Lenore,
Thanks so much for the detailed feedback.This is very helpful.
I'll try to revise the draft to include your suggested changes.
/ Daniel
At 12:00 PM 6/1/2006, Lenore Bell wrote:
Yossi--I always forget to copy you when I post to the list! I am
resending my message. Thanks!
>>> Lenore Bell 06/01/06 11:02 AM >>>
Dear Daniel and Colleagues,
Thank you for sharing this carefully crafted draft letter. As part of LC
management (although not involved with the final decision on series), I am
in an awkward position with regard to participating in this response to
LC. Nevertheless, as an AJL colleague, I would like to share with you a
couple of thoughts and suggestions.
I feel that it is unlikely (especially now that June 1 has arrived) that
another postponement of the new policy will be considered; however, I also
believe that the call for further analysis of the long-term effects and
for pursuit of a more nuanced approach is reasonable and worth stating. I
will also share that LC policy and decision makers did consider
extensively a whole range of such nuanced approaches before arriving at
the announced decision, but unfortunately these deliberations were not
shared widely. A broader discussion of the varied approaches within the
library community could have yielded important input which might have
affected the final decision, or at the very least, would have softened the
blow of the public announcement.
The letter acknowledges appreciation for the postponement of the
implementation date. This postponement did allow for some further
consultation with the PCC, OCLC, and others, which resulted in a number of
important modifications to the policy, which might be worth noting in the
letter. Also, an explanation of the lack of broader consultation within
the library community was offered. Still, with the ALA annual convention
(and our own AJL convention) just around the corner, one might question
why LC did not postpone the implementation date a little longer to provide
an opportunity to benefit from additional feedback from the library community.
The letter notes the issue of cost. Statements regarding LC's new series
policy note that the decision is not to be viewed strictly as a
cost-cutting measure, but rather as one of addressing the changing role of
the library research catalog and of shifting limited resources to efforts
that benefit end users most. It might be useful if the letter
acknowledged this approach, and in the same vein, one might question where
is the evidence that the resources devoted to series control are not well
spent in supporting the catalog's end users (which includes collection
development specialists and reference librarians, as well as researchers).
I would advise against shifting the focus away from the matter of LC's
series policy by mentioning the Calhoun report, whose proposals LC has
only just begun to study. Instead one might wish to suggest that as LC
approaches other policy options, broader consultation within the library
community will yield greater understanding, cooperation, and
"buy-in" among the range of affected stakeholders and enable us as a
community to establish standards we can all maintain and which will be
conducive to our collaborative efforts.
Also, please note that while LC lost a significant number of staff members
(though not 130 cataloging staff) due to retirements this year, and while
the institution faces challenges as a result of the departure of many
experts at once, it is not accurate to say that there were cutbacks or
that positions were eliminated.
I hope that this comments will be helpful.
Lenore
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/31/06 1:47 PM >>>
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.
Daniel Lovins
Hebraica Team Leader
Catalog Department
Sterling Memorial Library
Yale University
PO Box 208240
New Haven, CT 06520
tel: 203/432-1707
fax: 203/432-7231
