NACO Coordinating Committee Minutes

Date: 10 July 2006

Present: Steven Arakawa, Ellen Ellickson, Maria Hunenko, Cécile Mandour, Rick Sarcia, Stephen Young, Manon Théroux (chair and recorder).

Absent: Sarah Elman, Mickey Koth.

Guests: Polly Chang (for Sarah Elman), Michael Scott.

1. Demo of NACO Record Creation on OCLC Connexion

Michael Scott, cataloger on the Latin American team, demonstrated how to create NACO authority records using OCLC Connexion. He used OCLC Connexion for NACO work when he worked at Vanderbilt. The following points came up during the session:

Positives

authority file searching is free
staff do not have to remember their passwords to logon
name and subject authority files are integrated so a single search will find ambiguous headings (i.e. when not sure whether established as a name or subject )
can search a heading in the bib file as a name and as a subject using a single search
delimiter signs get input with spaces on either side and the spaces are automatically inserted (as in Voyager)
can generate an authority record from a bib record automatically (as in RLIN)
can copy and paste from Orbis (as in RLIN) though delimiters do not appear to carry over properly
can map diacritics, delimiter sign, macros, etc., to specific keys
can define "constant data" to be applied to the authority record (similar to RLIN templates but data gets merged)
saved record seems to be indexed more quickly than in RLIN
saved records expire after 90 days (in RLIN it is 60 days)

Negatives

includes authority records for juvenile subject headings, which can be easily mistaken for LCSH headings
because name and subject authority files are integrated, might lead to confusion as to whether a heading should be submitted as NACO or SACO
no “universal” heading phrase index for all headings in the database
cannot view earlier versions of "authority records" (as in RLIN) though this may change in the future
fixed fields display with OCLC mnemonic labels (not in MARC order) though can click each field to see its MARC number & field name
must remember to input $w at the end of the field not the beginning
records in "save mode" created by other OCLC institutions cannot be viewed
a comma is missing when generating an authority record for a compound surname from an OCLC bib record [we should report this]
not sure exactly how the review file functions work
after "saved" record is "produced" it looks like duplicate records were created - if you search the heading, the "Records" column says "2" though it later changes to "1" [postscript: this appears to happen only sometimes]
there appears to be no equivalent to the RLIN "pending" message but the record does remain locked until LC has distributed it to all NACO nodes

For the training, we should:

do hands-on training in small groups in the SCML or the Electronic Classroom rather than one big lecture hall demo
have one or two helpers to float around the room in addition to a trainer at the front of the room
create an OCLC/RLIN comparison chart for the fixed fields and for basic terminology differences (produce vs. add, etc.)
divide the training into the following segments:
- searching the authority file
- searching headings in the bib file (unless we want to recommend that staff do their bibliographic searching in the LC Online catalog instead)
- creating/updating authority records
- exporting authority records (e.g. when need to update a newly-created SAR in Orbis to add an 090 field)
- the NACO review process
create documentation as needed but not duplicate OCLC documentation unnecessarily

Next steps:

request NACO accounts from OCLC
develop more specific timeline for migration
investigate whether we can bring in an outside trainer
reserve dates in the SCML or the Electronic Classroom and have staff sign up for training electronically
divide committee into subgroups to work on training materials
communicate with NACO coordinators at other OCLC NACO libraries