Continuing Education

A draft of Cataloging for the 21st Century: A Proposal for Continuing Education for Cataloging Professionals : A response to Action Item 5.3 of the "Bibliographic Control of Web Resources: A Library of Congress Action Plan" submitted to The ALCTS Advisory Task Force on the LC Action Plan for Bibliographic Control of Web Resources is now available

OpenURL

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has released The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services standard (version 1.0) for a trial use period ending November 1, 2003. The OpenURL standard allows a user who has retrieved an information resource citation to obtain immediate access to the most "appropriate" copy of the full resource through the implementation of extended linking services. The selection of the best source for the full resource is based on the user's and the organization's preferences related to location, cost, contractual or license agreements in place with information suppliers, etc.-all done transparently to the user. The transparency is accomplished by storing context sensitive metadata with the "OpenURL" link from the source citation, and linking it to a "resolver" server where the preference information and links to the source material are stored.

MARC

The new Understanding MARC Authority Records is now available from the Library of Congress. Understanding Marc Authority introduces the MARC 21 authority format to librarians and students who are not familiar with MARC 21 authority records. Although it shares the same structural organization with its companion, Understanding MARC Bibliographic, Understanding MARC Authority Records includes comprehensive information and descriptions of MARC 21 authority records, along with many useful examples and a complete bibliography for further reading.