Dear Daniel,
This is an excellent letter. I have no comments.
Thank you for your hard work on this issue. We are very, very fortunate to
have you as Chair of the AJL Cataloging Committee.
Warmly, Heidi
Heidi G. Lerner
Hebraica/Judaica Cataloger
MARC Unit
Stanford University Libraires
Stanford, CA 94305-6004
ph: 650-725-9953
fax: 650-725-1120
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Original Message -
From: Daniel Lovins [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: heb-naco@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu;
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 7:13 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: Africans Librarians Counceil letter sent to LC re SARs
decision
Dear colleagues,
Here is a second attempt at an open letter from AJL. Very interested in
your feedback. Thanks.
Daniel
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 June 1,
2006. While we appreciate LC's willingness to push the action date back
from April 20th -in order to give affected libraries time to develop
contingency plans- we urge LC to revisit the decision, and to consider
whether a more nuanced approach to series authority control might be
preferable. Perhaps being more selective about when to establish series
title headings (e.g., prioritizing university press publications) would
help reduce costs. In any event, we believe that greater consultation with
other libraries -including postponing implementation until after the ALA
2006 annual meeting-would have helped avoid the current atmosphere of
mistrust.
AJL sympathizes with recent statements from the ALA Executive Board, the
Library of Congress Professional Guild, the Africana Librarians Council,
the Music Library Association, the ALCTS Board of Directors, and other
concerned groups, and finds that the indiscriminate discontinuation 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 the new
policy will increase costs to all libraries, including, quite possibly,
the Library of Congress itself. We also know from daily experience that
our users greatly appreciate being able to search by series title, and to
have such titles normalized and collocated within our catalogs.
We support ALCTS' request for LC to share the rationale behind its
decision, including as many aspects of the decision making process as
possible, in hopes that other libraries outside LC could carefully examine
their own series practices in a thoughtful manner. In particular, we
would be interested in any empirical data that suggest series authority
control is no longer cost-effective or desired by our patrons. Deanna
Marcum stated in her 2005 EBSCO forum address that, if certain other work
could be moved to non-professional staff, catalogers could spend more time
on authority control, subject analysis, resource identification, and
evaluation, and collaboration with information technology units on
automated applications and digitization projects. We are confused,
therefore, as to why series authority control has been singled out for
elimination.
Moreover, we are concerned that this latest decision is just the beginning
of a long-term retrenchment in LC's commitment to bibliographic control.
[Maybe leave this out ... (?): It seems tragic that at a time when LC is
at the pinnacle of influence and respectindeed its name has become a gold
standard among libraries around the world -- when LC Subject Headings, LC
Classification, MARC21, and other LC achievements are being translated
into multiple languages, and vital initiatives such as MODS and METS are
gaining traction at various types of cultural memory institutions -that
LC would choose this moment to undercut confidence in its leadership and
collegiality.]
We are similarly concerned by LC having signed a contract with the Italian
book vendor Casalini Libri to catalog thousands of titles a year, none of
which is to be shared with other OCLC or RLG libraries. (OCLC, to its
credit, has since made its own arrangements for wider distribution of
these records). Again, there may be compelling reasons to have taken this
route, but the lack of consultation with other stakeholders is
disconcerting.
If present trends continue, 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 staffing cutbacks at LC and elsewhere, the recycling of
substandard records is likely to increase throughout the shared cataloging
system and cause a degradation of service to all our patrons.
We believe the new LC policy will have a profound effect on
cataloging-on-receipt and shelf-ready initiatives across the country as
costs are shifted to individual libraries. This will possibly save LC some
money in the
