Systemwide Cataloging Coordination Committee (SCCC)

Minutes of Meeting, September 26, 2005
Kapi`olani Community College Library

  1. Aftermath of the Unicode upgrade

    1. Clean-up report
      Paul Beck reported that clean-up work on Unicode conversion problems resulting from the Unicode upgrade was almost all done, with three exceptions: problems in CJK records, which will be handled by CJK language specialists; problems in non-essential fields that might be cleaned up by batch processing, (see item 1.d. below); and problems that had to be handled by the library that owns the item because the problem is in the holdings record or the problem can’t be fixed without examining the item. For this third group, lists of records with problems were distributed to each library with a request that they fix them as soon as possible (see item 1.b.).

    2. Retrieval problem with not converted records
      Michelle Sturges reported that records that didn’t convert due to a conversion problem are not fully indexed for retrieval. As long as a library leaves a record with a conversion problem unfixed, the item(s) described by that record will for all intents and purposes be inaccessible via the catalog. While the thinking had been that unconverted records could be worked on as time permitted, it turns out that they represent a serious retrieval problem and need to be worked on sooner rather than later.

    3. Possible diacritics shuffle
      Michelle reported that Cornell was investigating a possible change in the order of some multiple diacritics that might occur as part of the Unicode conversion. Voyager software and Microsoft Office software both compensate for minor diacritics irregularities, so it isn’t possible to see if any UH database records have the problem. Michelle asked the group to report if they encounter any problems importing or exporting records due to diacritics irregularities.

    4. Proposed batch clean-up
      Paul reported that a lot of records in the Unicode conversion problem log are old records that all have an unconvertible character in a 035 field. He proposed having the Systems Office do a batch clean-up of the 035 tags in these records. Carol Kellett said it would probably be possible to do a batch process that removed the tags with the offending characters. Michael Chopey questioned whether the presence of the characters mattered enough to justify going through such work.

    5. WebVoyage bug
      Carol reported that there is a bug in WebVoyage in Unicode Voyager that is affected by the presence of diacritics. If a patron tries to e-mail a copy of a record containing diacritics, the field containing the diacritic will not appear. The problem affects patron research and ISL requests. Carol reported that the bug is supposed to be fixed in Voyager 5. The problem has been designated as incident 109465.

  2. New Chinese vendor records
    Eileen Yara reported that K.T. Yao was completing work on an agreement whereby one of Hamilton’s Chinese language book vendors would be supplying the library with brief catalog records that include Romanized and Chinese script versions of basic fields.The records, which are meant to be temporary brief acq bibs, do not use linked 880 fields for the non-Roman content. Instead, the records have double tags, (for example, two 245 tags, one containing a Romanized version of the title and one containing the Chinese script version of the title).To see examples, perform a keyword search on the term “CHIBO” which appears in the 090 tag of the records.Once titles are received the records will be replaced or revised so that they use proper MARC21 coding.

  3. Addition of one or more libraries to the UH shared database
    Carol Kellett gave the background of recent decisions to add selected UH Manoa libraries to the UH shared database.She reminded catalogers that the School of Travel Industry Management (TIM) library was now a member of the shared database.Their location codes start with OUT, and their location jump code is T.

  4. Review of Voyager from a cataloging perspective.
    The Library Council asked the UH Voyager Coordinating Committee to task each functional committee with compiling a list of likes and dislikes with respect to the Voyager system. The catalogers compiled a list of things in the cataloging module they would like to keep, things they would like to see changed, and things they view as problems or poor functionality.

  5. Voyager 5 upgrade

    1. Preferred date for an upgrade
      The catalogers decided they would defer to the groups most likely to be affected by the upgrade, Circulation, Acquisitions and Serials, with respected to the selection of a date.

    2. New holdings keyword index
      Michelle and Carol reported that Voyager 5 was supposed to include a new feature allowing users to search holdings records for keywords. Whether the feature was available in all staff modules or just some could not be determined from the available documentation. It was also unclear whether the index could be customized.

  6. Updates

    1. Certification
      The catalogers decided that the basic rules for what to include in written procedures as part of add bib certification should be revised to include required settings for Unicode validation.

    2. Deduplication
      Hamilton catalogers expressed concern about how long it takes to put deduplication notes in a batch of duplicate records. Some unhappiness was also expressed about how long it takes some libraries to clean up their duplicate records. Hamilton representatives asked if it might be possible for a team of Hamilton catalogers to simply clean up other libraries’ duplicate records rather than putting in notes and waiting for other libraries to do the clean up work.

      Other catalogers felt it would be inappropriate for Hamilton catalogers to do other catalogers’ work. Hamilton catalogers thought there might be some libraries in the UH shared database who would welcome the prospect of having the burden of deduplication work done for them. They felt it should be left up to each library whether it wants to do its own deduplication work or have a Hamilton team do it for them.

      There was disagreement as to what sort of records constituted a batch of duplicates.  Traditionally it was understood that multiple exact match records constitute a set of duplicate records that should be reduced to the smallest number possible, (ideally a single record). Michael Chopey felt records for certain kinds of reprints should also be treated as duplicate records if a record for the original exists in the database.

      Michelle said she felt that a decision to allow Hamilton catalogers to do the deduplication work of other libraries would have to get approval from the Library Council. It was moved that Michelle take to Library Council a proposal that Hamilton Cataloging do monographic deduplication work for libraries wishing to outsource the work rather than doing it themselves. The motion was approved, 11 in favor, 1 opposed.

    3. Authorities
      Nancy Sack updated the group on progress in cleaning up authorities and expanding the scope of the authorities database. She reported that Hamilton had arranged to purchase backfiles of name and series authority records, which should start being loaded into the database soon.

    4. Addition of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to the UH shared database.
      Catalogers agreed to drop the policy of having members delete MeSH headings from incoming records. They also agreed that if the Health Sciences Library wants to expend the resources to add MeSH authority records to the shared database, they were welcome to do so.

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    Michelle Sturges
    Kapi`olani Community College Library
    Technical Services Librarian
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