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Consolidated Catalog

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SUNYLA and NYC

Victoria Ossenfort

OCLC Reclamation

Focus on SUNY

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At the April 2012 SUNY Council of Library Directors Spring Meeting, the Comprehensive Colleges, Colleges of Technology, and Community Colleges requested that OLIS move forward with the development of a shared catalog that would contain one record for each bibliographic entity.

Why?

The concept of a library system is evolving into a set of software tools that support two major elements:

• Discovery and access to a range of resources including print, electronic full text and digital repositories;
• Management of selection, procurement, fulfillment, organization and utilization of resources across format and location.

Additionally, around SUNY, there has been a significant increase in campus licensing of electronic books. Vendors supply MARC records to enable access through local catalogs. The current SUNY environment, where each campus has its own unique bibliographic database, results in the need to load and maintain tens of thousands of these records across multiple catalogs.

The consolidation of bibliographic databases and the introduction of the one bibliographic record per title would streamline maintenance and support of MARC records for these digital items. In addition, this change would make a SUNYConnect-wide discovery system a much more feasible option. And, as Chancellor Zimpher develops the concept of "systemness" as well as efforts to shift cost savings to instruction, a shared catalog would:

a. Create a union catalog view that is more accurate - as it represents the actual holdings of the campuses - this has significant implications for resource sharing and collection development across all formats;

b. Provide a more streamlined environment for shared cataloging operations among campuses;

c. Streamline cataloging workflows - minimize going to a bibliographic utility for acquisition and/or cataloging records for general copy cataloging;

d. Vendor batch loads - MARC records for e-resource subscriptions, ebooks and online Patron Driven Acquisition programs (PDA) would be loaded and updated centrally;

e. Possible cost savings by not having to download as many records from bibliographic utility;

f. Opportunity to investigate cost sharing of access to bibliographic utilities.

What Would be Required at the Campus Level for a Shared Catalog?

The SUNY library community would need to work with OLIS to develop work procedures and policies for shared cataloging and authority databases. These decisions need to be manageable to support all campuses in the shared environment. Discussion would need to address the following:

• Merging bibliographic records
  • Criteria for selecting the record to be shared by all campuses
  • Addressing need to maintain local notes and added entries
• Authorities
  • Local additions
  • Edits and updates
  • Use of OWN field
  • Who would coordinate ongoing maintenance and upkeep?
  • Who would participate in ongoing maintenance and upkeep?
  • Use of 3rd party service for ongoing updates?
• Cataloging - adding new records - who arbitrates work procedures and policies for
  • Individual records
    • Original input
    • Download from WorldCat, other bibliographic utilities, other sources
  • Vendor batch loads
    • Configuring batch loads correctly
    • Configuring 856 fields, holdings and items correctly
  • Deletions - who can delete and under what circumstances
• Cataloging - once records are in the database - who arbitrates work procedures and policies for
  • Items
  • Holdings
  • Local holdings symbol added to WorldCat
  • Editing
  • Added entries
  • Merges
  • Overlays
  • Vendor records - adding to holdings
    • 856 field for specific campus on correct HOL record
    • Items
    • Holdings
    • Local holdings symbol to WorldCat
    • Merges/overlays

Next Steps?

Currently, ITEC and OLIS are focusing on activities associated with a hardware upgrade for the 56 campuses in the shared server environment. Given the complexity of moving to a shared bib file, it is not possible to try and do both (move to new hardware and reconfigure Aleph) at the same time. The hardware upgrade is anticipated to be done by the end of this year. We have a test environment up and running and we should have a good idea in another month or so as to when the actual upgrades will take place.

Regardless, 1. Cataloging workflow review - the OLIS will present to the SCLD governance a proposal to create a Shared Cataloging and Authorities Task Force to develop guidelines and standards associated with cataloging and authorities workflow within a shared catalog.

Topics would include what workflow changes would need to be made, what activities would be done centrally, determining a master record, local edits, maintenance, etc. The idea is to have the recommendations of this group be distributed out to SUNYLA and SCLD for input and review.


2. After the hardware upgrade, OLIS and ITEC can then focus on what it would take technically to actually consolidate bib catalogs. This includes developing a project plan, identifying some early adopters and figuring out how the work would ultimately be staged. This work will likely get started in 2013.

It is too early to say how long this process will take and when all campuses in the shared environment will have their catalogs combined. The OLIS will be providing updates as these activities move forward.