RE: [IUG] Catalogers anymore?!

["Pidgeon, Alice" <apidgeon at law dot pace dot edu>]

I have only one thing to add to Diana's very complete rationale for having a
cataloger on staff:  How many librarians really understand MARC tagging and
records in order to make outsourcing work?  I depend heavily on my Head of
Cataloging to advise me when I need to understand why short records or
incomplete cataloging is not working for our patrons.  He is the real expert
when people think that we can give short shrift to creating records on the
online catalog.  Our Head of Cataloging is our one-stop "quality control"
department.

Alice Pidgeon
Head of Technical Services
Pace University Law Library
78 North Broadway
White Plains, NY 10603
914-422-4280
apidgeon at law dot pace dot edu


-----Original Message-----
From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org
[mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org]On Behalf Of D. Brooking
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 12:45 PM
To: IUG INNOPAC List
Subject: Re: [IUG] Catalogers anymore?!


It really depends on your library. And it depends on the service being 
offered. Everything should be very carefully examined!

Many of these services being offered are for what I think of as more 
mainstream, English-language, trade or university press publishers, and 
most often for books, though also for, again, mainstream popular 
media.

Services offered through OCLC generally offer whatever record is there 
when you order. Those records may or may not be complete. If your library 
wants complete records when the materials go to the shelves, then you will 
need someone to complete them.

Services offering records created by other vendors may supply only brief 
records or records that may or may not conform to the cataloging standards 
your library uses.

I used to work in a very small college library. Most of our acquisitions 
could be described as English-language, mainstream stuff. However, at that 
time outsourcing cataloging was in fact more expensive on a title-by-title 
basis than cataloging in house. Hiring a part-time cataloger was the more 
cost effective way to deal with a large donations backlog at that time. 
And even this small library had unique and obscure material for which 
there were not adequate OCLC records.

I now work in a very large academic research library. And there is a large 
body of mainstream English-language material from North American and UK 
publishers that is done through PromptCat. And we also have extremely 
large microform and electronic text sets for which purchasing vendor 
cataloging records is the only reasonable solution.

But not all of the records found by PromptCat are complete or accurate. 
And we acquire large amounts of materials from all over the world in 
languages other than English, large amounts of off-beat media, large 
numbers of local and international government publications that are not 
represented in OCLC. We also have pockets of uncataloged unique materials 
in Special Collections and elsewhere, that we haven't had the time or 
staff in the past to deal with. And now we have new collections of 
digitized materials that need cataloging, for which we must create our own 
records.

We are still cataloging, what we are cataloging though is changing.

************
Diana Brooking       (206) 543-8405
Cataloging Librarian (206) 685-8782 fax
Suzzallo Library      dbrookin at u dot washington dot edu
University of Washington Box 352900
Seattle WA 98195-2900

On Mon, 6 Mar 2006, Said Shafik wrote:

> After the announcement of  the partnership between Baker & Taylor and
> OCLC,  that will offer OCLC cataloging records to subscribers, like our
> library, who receive books and audio visual materials from the Baker &
> Taylor family of companies, how is the future of catalogers looks like?
> We started a successful outsourcing service with YBP to receive full
> order/bib/item/invoice service, RFID tagging and label service will be
> added. All services are done according to our own load profile. With the
> triangle of III Advanced Acquisitions Interface-Vendors processing
> services-OCLC partnership, we were told, we'll be able to get the best
> available OCLC record at the point of order and at the point of receipt.
> Some of the libraries have established already full outsourcing services
> with few or no catalogers, American University of Sharjah is one of
> them. A serious debate is taking place in our library whether to hire a
> replacement for the departed cataloger, or continue with the full
> outsourcing services.
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Said Shafik
> Systems Librarian
> Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research
> Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
> www.ecssr.com
> Office Phone:++971-2-404-4481
> Mobile:++971-5-323-5695
> Home: ++971-2-645-9787
> Said_Shafik at ecssr dot ac dot ae
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
>