Criteria for cataloging selected remote access electronic resources

For the purposes of selection at Yale University Library, remote electronic resources can be divided into three types, each type has a corresponding cataloging action.

Type I: Material that Yale or Yale Library is committed to maintaining or maintaining access to for its readers.

Actions: Catalog type I materials using minimal, core, full, or collective levels of cataloging as appropriate.

Selector notifies acquisitions and catalog staff.

Examples of committment include:

  1. YUL or Yale has an agreement licensing access to the resource
  2. YUL or Yale created the resource; YUL has committed to preserving the resource
  3. YUL is obliged to provide access to the resource (e.g. as a Federal Depository Library).

Resources examples of committment include:

  1. IDEAL project titles
  2. _The Yale University School of Medicine heart book_
  3. _The Yale C/AIM Web style guide_
  4. _The Cambodian Genocide Program_
  5. materials digitized in Project Open Book
  6. U.S. government documents

Type II: Material that other institutions are committed to maintaining or maintaining access to for their readers or members.

Actions: Catalog type II materials per selector's judgment using minimal, core, full, or collective levels of cataloging as appropriate.

If you judge this material to be of value for research and teaching at Yale and that is supported by a reliable institutional committment to accessibility that ensures it is a stable and sustainable remote access resource, then notify acquisitions and catalog staff. In addition to the usual reasonings for selected a resource for the YUL collections, remote access electronic resources must be clearly identified, consistently available, regularly maintained, and freely accessible to the Yale community. Additionally, responsibility for the resource must be stated in the resource, and the integrity of any original source must be reasonably preserved.

Types of other institutions include:

  1. consortia
  2. libraries
  3. museums
  4. universities
  5. research institutes
  6. non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
  7. associations
  8. state or local governments
  9. national governments other than U.S.

Examples of such an institutional committment include:

  1. Cornell U. committs to the preservation of certain digital materials
  2. LC digitzes materials for its American Memory project
  3. the Bibliographical Society of Virginia and UVa publish _Studies in Bibliography_
  4. material published by the United Nations

Type III: Material that lacks the committment of institutional support that is common to type I and type II.

Actions: Do not catalog type III material.

While this material will not be cataloged you may find that its potential utility to the Yale community for research or teaching may warrant placement on your subject web page.

Examples of such a lack of committment include:

  1. sites that are by nature or by circumstances ephemeral such as discussion lists, newsletters, etc.
  2. material that in print we would recognize as "gray literature" such as company or association home pages
  3. sites maintained by an individual person or group of persons with no credible institutional support such as personal homepages.