Record maintenance
Maintenance of remote
IR more complicated than maintenance of printed resources, for
example serials.
1. When a new serial’s issue
arrives, cataloging staff adds holdings/ item records and
sometimes notes to a bibliographic record. One can compare
previous issues of a serial with a newest one. IR iterations
could hardly be compared because there are not previous discrete
issues: the resource changes as a whole.
2. A
serial record is monitored with a frequency of check in a new
issue. The IR’s updates are hard to monitor regularly. After
a record is in a local database, a cataloger does not monitor
its future updated unless a special policy for it would be
established.
In order to establish
a local policy, we can look at the national policy for a record
maintenance if such a policy for IR is established.
The standards for BIBCO records can be considered as a national
one. The BIBCO participants’ manual includes general rules for
record maintenance of all type of materials. Integrating
resources are mentioned there briefly together with multipart
monographs.
The BIBCO manual defines record maintenance as “the process of
ensuring the continuing accuracy of a BIBCO record through
additions, changes, or deletions.” The manual describes four
clauses when a record maintenance is required. Record
maintenance “should be undertaken in the following
circumstances:
-
To correct
errors, or;
-
To reflect
changes in the publication (multipart monographs and
integrating resources), or;
-
To reflect
changes in policies and practices used within BIBCO for
bibliographic control, or;
-
To
reflect changes to authorized forms of access points.”
Comparisons of the
WSU local practice with national standards for record
maintenance show that
(1) errors’
correction (typos and errors in descriptive cataloging) is
included in work both original and copy catalogers on the daily
basis; original catalogers also correct obvious errors in
subject cataloging in the process of complex copy cataloging
during a process of 1st time cataloging; after that corrections
perform occasionally if cataloging supervisor revises staff
records, or somebody points out the mistake;
(2) changes in integrating resources are not reflected, and
policy for is not exist; it should be developed in the future;
the most obvious is a needs for fixing of broken links (the 856
field);
(3) IR is a new type of material and no local policies and
practices for re-cataloging of older records were not developed
yet (I am personally not sure if the WSU catalogers would see it
as a priority);
(4) LTI updates the WSU authorities on a regular basis; it
includes IR headings as well as all other types of materials.
In sum, the regular maintenance of IR records executed for a
goal No.4 by outreach services. The goals No. 1 and 3 probably
do not need to be performed on a regular basis. The different
issue is a goal No.2. There is a need to establish a record
maintenance policy for changes in IR, and probably a specific
policy will be developed in the future.
There are also another BIBCO
source of information on record maintenance. It was developed
specifically for IR by the PCC Task Group on Implementation of
Integrating Resources.
The final report of this group was written in 2001 and among
other issues included suggestions how to identify currency of a
bibliographic record for updating Web sites and remote
databases. The Task Group proposed to use (1) the 936 field for
update information, or (2) subfield “5” to identify currency of
data within specific fields of a record, e.g. the 856 data.
Both ideas were not established on a national level, but can
work on a local level. The WSU library can consider a usage of
some local field to reflect changes in the resource, or/and put
data to subfield “5” to reflect updates of the particular
fields.
This is possible also to use a URL checker for all the WSU
library electronic resources including updating Web sites and
databases.
Another idea is to develop a list of the most important
electronic IR and monitor them on a regular basis (for example,
with frequency 3 or 4 months).
The topic of IR record maintenance was only briefly mentioned in
this manual. This topic is very new. The national standards
still are not formed for this area of cataloging. The WSU
policies for IR record maintenance are waiting for their
development. A special manual on this topic could be written.
In conclusion, I would like to mention that this is obvious that
we will have more and more IR in the future in the WSU
collection. It will push ahead development of cataloging rules
and maintenance policies for this type of library materials.
This is an important assignment for a cataloger to adjust
national standards to the local needs and create a interim local
policies in the new areas where national standards are not
established yet.
