Bibliographic Control Working Group
ALA Annual Meeting
24 June 2006
New Orleans, LA

Present: Charles Croissant (Saint Louis University), Rebecca Malek-Wiley (Tulane U.), Charlene Kellsey (U. Colorado at Boulder), Frances Ott Allen (U. Cincinnati), Deborah Rose-Lefmann (Northwestern), Regina Lichti (Harassowitz), Knut Dorn (Harrassowitz), Miranda Hay (NLM), Reinhold Heuvelmann (Die Deutsche Bibliothek), Rowena Griem (Yale), Jim Niessen (Rutgers), Jon Marner (Texas A&M), Gail Hueting (U. Illinois U-C), Jeff Garrett (Northwestern), James Simon (CRL), Sebastian Hierl (Harvard)

I. Announcements

A. GNARP 6th Scientific Symposium Frankfurt (October 5-7, 2006) – jointly planned with the University of Frankfurt. See http://www.crl.edu/grn/gnarp/frankfurt2006.pdf for more details. This will be a great opportunity to meet one-on-one with our colleagues in Germany. Of note to this group is the session on "comparative cataloging cultures in Germany and North America."

B. Elizabeth Darocha Berenz has departed CRL. A new Project Coordinator for GRN has been appointed: Judy Eckoff (eckoff at crl.edu) is on board and will be the point contact for GRN activities. A part-time Project Assistant, James Hill, (jhill at crl.edu) has also been appointed.

II. Status of German transition to MARC21.

Reinhold Heuvelmann (Die Deutsche Bibliothek) reported on the recent decision (Dec 2004) to transition from the German/Austrian bibliographic format to MARC21. From Dec. 2007 onwards, libraries will use MARC21 exclusively when exchanging bibliographic information. First steps undertaken were to try to identify work packages, addressing policy issues such as the treatment of multi-volume works, develop a crosswalk from MAB format to MARC21 (identify where they do and do not fit together), and decide what to do with the "loose ends" (some are irrelevant, some are necessary).

The time frame is ambitious – by autumn need to present discussion papers and proposals for the loose ends. The MAB midwinter meeting will be the main discussion venue to resolve most details, and will be working with the regional consortia to discuss and decide issues. They have planned to translate MARC rules (part of the documentation is available in a translation prepared by the Swiss National Library) and the XML description of MARC Concise.

Once deliberations are complete, need to implement the transition. There are many libraries that do not use MAB internally: it is a "transportation format" as much as anything. Some libraries have their own internal systems, and will convert to MAB only to export data. MARC will allow for a more standard schema.

The deciding body is not DDB, but the Standardisierungsausschuss, or Committee on Standardization; this committee, on which the major libraries and library consortia are represented, does have the authority to require that other institutions must implement this change.

Once this transition is complete, will US institutions be closer to be able to use catalog records produced in Germany? The levels of cataloging may not be the same, but as improvements in the knowledge about MARC occur, the possibilities are better. Of course, there will be ongoing issues of name authority, etc….

III. Review of projects, activities, and directions

Charles led a discussion of current activities by the working group.
1. BddL – 15,161 records produced by Northwestern to accompany the fiche set. Available for purchase via the Deutsche Bibliothek – a portion of the revenue is returned to GNARP.

2. BddL 2nd Supp. – Work done by Northwestern to convert records. 1579 records are being deposited with the Deutsche Bibliothek for distribution along the same terms as the main set. GNARP members can receive the whole set of records for $100, ($200 non-members) – 50% of proceeds go to GNARP.

3. Digitale Bibliothek deutscher Klassiker – digital editions online through Chadwyck-Healey (133 works?), with cataloging done by Northwestern. Records are available for free download through Chadwyck-Healey for subscribers to the collection.
Q: Will RDA present a best practice in relation to having a separate record for electronic and print record, or a link to the electronic version from the print record? No resolution on this point to date.

4. DigiZeitschriften – backfiles of journals, available on the JSTOR model. Currently offering over 100 journals. A substantial component is Open Access (mainly 19th century titles), and they are making DZ OAI compliant, OpenURL compliance is in the works. 17 GNARP institutions have joined, and many institutions are currently adding links to their print records (or new electronic records) and linking through OpenURL.

5. Digitale Bibliothek (from DirectMedia, Berlin) – 166 titles in CD/DVD acquired by Northwestern, in a wide variety of subject matters. Title list is available at http://www.digitale-bibliothek.de. Some description and some tables of contents. Northwestern has loaded records to OCLC, with links to the online tables of contents.
Q: Are institutions interested in a GNARP consortial purchase? Something Collection Development may want to bring up.

Following this discussion, the group discussed possible future activities.
1. Die Deutsche Bibliothek offers a number of machine-readable datasets online for downloading. Is there an interest in working on conversion of these to MARC, in the model of BddL? See: http://www.ddb.de/eng/service/zd/datendienst.htm. An example of interest is the Bibliotheca Palatina. Now that the conversion program has been written, it is possible the conversion of these sets would take relatively little time to complete. Northwestern also arranged for financial consideration on acquiring film in exchange for creating the records.
**Members were asked contact Charles about which sets they hold and which they may be interested in in terms of better access.

2. Work in coordination to provide better access to BddL records, which do not have subject access at present? This might be distributed among members to ease the workload.

3. Cooperate with the Deutsche Bibliothek to provide English version of the Schlagwortnormdatei (Subject Heading Authority File)? German libraries do put in subject control, both linking to authority and control numbers…
** Next meeting come with more information on how German Schlagwortketten are formulated and how the subject cataloging process works in general – and possible cross-walk between these and LCSH. Charles will contact LC and DDB on this.

4. Better contact with German catalogers, ongoing communication and possible involvement?

5. Possible role for this group to field advise, expertise, instruction, or workshops for German colleagues?

6. Program at a future ALA in German catalog & database searching? Tips, nuances, expectations… Which committee might be good for this – perhaps ALCTS (the Association for Library Collection and Technical Services)?

The members were asked to consider these and other ideas, and make more concrete suggestions before midwinter.

IV. Frankfurt cataloging presentation

Charles will present at the Frankfurt Symposium on "Comparing Cataloging Cultures in the US and Germany" and would like the group's input on differences in culture, problems people have encountered, and approaches and solutions. Some topics mentioned:
- In the U.S., autonomy of practice in creating set or analytic records
- In Germany, bibliographers assign subject headings (catalogers are descriptive catalogers)
- Practice of copy cataloging? In Germany, there are pools of cataloging data within consortia, single libraries add local data. Exchange between consortia is not frequent.

V. Cataloging Survey

(Charlene Kellsey) The committee has mounted its survey of North American libraries to discover how US institutions are cataloging their German language materials. The deadline for response was mid-June. They have received 77 responses, but have not yet analyzed the data.

VI. Other announcements

A. Sebastian Hierl mentioned that the position of Head, Germanic Technical Services Team at Harvard is open. Please apply or distribute announcement.

B. CRL Report (James Simon)
- cataloging of foreign dissertations continues – 484,000 to date. Is there interest from the German side in receiving these? Perhaps…
- CRL records are available for loading to member's catalogs.
- Ongoing analytics for Bibliothek der Frauenfrage in Deutschland (4,172 entries to date).

C. German decision (??) on cataloging code. Possibility of a move towards RDA; translate into German, decision by 2009 on use in Germany and Austria.
** Possible role for GNARP BCWG in assisting in the translation? Reinhold does not know how the responsibility will be distributed – will probably be outsourced.

Submitted by James Simon 6/26/06