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.