SCP Program Updates: 2009
SCP Monthly Update December 2009
SCP monthly update
December 2009
In last month’s update, I reported that PCC implementation of the BIBCO Standard Record (BSR) was set for Dec. 1st and that SCP staff would review the BSR and pending any major issues, adopt the standard for SCP cataloging. It turns out that implementation was pushed to Jan. 4th, 2010 and regardless, the BSR will only apply to printed books. Therefore, SCP will ignore.
A reminder of a couple of SCP Advisory Committee approved actions. The first was whether or not to keep the 650 _7 and 650 07 Chinese script subject headings we occasionally found in SuperStar records we were deriving records from; yes we should. Secondly, how to code reclamation records that were being cleaned-up? UPD (update) was selected, along with the note “SCP reclamation clean-up” in the $b.
SCP will create brief records for SuperStar titles selected for acquisition into UCSD’s ILS (but not distributed to the campuses since actual OCLC records for these titles will be distributed soon after). The brief records are generated from spreadsheet reports from the vendor, which we receive monthly. Keeping in account the potential time lag, bibliographers responsible for SuperStar selection can consult UCSD’s Roger catalog to see if another bibliographer has already selected a title and avoid duplicate ordering. Items may be search by title or by first named author, but please be aware that these titles are loaded using batch processes, including one for Romanization, so the Romanization will not always be accurate. To view all SuperStar titles orders since the last record load, search by the title phrase “Superstar. Chinamaxx online monographs.”
Cataloging highlights for this past month include sending out nearly 500 Century journal project titles, some 130 CRC Press ITKnowledgeBase titles, almost 900 IEEE Xplore conference proceedings, and 150 JSTOR serial analytic titles. We received notice that the Springer Architecture and Design Collection titles will be folded into the Engineering Collection as of 2010. We are switching the 793s to reflect this and you will be getting these updated records in the Dec. 14th file.
As with other UCSD library operations, SCP will be closed during the mandated campus closure, Dec. 19-Jan. 3, and resume normal operations Jan. 4th. We will post the last SCP record file of the year on Dec. 14 and post the first file of 2010 on Jan. 4th. The Jan. 4th files will contain records for cataloging performed the week of Dec. 14-18.
Lastly, all of us at SCP wish you the best of the season and a most wondrous new year. Cheers!
Until next month … Fourth quarter statistics
SCP Monthly Update November 2009
At this past Program for Cooperative Cataloging Program Policy Committee meeting, it was agreed that PCC implementation of the BIBCO Standard Record (BSR) would be set for Dec. 1st. SCP staff are reviewing the BSR and pending any major issues, plan on adopting the standard for SCP cataloging. We will consult with the SCP AC if any issues are identified.
With various UCSD/SCP reclamation database management projects completed at UCSD, SCP can begin doing actual reclamation record clean-ups. The campuses will start seeing the results of this record clean-up starting in a week or so, mostly involving monographs. Also to start showing up in a week or two are the first Chinese language monographs. These will be for the package Chinamaxx (i.e., SuperStar).
New cataloging over this past month included 176 titles from Alexander Street Press for their Early Encounters in North America database. This database contains letters, diaries, memoirs, and accounts between 1534 and 1860. The indexing is such that not only can you search by the standard author, title, date, but also by flora, fauna, and environment. So, if want to read an early encounter with a black-throated waxwing or Missouri red-moustached woodpecker, or perhaps didelphis californica or a black-clawed shew mole, this resource is for you.
Until next month…
SCP Monthly Update October 2009
Reclamation news: Though some campuses have yet to finish loading their SCP reclamation files, the SCP Advisory Committee agreed that SCP should resumed its normal distribution of records. The first files were posted on September 21st and files will be posted weekly as usual. A reminder for campuses yet to finish their SCP reclamation loading, the SCP weekly record files are kept on the server for a period of three months, so you may leave files there for a period of time until you finish SCP reclamation. Relating to the server, UCSD’s IT department had to perform some immediate hardware maintenance that required the transfer of the weekly files to a different server. A message to the SCP systems liaisons is in the works with necessary details for future access. For now, when you try to access your weekly files, an automatic redirection to the correct server will occur.
UCSD is busy planning for loading local holding records (LHRs) for UCSD materials into OCLC. Once that process is in place, UCSD and SCP staff will look at loading LHRs for SCP titles. There are yet many unresolved questions about how 856 will display, whether to group them or not in one LHR, etc. Hopefully, by working out the kinks with UCSD’s materials, developing the process for SCP will be easier. As campuses plan out their own processes for loading their LHRs, keep in mind that the current plan is for SCP to load the LHRs for SCP titles and that you should avoid sending SCP data in your LHRs.
A few highlights on cataloging output. 1677 titles for 20th Century Drama (LION), 750 IEEE 2008 conference proceedings, and 380 titles from ASP’s North American Women’s Letters and Diaries went out in September. For more package cataloging statistics, check out our third quarter statistics.
Until next month …
SCP Monthly Update September 2009
Reclamation news: It seems we are in the home stretch with three campuses reporting completing SCP reclamation and several more planning to finish their processing of the SCP reclamation files within the next several weeks. As a result, SCP plans to resume its normal distribution of records with the posting of new files on September 21st. These files, while larger than usual since they will contain all the SCP cataloging done since early July, will contain the usual mix of new, updated, and delete records. Campuses should process them as they have in the past. Very important though, these records should be loaded only when campuses finish their loading of the SCP reclamation files, otherwise they run the risk of overlaying or deleting newer or updated records. SCP will continue posting of weekly files after the 21st. A reminder for those campuses still to finish: files are kept on the server for a period of three months, so you may leave files there for a period of time until you finish SCP reclamation.
PCC implementation of the repeatable 260 field occurred September 1 and SCP is following suit. This means that we will use a series of 260 fields to record changes in publication over time instead of recording that data in 500 notes. Some issues have arisen and some best practices are in development to address them. SCP will implement them as approved. Individual campuses should explore how best to display these repeating 260s in their OPACs. There is a problem with the display of multiple 260s in Next Generation Melvyl which has been reported to OCLC. While not an SCP title, if you are curious to see an example, check out the title Journal of Greek linguistics, OCLC #47134964, in NGM and Connexion.
SCP has completed cataloging of over 1600 titles for LION’s Twentieth Century drama, the same number of titles for IEEE conference proceedings and standards, and is busy on African Writers Series.
Until next month …
SCP Monthly Update August 2009
In reclamation news, SCP has posted its reclamation files and some of the campuses have started processing them. Preliminary reports from UC Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara identified some concerns; however, SCP’s analysis of their data shows nothing unexpected. Campuses will find they will not receive reclamation records for every SCP record they have. This is expected since over the course of nine years, various package cancellations, etc, that some deletes would have slip through the cracks. Also, campuses may get “new” records for titles they didn’t already have an SCP record, again, not unexpected for the same reasons. Overall, it seems reclamation will serve to get all of us in sync, which is a good thing. As a reminder, we expect the campuses will need four to six weeks to process the reclamation files. During this time period, SCP will not be sending regular files. However, SCP will continue to catalog materials in OCLC and will be setting SCP ER holdings for the campuses. As a result, records will display as being held by the campuses, but there will be no corresponding records in the campuses OPACs until we restart our normal record distribution process.
In cataloging news, note one upcoming cataloging policy change. As of August 1, PCC implemented the Provider-Neutral cataloging policy for e-monographs. This policy states that records for online monographs should be “neutral” in terms of provider. That is, a record should not contain any provider information, except in some explicitly stated places, so that the record can be used for all online versions of the monograph. This addresses the growing problem of catalogers having to create separate record for each provider’s copy of an online monograph. SCP will be preparing local guidelines for its catalogers on implementing this policy since, until OCLC can complete its database clean-up, the issued guidelines do not address some situations. A special thanks to Becky Culbertson who served as co-chair of the PCC committee that drafted the new policy and managed it through the approval process. They say good work doesn’t go unpunished and so Becky now finds herself working on documentation for vendors to guide them in adhering to his policy when they create vendor records. Lastly, Becky did an Elluminate session (a star is born) on the Provider-Neutral record that is available for viewing at https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/jwsdetect/playback.jnlp?psid=2009-07-23.1309.M.C599D7111CB58ADC13BF4722AED094.vcr
A couple of other national cataloging practice decisions were approved at July’s ALA conference. SCP will be reviewing those as well and making appropriate recommendation or changes. We will send updates on those as they need to be put in practice.
While reclamation has dominated our work, we managed to sneak in some cataloging and clean-up work before having to suspend record distributions. This included sending deletes for some cancellations: the ASTI journals, dropped CRC Press NetBase database titles, and the dropped Gannet newspapers. Journal access added included backfile access for Lippincott and new journal titles for IOP, Cambridge, and Springer. Additions to the COJ and CAJ packages also went out. Our quarterly update to the cumulative number of titles cataloged by package, current to the end of July, is now posted at SCP Program Statistics: 3rd Quarter – September 30, 2009. Also, check out the number of records distributed to your campus during the 2008/2009 fiscal year at SCP Record Distribution Statistics for fiscal year 2009-2010. On average, SCP distributed about 46,700 records to each campus.
Until next month …
SCP Program Statistics July – September 2009 (available here)
SCP Monthly Update June 2009
In reclamation news, OCLC has finished its part of the SCP file processing which means that campus (xxxER) symbols have been set on the WorldCat master records, allowing them to appear in Next Generation Melyvl. There was a 99.9% overall match rate, with 356,729 records processed, resulting in 3,233,624 holdings set and 23,191 new records created in WorldCat. There were 293 unresolved (problem) records for SCP to manually review and process. SCP staff are currently engaged in re-loading and preparing the files in order to add OCLC numbers to the SCP records and to load the new records created by reclamation. Once this is done we will have a better idea of any other problems that will need resolution apart from the unresolved records.
We intend to post the files as quickly as possible and will not hold them up while we clean up the problems. We are setting July 1st as our target date for making the files available to the campuses for retrieval. After posting the reclamation files, SCP will suspend the distribution of additional SCP records until all the campuses complete their local processing of these files. The period of suspension will be determined at the next SCP Advisory Committee meeting (June 15). Details regarding the posting, retrieval, and processing of the files will be given at the time of the files’ posting.
On the cataloging front, since the last update we distributed just over 2,500 new Springer records and almost 1100 records for another Alexander Street Press database, Latino Literature. Latino Literature contains poetry, fiction, and drama written in English and Spanish by Latino authors working in the United States. The scholarly editorial board that assisted in the selection of materials for this database includes two UC staff, Professor Jorge A. Huerta of UCSD, and Dr. Yolanda Retter Vargas, Chicano Studies Librarian at UCLA. Go UC! For other packages, work on the ScienceDirect supplemental back files titles is completed; 162 titles were updated with expanded coverage dates and 68 new titles were cataloged. Our first set of 113 records for China Online Journals was also distributed.
Until next month …
SCP Monthly Update May 2009
After months of preparation, SCP reclamation is underway. The SCP record files were sent to OCLC on April 15, and we have been in conversation with the manager assigned to our projects to iron out the details. OCLC is working hard to meet the June 1 deadline for the production version of Next Generation Melvyl. When SCP begins to receive various files and reports back from OCLC, we will have a better idea of how much problem resolution we will be facing and how time-consuming that might be. We will keep you all informed. In the meantime, SCP is manually setting the appropriate SCP ER holdings as we catalog new titles. Be aware that this may result in a disconnect between what a searcher of Next Generation Melvyl finds as available at your campus (because we have set your ER holdings) and what records are actually in your local OPAC (because you may not have yet received and/or loaded that title into your system).
We are up-to-date in cataloging licensed journal packages, while work continues on the Springer e-books. To date we have distributed nearly 18,000 Springer records and estimate having about 2,000 left to do. About 450 titles remain in the CRC Press backlog, though ongoing CDC licensing discussions may result in a sharp increase and/or decrease of that backlog depending on whether additional databases are added or deleted. For individuals interested in recent historical source materials, the first records for The Sixties, an Alexander Street Press database, have been distributed. The records represent primary documents and personal narratives covering the time period 1960-1974 in areas such as the arts, civil rights, mass media, the left, neo-conservatism, Vietnam, and student activism. Ah, such fun times they were. On other fronts, Becky continues to work on the EBSCO Business Source Complete while we await final title lists for the ScienceDirect supplemental back files and the Freedom Collection.
For Chinese language resources, I’m pleased to state that the cataloging is done for the initial title list for China Academic Journals (CAJ) with over 3300 titles cataloged. Updates for new content, coverage changes, and cataloging of hidden title changes will be folded into ongoing cataloging maintenance for this package. Next on our docket for Chinese language materials is China Online Journals (COJ) for which we anticipate sending the first records by the end of the month.
As you will note, the SCP Monthly Update has a new author. In a small move to maximize our cataloging effort, Becky has graciously agreed to turn over this assignment to me. So, to close out my first SCP monthly update, I wish to express great thanks and appreciation to Becky for writing these updates till now. Through this update, Becky has been SCP’s voice and her voice was surely appreciated by all. Thanks Becky!
Until next month …
— Adolfo Tarango