1. Expert Community Experiment
An Update
Jay N. Weitz
WorldCat Quality Management Division

2. Expert Community Experiment
Timeframe: mid-February 2009 through mid-August 2009
All OCLC Cataloging members with full level authorizations invited to participate — no applications.
Guidelines, FAQ, and Recorded Webinar available at:
What is this?
I assume most of you know, but if you don’t, this is where we’ve allowed all cataloging members with full level authorizations to enhance any non-PCC records in WorldCat. So, BIBCO and CONSER records are excluded. We’ll be talking more about the BIBCO side of this tomorrow morning in the BIBCO meeting.
Prior to the experiment, members could do minimal level upgrades and database enrichment. Once thing we’ve learned from the experiment is that many people didn’t realize they could do these things.
The team responding to askqc questions and responsible for the experiment are Glenn Patton, Jay Weitz, Brenda Block, Robert Bremer, and Cynthia Whitacre.

3. Expert Community Experiment
Allows member libraries with full-level Cataloging authorizations to make additions and changes to almost all fields in almost all records
PCC records (both BIBCO and CONSER) are excluded
LC records not coded as PCC are included
CIP records (not coded as PCC) can be changed but the Encoding Level must remain ‘8’
So, we’re embarking on an experiment to allow member libraries with full-level Cataloging authos to make more additions and changes to almost all fields in almost all records.
As always, there’s some “fine print” so I need to note some exclusions …
[one of the goals of the experiment is to test if these exclusions are reasonable or if we need to go further …]

4. Sharing Experiences
We’ve asked member libraries to use OCLC-CAT as a means of sharing their experiences.
A new generic is also available for questions.
We’ll be encouraging libraries to use OCLC-CAT as a means of sharing experiences. (We’d talked about setting up something special for the experiment but decided we’d keep things in one place.
We have established a new generic address for questions.

5. Are people participating?
Yes .

6. Webinars in February and March
We had over 900 individual log-ins for the 5 webinars.

7. Expert Community Replace Transactions

8. Number of Institutions
Number of institutions doing at least one replace.

9. All Replaces February (15-28) March April May June Expert Community
5,816
18,010
19,489
16,704
19,387
Database Enrichment
7,824
18,235
19,250
15,950
16,992
Minimal-Level Upgrade
6,045
14,791
14,568
13,178
14,185
Enhance
Regular
6,681
15,052
14,705
15,521
15,212
Enhance National
1,657
3,583
3,323
2,998
3,400
CONSER
Authentication
635
1,929
1,547
1,188
1,490
Maintenance
2,741
6,183
6,010
5,410
5,785

10. Activity Compared to Last Year
Mar-08
Mar-09
Database Enrichment
14,512
18,235
Minimal-Level Upgrade
9,260
14,791
Enhance Regular
13,444
15,052
Enhance National
3,002
3,583
CONSER Authentication
3,634
1,929
CONSER Maintenance
2,915
6,183

11. What Have We Learned So Far?
Member libraries are mostly behaving responsibly and are mostly making the kinds of changes that we hoped they would make.
No one understands parallel records and the concept of “language of cataloging.”
Lots of users didn’t know what they could already do.
We’re seeing lots of cases of fixing a minimal-level record but not changing the Encoding Level value (so no credit is generated).
Users are using the address to ask general cataloging questions.
… And we’re also seeing a decrease in the number of change requests (both paper and electronic) !!! That’s a good thing!
… (as evidenced by the increase in activity in the existing replace categories).

12. What’s Next? More monitoring of user activity.
Evaluation of the Experiment as a whole.
the first of what we hope to be a series of “special topic” cataloging-related webinars.

13. Thank you! Questions? Comments? ASKQC askqc@oclc.org
Now … What questions do you have?
ASKQC