Standards—a second look Rebecca Culbertson ALCTS CCS-EXEC COMMITTEE Forum Friday, Jan. 7, 2011

Cataloging standards 1. What are standards and where do they live? 2. Why do we spend so much time on developing them? 2. Who uses them? And where do they live? 3. What is the development process? 4. How do we get the word out? 5. Levels of standards 6. What happens when standards conflict?

Why do we have standards? To allow for the “Timely creation of authoritative, cost-effective bibliographic and authority records by knowledgeable catalogers at many institutions” Sets up patterns so that catalogers can spend less time on repetitive processes Essential with consortia to have agreement Better user experience because of consistency Makes the life of a trainer easier

What standards do catalogers use? Standards documentation can be found as – Rules The Biggies: AACR2 (Content standard); MARC format (Encoding standard) – Guidelines and “Best Practices” BSRs AND CSRs Provider-Neutral Guidelines OLAC Streaming Media Standards can be full or floor—we just have to agree

Full vs. Floor Standards First the serial cataloging developed the CONSER Standard Record (CSR) Next PCC developed the BIBCO Standard Record (BSR) for books Tendency is to move towards a ONE level standard for BIBCO catalogers using an 042 code of “pcc”—not true for OCLC non 042 records (OCLC I and K)

Cataloging as “Embryonic” Using FLOOR standards to “grow” records – Will any record ever be final? Using FLOOR standards – Brief (NOW) just to get it out there... – Full (LATER) if the need arises – Levels of detail will vary

Who decides on which standards to use? And at what level? AACR2; RDA—multiple contributors MARC format—multiple contributors PCC “standards” are not just for CONSER/BIBCO catalogers – CONSER standard record – BIBCO standard record Evolved from Core and Full –Now just one level First was Textual Monographs Now Multiple formats

Where do the PCC standards live? Serials – CONSER CONSER Standard Record Field 588 Electronic serials (CCM Module 31) Integrating Resources: a Cataloging Manual CONSER Editing Guide: Appendix O for CJK

Where do the PCC standards live? Monographs BIBCO ml ml – BIBCO Standard Record (BSRs): Oct. 1, 2010 – Provider-Neutral e-Monograph Guidelines – Draft BIBCO supplemental requirements for e- monographic resources at: 3Dec-2010.pdf 3Dec-2010.pdf

Development process for PCC Standards Start with a need Charge comes from the PCC Policy Committee (PoCo) PCC Standing Committees on Standards and Automation – Set up task groups – Answer TG questions, review, wheedle, compare, contrast, agree/disagree, and finally come to a consensus – Get feedback from listservs and other concerned catalogers – Go through the Reviews process… again – Report conclusions to the Policy Committee – Finally—Implementation

A method of using the BSR (locally) UCSD has inputting and copy cataloging guidelines for every format Decision was made to adopt the BSRs –PLUS Looked at each BSR Standard in a new light to see what we wanted to add/subtract Committee discussed and made changes using laptops and Google Docs!

What happens when standards conflict? Important to say what standards you follow Important to work towards resolution at the highest levels Example is the 300 field in the Streaming Media Guidelines Another is AACR2 Chapter 9 and Provider- Neutral Guidelines

Suggestion for using the PCC standards Review each standard Review even if your institution is not a BIBCO institution Compare with your local editing guidelines Make sure that what you have includes what is in the BSR and CSR Optional to include more (if possible)

“Seeing Standards” tamap/seeingstandards.pdf tamap/seeingstandards.pdf