Dear friends,

Many people asked for me to send them responses so I'm going to just
give it to everyone and let you guys delete it if you don't want to read
it.  Forwarding four emails would be difficult on me.

First thanks to Buddy Pennington at Kansas City Public Library and his
other colleagues, Val Harris at the Chicago Historical Society, and
Frank Sadowski University of Rochester for their assistance.  I believe
since our new cataloger came from a university using MESH descriptors
for cataloging that they established this practice but either don't
realize that it was stopped by NLM or decided to keep doing it anyway.
The cataloger did say that there are OCLC records with this subdivision.

Thanks for all the help in clearing up this issue!

Julie

Julie Esparza
jesparza@ecri.org
ECRI - a non profit health services research institute
Library
5200 Butler Pike
Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462-1298
610.825.6000 Ext. 5184 Voice
610.834.7366 Fax
http://www.ecri.org

-----Original Message-----
From: MD_Buddy (Buddy Pennington) [mailto:MD_Buddy@kclibrary.org]
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 4:01 PM
To: Esparza, Julia
Cc: MT_April (April Gieseking); MT_Bruce (Bruce Rennie)
Subject: Electronic Journal

Hi Julia,

I found this section of text from Cataloging Practices for the National
Library of Medicine (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/catpractices2002.html):

Use of ELECTRONIC JOURNAL as a Publication Type is discontinued: The PT
ELECTRONIC JOURNAL was included in the list of PTs used as Form Division
1999-2001. NLM discontinued use of ELECTRONIC JOURNAL as a PT in June 2001
and retrospectively removed the PT from bibliographic records in
LOCATORplus. This change was made in conformance with NLM"s policy,
implemented with MeSH 1999, to discontinue the use of physical format as
Publication Type or Genre.

Of course, this only applies to MeSh, not LC subject cataloging.  I am
still looking for LC documentation, but I haven't found any yet to support
Electronic Journal over Periodicals and in the serials cataloging workshop
I took just last week, we were using $v Periodicals for electronic
serials.

Buddy Pennington
Document Delivery Librarian
Kansas City Public Library
md_buddy@kclibrary.org
816-701-3552

-----Original Message-----
From: MT_Bruce (Bruce Rennie)
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 3:35 PM
To: MD_Buddy (Buddy Pennington); MT_April (April Gieseking)
Subject: RE: New cataloging rule on free floater - Electronic Journal?

As of this moment, there is no 185 (that is, subdivision) authority record
on OCLC for "Electronic journal." There *is* a 150 (subject) authority
record, but it does not currently contain any instruction for use of that
term as a subdivision. That means, sticking to applicable conventions, you
would still use (e.g.)

Fuzzy sets -- Periodicals

... for print *and/or* electronic journals.

Here's a caveat: The applicable instruction for subject headings for
electronic serials is SCM:SH H 1580.5, which says to do what I've just
described above. However, the pages I checked are dated August 1998. I do
know that we are missing our 2000 update no. 2 (I've talked to Theresa
about obtaining a replacement), so there is some possibility there is a
later version of the instruction. However, "Electronic journal" is not
listed in SCM:SH H 1095 (2001 update 2). This, and the situation with the
existing authority records, makes me pretty confident that "Electronic
journal" is *not* a free floating subdivision as of now.

Of course "Electronic journal" is in LCSH as a topical subject
(150a/650a), and if we wanted to provide an access point specific to these
things, we could enter it as a Form heading in 655.

Bruce

-----Original Message-----
From: Harris, Valerie [mailto:Harris@chicagohistory.org]
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 4:29 PM
To: Esparza, Julia
Subject: RE: New cataloging rule on free floater - Electronic Journal?

Greetings Ms. Esparza:

I checked the most recent index of free-floating subdivisions, and
Electronic journals was not listed. It's possible that her former place of
employment est. local practices for their catalog, and didn't share
cataloging via OCLC or RLIN.

Sincerely,

Val Harris
Cataloger (Serials)
Chicago Historical Society

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Sadowski [mailto:fsadowski@rcl.lib.rochester.edu]
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 9:27 AM
To: Esparza, Julia
Subject: Re: New cataloging rule on free floater - Electronic Journal?

Julie,  I checked the Subject Cataloging Manual on the Catalogers
Desktop, and the closest thing it had was "Electronic information
resource" as a free-floater.  Of course, it also says it's the 1996 5th
edition of the Subject Cataloging Manual.  However, I think your
cataloger's previous institution was using local practice.  Please do
put the responses up on SERIALST.
-------------------------
Frank E. Sadowski Jr.
Principal Cataloger
River Campus Libraries
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627-0055