I wonder if SERIALST subscribers could offer some advice on the
following issue being discussed by the serials catalogers here at
Iowa State University.  The issue concerns the updating of serials
cataloging records to show corporate body name changes.

The Authorities Unit has routinely informed the Serials
Cataloging Section whenever authorities reports show that a
corporate body name has changed.  Then a serials cataloger checks
all serial records using the old name, examines issues to
determine if and when the new name appears, makes an added entry
for the new name, and adds 550 notes with appropriate dates to the
serial records to justify the additional access point.  A serials
cataloger might also discover a corporate body name change in the
course of other recataloging, and then may do this work on all other
serial records with that corporate body as an access point.  If the
corporate body name appears in the title, this would be noticed by
staff who check-in issues, and for this case, serials catalogers
would be notified to do a title change.

I am wondering to what extent other libraries update serials
cataloging records when corporate body names have changed.  About
half the serials catalogers here think that what we are doing is too
time consuming on an ongoing basis, and we should update the
corporate body names only when a serial needs other recataloging.
The other half feel strongly that library users need
up-to-date corporate body names for their searching, and that
even though there will be cross-references between earlier and
later forms of names, users will probably not follow up on
them to find a serial under an early form of a name that has
changed frequently.

Due to a glitch in the Authorities Unit procedures, the serials
catalogers have not been notified of corporate body name changes for
the past year, and so far there have been no complaints from other
library staff or users.  Iowa State University has over 50,000
serials cataloging records in its NOTIS-based online catalog.

How do other libraries discover that corporate body names have
changed on serials, and when and how much recataloging do you do
to handle this?

Thank you very much for your comments!

--Lori Osmus
Head, Serials & Monographs Original Cataloging Department
204 Parks Library
Iowa State University
Ames, IA  50011
JL.LLO@ISUMVS.IASTATE.EDU