This 'Blog

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AACR

The new edition of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules due to be published in Sept. will not be used by the Library of Congress until December. More details are available at LIBRARY OF CONGRESS IMPLEMENTATION OF AMENDMENTS 2002 TO AACR2. Still makes a nice gift for the holidays.

MARC Code List for Geographic Areas

The 2002 edition of the MARC Code List for Geographic Areas is now available from the Library of Congress. This revision of the 2000 edition contains a list of up-to-date geographic areas and their associated one- to seven-character codes used in MARC records. The list includes separate codes for countries, first order political divisions of some countries, regions, and geographic features. References from variant forms are also included. Changes and additions since the previous edition include a code for East Timor, and codes for outer space and celestial bodies.

The list includes all valid codes and code assignments as of September 2002 and supersedes the 2000 edition of the MARC Code List for Geographic Areas. There are 19 additions in this new publication.

MARC Code List for Geographic Areas (ISBN 0-8444-1055-1) is available for $20 (North America) and $22 (outside North America) from:

Library of Congress
Cataloging Distribution Service
Customer Services Section
Washington, DC 20541-4912
www.loc.gov/cds
TEL: 1-202-707-6100
FAX: 1-202-707-1334
E-MAIL: cdsinfo@loc.gov

MARC 21 information, including future updates to this edition of the geographic areas list, may be found online.

Another item for your Christmas list. The hard copy is not necessary, since the entire list is available online. Moreover, the online list is sometimes more current. I do like to use a hard copy since I make notes in it. I mark which codes I've used and place the class number from the G schedule beside the code to provide a basic index to that schedule.

PHP

A List Apart has the article "Manage Your Content With PHP" by Christopher Robbins.

XHTML for structured markup. CSS for presentation. What more could you ask? How about an easy way to manage your site, using free, open-source tools? Christopher Robbins shows how to use PHP to build a simple, template-driven system that handles site maintenance chores and remembers your visitors’ preferences.

AACR2

The Canadian Library Association, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, and the American Library Association will publish the 2002 Revision of ANGLO-AMERICAN CATALOGUING RULES, SECOND EDITION in September 2002. Major changes in both content and format will make the release of the 2002 Revision momentous.

WHAT'S NEW IN 2002?

• Fully integrated 1999 and 2001 Amendments and revisions approved and finalized through 2002
• More than 100 substantive changes throughout the text and completely updated Index
• Three completely revised and updated chapters (Cartographic Materials, Electronic Resources, Continuing Resources)
• A more user-friend format with 8.5" X 11" looseleaf pages that fit a standard 3-ring binder
• Separately numbered chapters for easy integration of future updates
• A brand new text design that clearly distinguishes the rules from the examples

With annual updates that will easily integrate into this brand new, streamlined format, AACR2-2002 is an up-to-the-minute, forward-looking revision that will equip you to catalog any type of resource, print or electronic. For more details, see the flyer/order form. To order in the United States and its territories or to learn about receiving AACR2 updates each year on standing order, please call toll-free 1-866-746-7252.

Preservation of E-Resources

The recent announcement from New Breed Librarian about closing up shop brought to my mind again the preservation problems of electronic resources. There are some articles and interviews at New Breed worth preserving. Will they be available a year from now?

The proposal made by Walt Crawford "Long-Term Access to Library Zines: A Call to Action?" makes sense. Has there been any movement on that idea? Maybe New Breed can perform one final service to our community by getting some action started on this issue.

Dublin Core

Besides initiating processes for the review and approval of new Dublin Core elements and qualifiers, the DCMI Usage Board has revamped the way Dublin Core Metadata Initiative documents its work. The documents currently include:

• Up-to-the-minute listings of all current Elements, Element Refinements, Encoding Schemes, and DCMI Type Vocabulary terms. These will supersede Web documents currently in use as authoritative sources of up-to-date information on DCMI metadata terms.
• For the historically- or archivally-minded, a complete listing of all Elements, Element Refinements, and Encoding Schemes -- including past versions of terms that have been corrected or revised. Each term has a cross-reference to a related Decision, and each such Decision points to supporting documentation in the archive. This master file is used as the source for periodically generating the updated listings.
• DCMI Usage Board Decisions, each of which is numbered for unambiguous identification.
• DCMI Usage Board Review of Application Profiles -- principles and criteria by which the Board will review profiles which use or extend Dublin Core in various ways.

At its latest meeting, held on 12-13 May 2002 in Bath with financial support from JISC, the Usage Board revised and simplified its model for conferring status on terms, making it easier for working groups to put new terms of proven usefulness into the DCMI-maintained namespaces.

The Usage Board now distinguishes the following:

• "Recommended" Elements, Element Refinements, and DCMI Type Vocabulary terms useful for resource discovery across domains.
• "Conforming" Elements and Element Refinements -- terms for which an implementation community has a demonstrated need and which conform to the grammar of Elements and Element Refinements, though without necessarily meeting the stricter criteria of usefulness across domains or usefulness for resource discovery.
• "Registered" Encoding Schemes -- terms which identify parsing rules or controlled vocabularies useful for interpreting particular metadata values. All encoding schemes, new and legacy, have the status of Registered.

Metadata

First Monday has the article "A Metadata Approach to Preservation of Digital Resources: The University of North Texas Libraries' Experience" by Daniel Gelaw Alemneh, Samantha Kelly Hastings, and Cathy Nelson Hartman.

This paper discusses the issues related to digital resources preservation and demonstrates the role of preservation metadata in facilitating the preservation activities in general. In particular, it describes the efforts being made by the UNT libraries to ensure the long-term access and preservation of various digital information resources.

RSS for Acquisitions

A new and rather interesting RSS application is the notification service of Amazon. Using a news aggregator, the link http://www.yaywastaken.com/amazon/amazon-rss.asp?keywords=???? will deliver a list of books. Just replace ???? with the keyword of interest. This could be useful in acquisitions on keeping up on a current topic. For more details see Amazon RSS - books delivered to your news aggregator! A poor title IMHO, it does not deliver books, only information about books.

"Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure, note that I have hooked my Amazon affiliate code up to the links returned by the feed. " Is at the end of the the article. I've nothing against someone picking up a few bucks for being clever and talented, just be aware.

Maybe a library or non-profit could duplicate the feed and either not collect or have it go to a library.

SACO

The Library of Congress’ Cooperative Cataloging Team is pleased to announce that two subject proposal web forms are now available on the SACO Home Page

The web form for new subject heading proposals had been in an experimental phase since 1998 and available only to BIBCO and select contributors to the SACO Program. Since the form’s inception over 3,500 proposals have been processed successfully and internal studies indicate that the majority of these proposals were approved and available to the library community via the OCLC and RLG authority files within 4-6 weeks of submission. The form for proposing changes to existing LCSH headings is newly developed and will continued to undergo development and improvements as contributions and comments are received.

In an effort to expedite the growing number of new and changed proposals the web proposal form is now the mainstream mechanism for processing subject proposals contributed to the SACO Program. Regretfully, there is no “save file” mechanism to facilitate internal review practices and prevent re-keying. Review of all proposals before submitting to the SACO Program is highly encouraged. Coop will continue to accept e-mail proposals; however, resources in Coop can no longer support an expeditious processing of proposals submitted via that mechanism.

To facilitate the approval of a proposed heading, please consult the appropriate LC Subject Cataloging Manual (SCM) instruction sheets and/or the proposal guidelines and FAQs on the SACO home page. Prospective SACO contributors are encouraged to attend the SACO workshops presented in conjunction with ALA before submitting new or changed subject proposals. Proposals that fail to follow the SCM guidelines to a reasonable degree will be deleted without further processing.

To facilitate the processing of the web form proposal read and follow the editorial instructions provided on the form before clicking the submit button. The web form programing is simple and will work best provided that ASCII characters are not used in any field, diacritics are copied and pasted from the list of diacritics linked to the form, and that initial subfields are left off in all fields.

Proposals submitted via the web form will be available for searching through LC web authorities within two working days of receipt.

Comments, questions, suggestions for improvements to the forms, etc. may be sent directly to acri@loc.gov

****************
Ana Lupe Cristán
Acting Team Leader/BIBCO Coordinator
Cooperative Cataloging Team
Library of Congress, LM 537
Washington, DC 20540-4382
tel: 202.707.7921
fax: 202.252.2082

LC Classification

Dear Colleagues,
The Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS) wishes to announce that, with the highly successful introduction of Classification Web, Classification Plus, our CD-ROM product, will be discontinued with 2002, Issue 4.

Effective immediately no new full-year subscriptions to Classification Plus or the combination product Classification Plus /Cataloger's Desktop will be taken.

Renewing subscribers must purchase Cataloger's Desktop and Classification Web separately. For details on ordering these products visit the following Web sites:

• Classification Web
• Cataloger's Desktop

Customers who are currently completing subscriptions to Class Plus or the Desktop/Class Plus combination product may switch to Classification Web immediately and apply the remaining portion of their Class Plus subscription to Class Web or switch to Classification Web with the beginning of their next subscription year.

The final two issues of Classification Plus will be available on a prorated basis. For further information check the CDS Web site

Library of Congress, Cataloging Distribution Service,
Customer Services Section
101 Independence Avenue, S.E. Washington, D.C. 20541-4912
E-mail: cdsinfo@loc.gov CDS Web site

Cataloging Resources

Anyone who has read AUTOCAT for even a week knows the name McRee (Mac) Elrod. (And if you are not reading AUTOCAT what are you doing here?) I have benefited many times from his clear, considered comments on many cataloging issues. What I never knew was that his Web site, SLC, contains some resources useful to the catalogers. Some of the information is specific to his company and their approach but many of the resources are more general. For example, his "cheat sheets" include:

• Brief Government Documents
• Common MARC Fields
• Cuttering and Years
• Electronic Resource Cataloguing
• Form Subdivisions Coded $v
• Government Documents
• MARC Authority Records
• MARC Punctuation
• MARC Tag Mapping for OPACs
• MARC Title Fields
• Monograph Cataloguing
• Reclassification: DDC to LCC
• Serial Cataloguing
• Selected Cataloguing Tool Acronyms, etc.
• Sound Recording Cataloguing
• Video Cataloguing