Catalog Policy and Documentation Committee Minutes:

March 15, 2007

Present: Steven Arakawa (chair), Eva Bolkovac, Ellen Cordes, Eric Friede, Keiko Suzuki (recording), Penny Welbourne

Absent: Larry Heiman, Rick Sarcia, Britta Santamauro

Guests: Curtis Orio (Serials Support Team Manager) and Rowena Griem (Co-chair of Task Force for Serial Access Level Records Final Report)

Steven explained that CPDC needs to prepare for the upcoming CONSER Standard Record implementation, both to create and/or revise local documents and to make our training plan. PCC currently plans to implement the new standard sometime after JSC April meeting although NLM has already implemented the draft version from Mar. 1, 2007.

Some concern was raised regarding serials cataloging training during the interim period, i.e. a new serial catalog librarian at Divinity. Interim training will be considered on a case-by-case basis, depending on the actual implementation and the training dates. However, because most of the new CONSER guidelineswill be optional rather than required, records following the old guidelines will still be acceptable. The new catalogers probably need to know those past/optional practices anyway. Thus, using the current ALCTS/PCC training manuals, perhaps supplemented with the draft guidelines, should be workable.

Meanwhile, the committee agrees that the PowerPoint presentation during ALA Midwinter ( would be sufficient for introductory training,probably with some modification to reflect local YUL decisions.

The possible audiences for training would be: both original & copy catalogers, serials acquisition staff (who order and/or check-in).

In addition, the committee feels the need to reach out to a larger audience and to announce the implications for this change, such as PIC (Steven has already communicating with Daniel Lovins as a PIC liaison) and ITLS, etc. since the changes in the requirement to some fixed fields (frequency, regularity, conference pub.) may affect OPAC search limits and Voyager reports, which could be limited by all fields.

In the course of the review of the CONSER presentation, reference was continually made to the Yale Task Force for Serial Records report.

This report needs to be publicized with Public Services.

Regarding 006 and 007 changes, Steven addressed the concern for microfilms, which need more information than required by the new standard. Yale has many of them. Thus, what we need to do for original cataloging, copy cat., or maintenance for our own local ones and for commercial vendors’. It was suggested to consult preservation specialist, David Walls. Different decisions depending on local vs. commercial microform?

e-serial records provided by Serial Solutions, etc. will probably begin to follow the new standard when it is implemented by CONSER. Any local Yale decisions applying to the standard will not be applied to vendor supplied cataloging of e-serials.

Encoding level. Since Yale is not a CONSER library, if we follow the standard, do we encode “blank” as CONSER record? (Yes; this has been verified by both Brenda Block at OCLC and Hien Nguyen at CONSER) CONSER membership is probably not on the table until Connexion 2.0 is up and running.

Title changes. Use of the uniform title will be significantly reduced under the new standard. (It will be continued primarily for generic titles and series, but not to resolve conflicts). The initial proposal was (and probably still is) that locally we could add uniform titles to break conflicts retroactively, if there was a request from Acquisitions or Public Services. However, it was suggested that in most cases the 78x linkage is more efficient than the uniform title for resolving conflicts. In order for this to work, we need to input the OCLC number and/or LC control number in $w in 78Xs. (But it needs to be tested)

041: Only $a is required. Does this cause a problem with limiting or combined searches? Assuming it is 041 that is indexed (this hasn’t been verified), it was noted that $a is now repeatable, so each language should be indexed. 546 is not required.

245.CPDC accepts the new CONSER standard, which does not require 245 $c. Proposed workflow: a. Original cataloging: establish any new corporate heading. b. Copy cataloging: CONSER standard requires a note if the heading is not established. If there is such a note, the copy cataloger should check the authority file, and ask a librarian to establish it if the heading has not been established.

300. CPDC: Agrees with the TF recommendation to continue to use $a and $c. Rationale: facilitates processing in serial support. Workflow: copy catalogers can update the 300 field.

362. CPDC recommends that Yale continue to use the standard AACR2 abbreviations in 362 and in the MFHD; the rationale is that consistency will make it easier to interpret and maintain the MFHDs. However, the committee agreed that we would accept the CONSER (non)standard version [transcribe as found] in field 362 in copy records.

Meeting adjourned at 4:05 p.m.

Èva sent the URL of the article regarding new directions of serials after the meeting:

Respectfully submitted,

Keiko Suzuki