Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 11:40:05 -0600 (CST) From: renette davis <rd13@MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU> Subject: Response to LC series proposal Pt. 2: _________________ COLLOCATION STUDY In an effort to determine what the degree of non-collocation of series which are not subject to authority control might be, and how often it would be severe, several members of the cataloging staff examined 132 incoming volumes with series. One hundred and ten of these series were already represented in the online catalog. We found that in 36% of cases, there would be a loss of collocation in our catalog if authority work were not done, because a variation in series title on one of the pieces would not collocate with other entries for that series in the online catalog. We imagine problems of access and collocation in our catalog to be common to large library catalogs where there are not sufficient resources to carry out all the needed authority maintenance. The situation will become far more difficult if series authority work is no longer done consistently. Public services staff note that while library staff may know about the problem of loss of collocation, and be able to make up for it to some extent through use of imaginative search strategies, and not give up too soon, patrons will not know enough to do so, and will tend to assume that the library does not have the volumes they are looking for. SURVEY RESULTS We devised a quick survey of our colleagues, which was circulated to staff in collection development, reference, acquisitions, and student employees who use the system as patrons and as staff members in Serials. We found that most respondents were dismayed by the lack of collocation which would result from implementation of this proposal. Twenty- three people responded to our survey, which was sent to about 30 people (some shared it with other staff and responded for their group). We asked them whether they found the proposal as a whole acceptable, whether they would agree with the statement "Series information receives relatively little use by the Library's acquisitions, collection development, and reference staff," if it were applied to our library; and whether they could estimate how often they access series when doing word searches on the online catalog. Eighteen respondents either disagreed, strongly disagreed, or partly disagreed with the idea of the LC proposal. Seventeen respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement about the use of series information by library staff if applied to our library. Sixteen respondents estimated how frequently they accessed series when doing word searches in the online catalog ranging from 1%-5% of the time to over 50% of the time. We are willing to share both the text of the survey and the results in detail if there is interest. SHIFTING WORK FROM ONE AREA TO ANOTHER Series authority work which is not done may result in a one- time savings of time for the cataloger. However, the possible negative effects seem to us to be rather far- reaching. The obverse of that one-time saving is that copy catalogers, reference librarians, and other staff at other institutions will all have to spend extra time "forever and ever," as one of our bibliographers put it, ascertaining the accuracy of series headings or figuring out how series have collocated, or correcting egregious errors of collocation. Searches necessitated by the lack of a series authority record will occur over and over again. For LC itself, we see an upfront savings in original cataloging which will be more than lost in other library operations, including copy cataloging. Another possible workload shift that we will expect locally is an increase in reference activity and inter-library loan requests because people who come to the catalog with only a series citation are unable to locate needed materials which we already have. Patrons may ask for help from reference staff more often, and may place more inter-library loan requests because they cannot find material on their own. If these are problems we anticipate within our own catalog, it is not too difficult to imagine the type of problems which will occur in linked catalogs, such as the CIC Virtual Library, in which most of the CIC library catalogs are to be seamlessly linked within a few years. NACO and NCCP We believe that it is useful to do series authority work for NACO and NCCP, and would like to continue; catalogers enjoy participating and at the moment everyone is well-trained and fully functional. We contribute almost all our series authority work from original cataloging to NACO, and we are experimenting with generating SAR's for series found on OCLC member copy for which series authority records are lacking. However, if LC's proposal is adopted, it would be difficult to justify continuing to work in the traditional way. We have watched with interest the ongoing discussion of how difficult it is to contribute series authority records. Two things which would most encourage NACO libraries to contribute series are a) a reduction in the byzantine rules and rule interpretations for series, and b) a unified and well-written series manual, modelled after the one now being prepared for name authorities (or, alternatively, a comprehensive series section added to the names manual). CONCLUSIONS AND ALTERNATE PROPOSAL We understand the need to reduce the cost of cataloging and the complexities of the work in order to do more with the same or fewer staff. LC's assessment of the number of additional records which could be cataloged in the time it takes to establish series (13,000 annually) is impressive. However, input from our staff points to the value of, and continued need for controlled access to series information. In that spirit, we propose that LC consider simplifications of series authority work that would make it a smaller cataloging investment, more conducive to cooperative series authority work via NACO. We would like to meet LC's needs halfway, given that we could not make up the deficit if series were no longer controlled, with a simplified series authority record. We propose that LC and others begin to think of an SAR the way we think about name records. That is to say, consider whether the SAR can be used only to record the form of name and its variants. It seems worthwhile to question the value of recording series treatment information at all in an environment where access can be provided effortlessly to all series by machine, and "tracing" is a historical concept related to the card environment. Further, if experiments with machine generation of NARs succeed and can be applied to real work, SARs which do not need qualifiers or cross- references could be generated in the same way. We look forward to hearing about and reacting to further thought on this issue from LC, and urge strongly that series authority work be modified and modernized, rather than effectively abandoned. ---------------------------------------------------------- Renette Davis Senior Serials Cataloger Internet: rd13@midway.uchicago.edu University of Chicago Library Voice: 312-702-8769 1100 E. 57th St., Chicago, IL 60637
