Teaching Cataloging

The "Educat" discussion list has recently been established as a forum for issues in teaching cataloging and metadata principles and techniques for electronic resources, as well as broader issues relating to cataloging education and training. The list is an outgrowth of workshops held in conjunction with Preparing 21st Century Cataloging and Metadata Professionals: A Workshop for Educators and Trainers, sponsored by the ALA Association of Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS),the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), LC's Cataloging Directorate, and OCLC An initial focus of the list will be a continuation of the workshops' discussions, such as the "levels of expertise" delineated in Ingrid Hsieh-Yee's report, and the role of catalogers and cataloging education in preparing professionals to work with digital resources and collections.

To join the list, send the following email message to listserv@loc.gov, substituting your name in the appropriate spot:

subscribe educat YOURNAME

To access the Educat discussion list using the Web interface:

• Join or leave the educat list (or change settings)
• Post to the educat list
• Educat list archives

The list is hosted by the Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS) at the Library of Congress. Listowners are Diane Baden (NELINET) and Bruce Johnson (CDS).

Bibliographic Access to Digital Content

The Cataloging Management Team has endorsed two sets of recommendations to expand bibliographic access to digital content, which is Goal IV in the Cataloging Directorate Strategic Plan:

Recommendations for Modes of Cataloging for Electronic Resources calls for the Cataloging Directorate to apply three modes of cataloging for digital content: AACR2/MARC 21; MODS; and Web guides. The modes apply to monographs and integrating resources, both digitized and born-digital. A major recommendation calls for specifying an "access level" bibliographic record for electronic resources. The report sets bibliographic access into the context of the Digital Lifecycle Planning Framework, a planning tool to be used jointly by Library Services and the Office of Strategic Initiatives. This report was written by the Processing Rule Analysis Group, chaired by David Reser, senior cataloging policy specialist, Cataloging Policy and Support Office.

Recommended Workflows for Cataloging Electronic Resources
describes a workflow featuring:

1. summaries of content to be supplied by recommending officers
2. a selection review to ensure that digital content meets Library of Congress collection policy guidelines before it is cataloged
3. an online traffic manager, TrackER, that will permit tracking and monitoring of all digital content submitted for cataloging.

The report was written by the Workflow Analysis Group, chaired by Sharon Tsai, acting chief of the Arts and Sciences Cataloging Division.

Seen in the LC Cataloging Newsline v. 12, no. 5 (2004)

Metadata Authority Description Schema

In response to numerous requests, the Library of Congress' Network
Development and MARC Standards Office has drafted an XML schema for an authority element set that may be used to provide metadata about agents (people, organizations), events, and terms (topics, geographics, genres, etc.). This Metadata Authority Description Schema (MADS) was created to serve as a companion to the Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS). As such, MADS has a relationship to the MARC 21 Authority format, as MODS has to MARC 21 Bibliographic-- both carry selected data from MARC 21. There is a high level of compatibility between the MADS and MODS schemas. MADS is expressed using the XML schema language of the World Wide Web Consortium. Note that once the schema is finalized, a few changes may be made to MODS for consistency. An example is that MADS uses the term "event" instead of "conference".

The MADS draft schema is now available for broad review to inform its completion. Based on input from prospective users, the schema will be revised and made available for experimentation. The review period will be between June 4 and July 16, 2004.

The Web site includes the XML schema itself, a document describing the purpose of MADS and details about definitions of the most important elements, and an outline of elements and attributes. A mapping to the MARC 21 Authority Format will be available shortly.

Ontologies

John Bateman's Ontology Portal is a good starting place for this topic. It includes links and brief discussion of basic topics.

Federated searching

The article The Truth About Federated Searching appears in Information Today. It lists five misconceptions

• Federated search engines leave no stone unturned
• De-dupe really works
• Relevancy rankings are totally relevant
• Federated searching is software
• We don't make your search engine. We make your search engine better

Destruction of Libraries

The latest issue of School Libraries in Canada is a special issue devoted to the Destruction of United Talmud Torah Grade School Library.

ISBN 13

Changes are coming to the ISBN. OCLC Interim Support for ISBN 13 tells how OCLC plans to deal with the change.

Writing

The latest Information Outlook has the article "What About Us? The Meta Librarian Information for Information Pros" by Stephen Abram. A call for librarians to publish and share information within the profession. He focuses on the more immediate, less formal publishing outlets. Nice list of 'blogs and 'zines, but missing Catalogablog.

DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGING OF EAST ASIAN MATERIAL

Descriptive Cataloging OF East Asian Material: CJK Examples of AACR2 and Library of Congress Rule Interpretations A Work in Progress is available on-line. The chapters available are:

• General Rules for Description
• Books, Pamphlets, and Printed Sheets
• Music
• Sound Recordings
• Motion Pictures and Videorecordings

Chapters 7 (Motion Pictures and Videorecodings) and 9 (Electronic Resources) and Appendix C (Numerals) will be posted later this summer. Additional chapters will be reviewed by CPSO, edited, and posted in the coming months.