CONNECT Minutes for March 2013

Location:  Capitol Hill Library
Date:  March 12, 2013
Time:  2:00pm - 4:00pm

In attendance: Buddy Johnson-DN- Committee Chair, Julie Ballou-NW, Julia McConnell-NW, Clyde Herrod- CAT, Daniel Fields- BE, Edie Daniels-AL, Tulin LaFollette-DC, Meghan Attalla-RE, Angel Suhrstedt-ED, Karen Litteral- WA, Carol Roberts-CT, Darlene Browers- DN, Tim Fisher-DN, Vickie Dixon-DN, Jennifer Jones-CH

Guests: Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins- CAT, Jana Hausburg- CH

The meeting was called to order at 2:10pm.

Jana Hausburg, MLO, CH expressed a warm welcome to the CONNECT forum.

CONNECT began with introductions and a summary of the purpose and goal of this forum.

CONNECT is meant:

• To serve as a platform for librarians to voice questions and concerns
• To facilitate a learning and sharing environment for professional development, trends in libraries, customer service, legislative issues, and other topics
• To foster a sense of camaraderie between and among the librarians at MLS

The topic for this meeting was cataloging.  The rules of cataloging for libraries (AACR2) have been the same since 1978, and since that time records have been limited by how much information can fit on a 3x5 index card. Computer technology and increased storage space for these records has improved and made it possible for more information to be listed in a catalog record. By March 31, 2013, many libraries plan to create all new catalog records in RDA format. RDA stands for Resource Description and Access.

“Wring out the Old, Bring in the New” Subject Heading Quiz

Participants took a quiz demonstrating the changes in subject headings. Most librarians are not completely aware of the nuances of subjects. The quiz demonstrated how access points to catalog records can often be slow to change (e.g. World War I did not change from European War until the 1980s) or can change rather quickly (e.g. Chick Lit is already a heading). Other examples of changes were a change from ‘Alien Labor’ to ‘Foreign Workers’ and from ‘Costermongers’ to ‘Street-food Vendors.’ The top scores won a Bunny Bucks candy bar from Russell Stover. The quiz and its answers will be posted in the CONNECT resources area for others to try.

Q&A Discussion on RDA

Cataloging Manager Pauline Rodriguez-Atkins was present to share the changes coming with RDA and to explain how the changes would affect MLS. The Q&A was moderated by Julie Ballou. Rodriguez -Atkins shared the evolution of the cataloging process, and how technology has such a large effect on how things are cataloged and stored. The changes from RDA will be largely unnoticeable to customers or even librarians. The most noticeable change will be the inclusion of more information, and the removal of designators (e.g. audiovisual).  More physical descriptions, publisher info and fewer abbreviations will be allowed due to more available space. While the impact on librarians will be minor, the new records could potentially affect the citation information for research papers. The changes would be more noticeable in World Cat, and are to be implemented in the MLS catalog by March 31, 2013. For MLS, only new original cataloging records will be in the new format. Old records will not be converted to the new format.

To see what the new records look like, search the catalog for Lee Roy Selmon, The Gentle Giant (bib# 0815/9543) or Clive and Ian’s Wonderblimp of Knowledge (bib# 0840/3354).

Rodriguez-Atkins shared that one exciting capability that could happen in the future is to have multiple formats of items represented under one record, but that is not happening right now.

The full record of the questions and answers will be posted in the CONNECT resources area for those unable to attend.

Following the scripted questions, Rodriguez-Atkins took questions from the librarians. There was discussion about the potential vendors for a new ILS and whether there were compatibility issues with RDA. Rodriguez-Atkins said the new cataloging format is compatible with all of the potential new systems. Some of the improvements librarians would like to see are the ability to search by location, and the designation of a Y on YA books so they are more easily found by customers (without clicking on holdings to see that it is a YA book.) Rodriguez-Atkins explained that searching by location would be slower, and potentially limit access to materials. She also shared that adding a Y had been discussed in the past but not approved. One theory was because YA books can now be easily moved by individual libraries into either the YA collection or the adult collection and if they have a Y added in the cataloging process this would limit that option.

A question was raised about the effects of the two new libraries on CAT. Rodriguez-Atkins said that CAT is producing 10% more records than last year, and 20% more barcodes. The opening of AL had them very busy for the first part of the year.  In addition, more titles have been purchased than in previous years, but fewer copies of each title are being purchased.

CAT has spent time streamlining their processes to whittle down the time it takes to process materials. Right now the turn-around time is 1-2 days.

“Realia Check” Activity

Next, we had a presentation by Clyde Herrod from CAT about physical descriptions in catalog records.  The word ‘catalog’ comes from the Greek word ‘catalogos’ which means ‘description’. The librarians completed a fun exercise cataloging realia. Clyde distributed several objects to the librarians along with an index card and a ruler. Some items were not labeled or did not have predetermined information, so creativity could be used in deciding what each item was and how to describe it. After a few minutes the items were rotated and described by a different librarian. The descriptions were then shared. It was fun to hear others’ ideas and descriptions. The activity showed the importance of having cataloging rules so that a common ‘lingo’ could be used in the way things are described in a catalog (i.e the format of the record), but that there is still room for creativity and ingenuity in the descriptions. Clyde allowed attendees to keep the objects if they so desired.

Meeting adjourned at 4:10pm.

The CONNECT planning committee would like to express sincere gratitude to the staff of CH for providing delicious homemade cookies for the forum refreshments.

Resources

Resources for this meeting can be found on the Connect Forum resources for those unable to attend but would like to participate in the conversation.