TL Recommendations: Questions and Comments from Task Force Members
The following is a paraphrase of Youn's comments [along with additional comments from me, in brackets] on the Team Leaders document. Additional comments will be added as they are presented.
Proposal I: Revisit Criteria for LSF Transfers
Does creating authority record only on second occurrence significantly reduce number of authority records needing to be created?
Is LCSH syntax wasted when readers search by keyword [cf. Gross & Taylor, 2005 in bibliography]? Consider NLM use of MESH and Medline. What about Yale treatment of ERM [Electronic Resources Management?]? [What would happen to Yale's commitment to high-level subject analysis if we moved to faceted application of subject headings? Currently, our department provides workshops for the entire library on principles and application of LCSH terminology AND syntax]
Priorities: Two sets of stakeholders: local Yale community and group of other RLG member institutions. Regarding former, more desirable to catalog most highly-sought items as fully as possible ... obscure items likely to be requested by more experienced researchers, who have their own ways (beyond the catalog) of identifying and retrieving such things. With respect to latter, more desirable to provide full cataloging for most obscure, rare, original holdings, irrespective of immediate interest of Yale community. Question: "Do the strengths of our department correlate with the strengths of our collections? Do we participate in national cataloging programs in subject areas in which [we] collect the most?"
Discontinuation of shelf-listing for LSF-bound materials a good idea? Subject headings provide better navigation, cross-classification, semantic transparency, etc..
Proposal II: Make non-PCC Core level default for current material
Are the TLs suggesting that non-PCC core would be default for copy cataloging and PCC for original cataloging? [This isn't clear in the TL document, but I believe your are correct. It's also the reason why the total number of authority records contributed to PCC should not decrease, since original catalogers would continue to create them as needed. ]
Proposal III: Reconsider Shelflisting (Collocation) Practices
Non-LC call-number assignment is very unpredictable. Are LC records available for most items? Would Yale benefit from spending more time on intellectual organization of resources at the expense of physical arrangement on shelves? Given increasing difficulty of keeping similar items together on shelf, and increasing use of online browsing [along with convenience of ELI express], how important will call number assignment be in the future?
Proposal IV: Expand Range of Duties for Level E Staff
Improvement of training documentation would support this proposed goal.
Proposal V. Impolement New "Standard Routing Form" for all Materials sent to Catalog Dept."
[Hard to argue with standardized forms]
Proposal VI: [Deleted from Source Document?]
Proposal VII: Reconsider Treatement of Certain Titles Acquired both in Print and Electronic Form
Regarding discontinuation of analytic cataloging: "Our current practice is to create records for analytics if they can be accessed separately on the site. I don't think it makes sense to have multiple URLs in a single record. Multiple links will appear redundant to users. Many publishers/vendors provide MARC records for analytic titles. Some databases may not be as well known as the works they contain. Also, consider the different types of users who are likely to know database names vs. those likely to know analytic titles (undergraduates vs. professors?). Do titles in a 505 field come up in a title search? If necessary, 7XX fields might be better." .... Regarding dissertations: "A collection of Yale dissertations may be included in VITAL".
Proposal VII: Automate Cataloging Statistics
Proposal IX: Use Blog to Track "Cataloging Problems" and Solutions
Does this overlap with email discussion list? Need to be clear on which tools would be used for which purpsoses (e.g., blog for discussion and mailing list for announcements).