.Prospector
Catalog/Reference Committee
Minutes
The Committee met from 1:30 to 3:30 at Denver Public Library. Present: Veronica Able, Sandy Arnesen, Joan Beam, Pam Blome, Bill Garrison, Gwen Gregory, Florence Jones, Lois Jones, Janet Lee, Carol Perkins, Helen Reed, Carol White, Cynthia Wilson. Guests: Judith Kuhagen, Library of Congress; Paul Staincliff, National Library of New Zealand.
Minutes of the August meeting were approved.
A few item and checkin records seem to have been added in Prospector, so some testing may be going on. Overlays did not occur. In George’s absence, no one present really knows what Endeavor is doing.
An Inn-Reach problem has been corrected, which occurred because DPL checkouts are not showing up quickly. The fix is an automatic resend of DPL requests back to DPL.
Prospector will be getting an uninterruptible power supply.
Training for Fort Collins Public will be around the end of Oct. George will finalize this. Will need to get training documentation, Checklist for Prospector participants, in shape before that. The Checklist was distributed. Revision will be done at the Oct. meeting.
Authority records are sent daily to LC from OCLC & BNL, and from RLIN to OCLC; then LC sends back to all nodes.
For bib records, LC FTPs daily to OCLC and sends a weekly tape for monos to OCLC; OCLC (where CONSER resides) distributes serial records weekly to LC and other formats monthly
CONSER cataloging manual is coming very soon; revised CONSER editing guide will be out next year
CONSER is not going to work on integrating resources now; maybe later, but they want Bibco to handle the documentation and training on this
Overlays in Prospector will not occur with two different titles
Some titles will be a serial in paper and integrating resource online. This has implications for limiting by format.
A return to latest title cataloguing for serials is not on; would for example have to change all monos in a series that changes title.
Judith can foresee that we may need to develop additional Prospector best practices, e.g., for major/minor title changes or for 247 usage
Responses indicate the people mostly want a simple bib record to which the local library can add vendor information. Title variation will be an issue.
In the last 10 years LC has lost about 90 cataloguing positions. In response, LC is using more records from PCC libraries as loaded into the utilities. In addition to the lost positions, there are currently empty positions due to reduced budgets and the huge cost (in the millions) of deal with post-9/11 anthrax scares.
Announcement: OCLC may be interested in purchasing GoldRush.
Next meeting is Oct. 10, 12:30. Members should review the checklist before the meeting.