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Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 13:47:34 -0400 Dear Safranim, I realize there may not be concensus on this issue (I read, e.g., Sara Spiegel's thoughtful email this morning, and just now saw the ARL statement in support of LC's decision), but I'd still like to propose sending a letter of concern from AJL (at least the Cataloging Committee?) to Beacher Wiggins along the lines of the African Librarians Council letter. I'm sharing it with you to see if you agree with me, but also to ask for suggestions about improving the language. If you disagree, that's fine too. I'm waiting to get a list of email addresses for the AJL council, but once I do, I'll share the draft with them as well. Possible AJL Position Letter: Beacher J.E. Wiggins Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Library of Congress Washington, DC 20540-4300 Dear Director Wiggins, We are deeply concerned by the decision of the Library of Congress (LC) to discontinue creation of series authority records (SARs) effective April 20th (http://www.loc.gov/catdir/series.html). The AJL represents professional librarians with special expertise in, and responsibility for, acquisitions, cataloging, collection development, and reference, relating to Judaic Studies, Hebrew language and literature, and related materials in all types of libraries and educational institutions. While we appreciate the decision to push the new policy action date from April 20th back to June 1st (as per http://www.loc.gov/catdir/delay.html), we urge LC to consider postponing the new policy indefinitely so that the long-term effects can be more fully analyzed by the larger cataloging community. It is our sincere hope that LC administrators will revisit their decision, and agree that a more nuanced approach to series authority control is warranted. Perhaps simply being more selective about when to establish series title headings (e.g., prioritizing university press publications) would help reduce costs. AJL sympathizes with recent statements from the ALA Executive Board, the Library of Congress Professional Guild, the Africana Librarians Council, and the Music Library Association, and agrees that the wholesale abandonment of series authority records, combined with the lack of consultation with other stakeholders, compromises LC?s professed commitment to uniform bibliographic standards and cooperative cataloging. We believe it will increase costs to all libraries, including, quite possibly, the Library of Congress itself. We also know from daily experience how much our users appreciate being able to search by series titles, and how useful it is to have such titles normalized and collocated within our catalogs. Moreover, we are concerned that this latest decision is just the beginning of a long-term retrenchment of LC?s commitment to bibliographic control. In a report recently commissioned by the Library of Congress, Karen Calhoun has proposed reducing the number of data elements included in bibliographic records and eliminating Library of Congress Subject Headings. If present trends continue, and LC further abdicates its leadership role, the pool of shared cataloging which has done so much to reduce costs and nourish American libraries over the past 30 years will either dry up from neglect or become brackish with inferior content. With cutbacks in expert staff (130 LC cataloging positions eliminated in 2005 alone (?), let alone staff reductions in virtually all other American libraries), the same substandard records are increasingly being recycled throughout the system. We believe the new LC policy will have a profound effect on cataloging-on-receipt and shelf-ready book activities across the country as costs are shifted to individual libraries, perhaps saving the LC some money now, but costing the larger U.S. library community a great deal in the future. The greatest gains in efficiency will come from heightened rather than lowered compliance with standards. By adhering to international agreements and best practices, cataloging output is optimized for interoperability, which means that multiple agencies can trade and repurpose records without special editing, re-keying, or other human intervention. Indeed, it is precisely through excessive and repetitive editing and redundant record creation that the cataloging costs are driven upwards, and is precisely by cutting back on standards that we undermine data integrity and interoperability for our libraries and patrons. We thank you for your consideration. Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the AJL =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
