VIVA User Service Committee
Subcommittee on Cataloging and Intellectual Access
|Minutes for November 21, 1997

Charlottesville VA

Present: D. Badertscher, K. Cary, E. Day, B. Heyman, C. Lewis, J. Ogburn, J. Shieh,
Guest: A. Sleeman

David Badertscher, a new member of the committee, was welcomed.

Minutes from the previous meeting were approved.

Cataloging guidelines:

The guidelines now include examples of displays from representative systems in VIVA, including SIRSI, III, DRA, NOTIS, and VTLS. These examples will be useful for public services staff to understand the and interpret the cataloging records. The examples for now are live links to catalogs, but we will capture screen displays as files and modify them to illustrate specific points in the Guidelines.

This way the examples can also be highlighted and annotated. The committee discussed having the guidelines work down two paths: one detailed for catalogers and one for public  services staff. The text of the guidelines has also been updated. Jackie reported that she has gotten a lot of questions from other libraries regarding our guidelines. Joyce has also been contacted by a few people.

Committee members should go ahead and show public services staff the revised guidelines to get feedback.

Converting MARC records to web pages:

Elaine has been in contact with the Los Alamos Laboratory regarding their scripts for converting MARC records to web pages. They have offered to share their scripts with us in December. Elaine also reported that she will be attending one of the OCLC Institutes on December 8-10, 1997.

Starting the listserv:

UVa as agreed to host the listserv for catalogers across the state.  The name suggested was VIVACAT-L. It was agreed that the listserv will be unmoderated for now. As chair, Joyce will write a letter to UVa requesting the establishment of the listserv.

OCLC Survey:

Marda Johnson of OCLC has sent Joyce a survey to gauge our interest in having a collection sets service established, as we have been discussing. The survey is geared toward individual libraries, but we agreed to answer as a consortium. The committee filled out the survey at the meeting and Joyce will return it to OCLC.

Local checking of URLs:

UVa is experimenting with a program that checks URLs for currency.  Jackie has the link to a web page containing evaluations on URL robots/minders/checkers.

Update from VIVA Special Collections:

Joyce gave a short report on a potential VIVA Special Collections database of records and images.

Chadwyck-Healey update:

UVa has loaded 6 records successfully. They are not in USMARC format and the 856 field had to be added. There are approximately 9039 records total, which the other VIVA libraries can add to their catalogs. There may be some records ready by February for selected libraries to do a test ftp to their catalogs. UVa will not add these records to OCLC. Number of records by title:

English poetry: 4477 records
American poetry: 1288
English verse drama: 2283
African-American poetry: 991

Next meeting:

The committee will meet in Richmond at the new Union Theological Seminary Library on January 30 or February 6 if Joyce can get permission from John Trotti.

Joyce L. Ogburn
AUL for Information Resources and Systems
Old Dominion University Library