From the Print Media to the Internet Part 10

Parts of the current systems are now 20 years old. The basic design of the systems is no longer in line with current business needs and the fact that the British Library's software is out of date is often a hindrance, particularly as concerns cooperation with other organizations. The British Library has therefore decided to replace these systems, and the Corporate Bibliographic Programme is charged with implementing this decision.

The key objectives of the Programme, as summarized on their website, are:

"- To ensure the continuation of essential processes and services, i.e.

creating, maintaining and providing access to catalogue data;

- to make these processes and services more efficient and effective; and

- to provide a basis for future developments which will support the Library's strategic objectives and be in line with the Library's information systems strategy."

The Library of Congress Catalogs can be searched using four different methods: a) Word Search; b) Browse Search; c) Command Search; and d) Experimental Search System (ESS).

a) The Word Search's Z39.50 Gateway provides a simple search form for authors and t.i.tle queries and an advanced search form allowing the use of Boolean operators (and, or, and not), with searches for subjects, names, t.i.tles, series, notes, and various numbers. Some of these records have direct links to digitized materials.

b) The Browse Search allows the user to browse and then select from alphabetical indexes for the Library's catalogs, including subject cross references. One can browse by subject, author (personal, corporate), conference, t.i.tle, series, Library of Congress Cla.s.sification (partial call number), Dewey Decimal Number, and standard numbers like the ISBN (international standard book number), the ISSN (international standard serial number), and the LCCN (Library of Congress control number).

c) The Command Search allows the use of commands which can be typed to search for words and to browse indexes for the Library's catalogs, and for additional non-catalog files. This method provides access to LOCIS (the Library of Congress Information System, which is the original mainframe-based retrieval system), with browsable indexes, word searches, Boolean combinations, various display options, set creation, and advanced features for limiting and refining search results. This method requires the Internet Telnet function (either Telnet or tn3270) in order to connect to LOCIS. The Telnet capability comes with most WWW browsers, but must be configured.

d) The Experimental Search System (ESS), currently located in the LC Web research and development area, supports relevancy-ranked searching of catalog records, as well as sorting and e-mailing search results. Special search features include a.n.a.lyzing results by subject heading and "browsing" the shelf for items with similar LC call numbers. Some of these records have direct links to digitized materials, including selected full-text, image, video and audio files, at the Library of Congress and elsewhere. This is a test system and results may not be all inclusive.

The catalog records relate to books (9,543,910 as of December 10, 1998), maps (171,756), serials (825,664), prints and photographs (68,135), ma.n.u.scripts (10,698), music (209,142), visual materials (278,771) and software (6,318). As explained on the website:

"The Experimental Search System (ESS) is one of the Library of Congress' first efforts to make selected cataloging and digital library resources available over the World Wide Web by means of a single, point-and-click interface. The interface consists of several search query pages (Basic, Advanced, Number, and a Browse screen) and several search results pages (an item list of brief displays and an item full display), together with brief help files which link directly from significant words on those pages. By exploiting the powerful synergies of hyperlinking and a relevancy-ranked search engine (InQuery from Sovereign Hill Software), we hope the ESS will provide a new and more intuitive way of searching the traditional OPAC (on-line public access catalog). [...]

Besides the cataloging records for over 4 million books (including JACKPHY records not currently available through SCORPIO); 263,000 motion pictures, videos, filmstrips and other visual work; 200,000 sound recordings and musical scores; more than 150,000 maps; and 4,300 computer files - i.e., LC cataloging records created since 1968 - ESS also contains the cataloging for almost 140,000 photographs and ma.n.u.scripts in the National Digital Library Program's American Memory, linking to more than 70,000 digital photographs and images available on-line. By indexing the works selected and organized by The On-Line Books Page at Carnegie Mellon University, links are also provided to the full-text of over 2,500 on-line books from sites across the Internet. Even early motion pictures are available for searching and viewing once the proper viewer is installed.

(Hint: try searching on the subject heading 'shorts' in the Photographs, Ma.n.u.scripts, Movies collection.)"

Except for their prohibitive costs, the commercial databases give us an idea of what the catalogs could be in the future: for the past several years the Dialog Corporation, Lexis-Nexis or UnCover have been using their catalogs to provide on-line doc.u.ments.

Based in London, United Kingdom, with regional headquarters in Mountain View, California, and Hong Kong, the Dialog Corporation is a major on-line information company, with 900 main databases (the most well-known being Dialog and Profound) serving over 20,000 corporate clients in 120 countries. Content areas include: news and media; medicine; pharmaceuticals; chemicals; reference; social sciences; business and finance; food and agriculture; intellectual property; government and regulations; science and technology; and energy and environment.

LEXIS-NEXIS is an international provider of enhanced information services and management tools using on-line, Internet, CD-ROM and hardcopy formats for a variety of professionals. It serves customers in more than 60 countries. The 25-year old company has introduced Web products for business, legal and academic research, current awareness, and both standard and customizable tracking of compet.i.tive and business subjects and companies on a daily basis.

A service of CARL Corporation, UnCover is both a fax reprint service and the world's largest database of magazine and journal articles, with current article information taken from well over 17,000 multidisciplinary journals. UnCover contains brief descriptive information for over 7,000,000 articles which have appeared since Fall 1988. Any Internet surfer can use the free keyword access to article t.i.tles and summaries.

8.2. International Bibliographic Databases

Two organizations, the OCLC Online Computer Library Center and the Research Library Information Network (RLIN), run international databases of bibliographic information through the Internet.

The OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit, membership, library computer service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs.

More than 27,000 libraries in 65 countries use OCLC services to manage their collections and to provide on-line reference services. The site is available in English, Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.

OCLC Services include: access services; collections and technical services; reference services; resource sharing; Dewey Decimal Cla.s.sification (published in OCLC Forest Press); and preservation resources. From its headquarters in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC operates one of the world's largest library information networks.

Libraries in the United States join OCLC through their OCLC-affiliated Regional Networks. Libraries outside the United States receive OCLC services through OCLC Asia Pacific, OCLC Canada, OCLC Europe, OCLC Latin America and the Caribbean, or via international distributors.

OCLC also runs WorldCat, name of the OCLC Online Union Catalog, which is a merged electronic catalog of libraries around the world, and probably the world's largest bibliographic database with its 38 million records (at the beginning of 1998) in 400 languages (with transliteration for non-Roman languages), and an annual increase of 2 million bibliographic records.

WorldCat is derived from a concept which is the same for all union catalogs: earn time to avoid the cataloguing of the same doc.u.ment by many catalogers worldwide. When they are about to catalog a publication, the catalogers of the member libraries search the OCLC catalog. If they find the corresponding record, they copy it in their own catalog and add some local information. If they don't find the record, they create it in the OCLC catalog, and this new record will immediately be available to all the catalogers of the member libraries worldwide.

Unlike RLIN, another international bibliographic database (see below) which accepts several records for the same doc.u.ment, the OCLC Online Union Catalog takes into consideration only one record per doc.u.ment, and emphatically requests its members not to create double records for doc.u.ments which have already been cataloged. The records are created in USMARC format (MARC: machine readable catalog) according to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd version (AACR2).

What is the history of OCLC? According to the website:

"In 1967, the presidents of the colleges and universities in the state of Ohio founded the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC) to develop a computerized system in which the libraries of Ohio academic inst.i.tutions could share resources and reduce costs.

OCLC's first offices were in the Main Library on the campus of the Ohio State University (OSU), and its first computer room was housed in the OSU Research Center. It was from these academic roots that Frederick G. Kilgour, OCLC's first president, oversaw the growth of OCLC from a regional computer system for 54 Ohio colleges into an international network. In 1977, the Ohio members of OCLC adopted changes in the governance structure that enabled libraries outside Ohio to become members and partic.i.p.ate in the election of the Board of Trustees; the Ohio College Library Center became OCLC, Inc. In 1981, the legal name of the corporation became OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Today, OCLC serves more than 27,000 libraries of all types in the U.S. and 64 other countries and territories."

Both complementary and different from the OCLC Online Catalog (WordCat) with its 38 million records (with one record per doc.u.ment), the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) includes 88 million records (with several records per doc.u.ment).

RLIN is run by by the Research Libraries Group (RLG). The central RLIN database is a union catalog of nearly 88 million items held in comprehensive research libraries and special libraries in RLG member inst.i.tutions, plus over 100 additional law, technical, and corporate libraries using RLIN. It includes:

a) Records that describe works cataloged by the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, the U.S. Government Printing Office, CONSER (Conversion of Serials Project), The British Library, the British National Bibliography, the National Union Catalog of Ma.n.u.script Collections, and RLG's members and users;

b) Comprehensive representation of books cataloged since 1968 and rapidly expanding coverage for older materials;

c) Information about non-book materials ranging from musical scores, films, videos, serials, maps, and recordings, to archival collections and machine-readable data files;

d) Unique on-line access to special resources, such as the United Nations'

DOCFILE and CATFILE records, and the Rigler and Deutsch Index to pre-1950 commercial sound recordings; and

e) International book vendors' in-process records that can be transferred by bibliographers, acquisitions libraries, and catalogers to create citations, order records, and cataloging in their local systems.

In RLIN, particularly valuable sources of processing information are available on-line:

a) A catalog of computer files: Machine-readable data files are of value to a growing number of disciplines. RLIN contains records describing a wide array of such files, from the full-text French literary works in the ARTFL Database to the statistical data collected by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan;

b) A catalog of archives and special collections: The archival and ma.n.u.script collections of research libraries, museums, state archives, and historical societies contain essential primary resources, but information about their contents has often been elusive. Archivists and curators worked with RLG to create an automated format for these collections. There are close to 500,000 records available in RLIN for archival collections located throughout North America. These records a.n.a.lyze many collections by personal name, organization, subject, and format.

Complementing the central bibliographic files of RLIN is the English Short t.i.tle Catalogue (ESTC), an invaluable research tool for scholars in English culture, language, and literature. This file provides extensive descriptions and holdings information for letterpress materials printed in Great Britain or any of its dependencies in any language, from the beginnings of print to 1800 - as well as for materials printed in English anywhere else in the world. Produced by the ESTC editorial offices at the University of California, Riverside, and the British Library, in partnership with the American Antiquarian Society and over 1,600 libraries worldwide, the file continues to be updated and expanded daily.

ESTC serves as a comprehensive bibliography of the hand-press era and as a census of surviving copies.

ESTC included 420,000 records as of June 1998. It contains records for items of all types published in Great Britain and its dependencies or in English anywhere in the world from the beginnings of print (1473) through the 18th century - including materials ranging from Shakespeare and Greek New Testaments to anonymous ballads, broadsides, songs, advertis.e.m.e.nts and other ephemera.

Extensive indexing includes imprint word, place, genre, and year as well as copy-specific notes. Searches may also be limited by date, language and country of publication.

8.3. Future Trends for On-Line Catalogs

The future of catalogs is linked to the harmonization of the MARC format. While MARC is an acronym for Machine Readable Catalogue or Cataloguing, this general description is rather misleading as MARC is neither a kind of catalogue nor a method of cataloguing. According to UNIMARC: An Introduction, a doc.u.ment of the Universal Bibliographic Control and International MARC Core Programme, MARC is "a short and convenient term for a.s.signing labels to each part of a catalogue record so that it can be handled by computers. While the MARC format was primarily designed to serve the needs of libraries, the concept has since been embraced by the wider information community as a convenient way of storing and exchanging bibliographic data."

MARC II established certain principles which have been followed consistently over the years. In general terms, the MARC communication format is intended to be:

"- hospitable to all kinds of library materials;

- sufficiently flexible for a variety of applications in addition to catalogue production; and

- usable in a range of automated systems."