attach the order records to the books and last process the payments.

 

The benefits for buyers: not only the cost is extremely low, but also the price is negotiable. It is like bookstore, the buyers could flip through the books and there is no shipping and handling involved.  University libraries could have a better understanding of the local communities and build a better relationship with them.

 

The benefits for sellers: successful fund raising and build good relationship with the universities.  

 

 

Questions & Answers

 

For Dr. Poon Ming Sun’s approval plan at Library of Congress

 

Q:        Who are the vendors?

A:        I am not sure this is the right place to advertise.  Let me discuss this with you privately after the presentation.

 

Q:        What are your recommendations?

A:        Each approval plan catalog consists of anywhere from 100 to 450 titles.  On average, 60% of the titles in the approval plan catalogs will be selected.  For useful titles not listed in the approval plan catalogs, Asian Division’s librarians will find the information from various sources and ask our vendor to provide them.

 

Q:        Are there going to be any shelf-ready books in the near future?

A:        Not ready yet.  At this moment, vendors usually provide AIP (Acquisitions in Progress) records, affix barcodes and do binding before sending the books to the Library of Congress.  Not fully shelf-ready yet.

 

Q:        Are you requiring the vendors to do everything online?

A:        The approval plan catalogs are transmitted to us electronically, and our decisions are also transmitted electronically to them.  But as far as I know the vendor sends us invoices by mail.

 

Q:        What’s the percentage of duplication?

A:        We check the approval plan catalogs against our OPAC and card catalogs very carefully to eliminate duplications.  So far we have been very successful.

 

Q:        What’s the percentage of de-selection?

A:        So far less than 15 titles for each catalog.

 

Q:        Could you share your acquisition profile with us?

A:        I don’t have a copy with me today.  In the Library of Congress, Acquisitions Specialists handle the profile, not the Recommending Officers.

 

Q:        Do you do content evaluation with the vendors?

A:        Do evaluation not only on content of selection, but also efficiency. Recommending Officers check a lot of bibliographic tools to see if our vendors miss any important books.

 

Q:        Do you conduct study to see what the percentage of approval plan matches the      specialists’ selection?

A:        We do spot checks to see if approval plan meet the acquisition profile.  We also conduct acquisition trips to fill in the gaps in acquisitions.  In other words, we don’t rely solely on approval plan.

 

Q:        What mechanism you use to ensure the vendor doing its job?

A:        Darwinism – survival of the fittest.  If the vendor does not provide good service, they won’t get the contract renewed.

 

For Li Sun

 

Q:        Regarding the software created in WMS, what is the relationship to online catalog? Can you search them together or separately?

 

A: They are two different systems, no connection, but records can be exported to catalog.

 

Q:        Can your system connect to catalog toolkits? How can you do it?

A:        It is a standalone system but may be connected to other public interface, if data export as MARC to local catalog.