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 (
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,
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,
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:
§
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 (
§
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
The WMS is used to organize
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
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
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
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.