OCLC Newsletter

              X868·£9 1-0 =NSSI
CONTENTS
MEMBERSHIP NEWS SPECIAL REPORT/
IIIIIII[J Library leaders attend fourth President's Luncheon. DATABASE QUALITY
OCLC On the Front Line award nominations sought. ~ Database quality: its cost, focus, and future.
Flood-damaged libraries offered assistance. .m How OCLC and member libraries are improving the
~ Washington Report. Online Union Catalog.
New Jersey library logs 45 millionth ILL. .:m Users comment on database quality.
~ Opinions on documentation wanted. .:II Task force reports on future use of OLUC.
OCLC begins cataloging project for LC. 11m Cooperative programs promote quality. 11116 Robots move into OCLC computer room.
IE]
~ Users Council discusses values.
Four areas work together to maintain OLUC quality.
~ Users Council meeting minutes available via Internet. INTERVIEW
OCLC Statistics.
.:I!] IE] California woman wins LITNOCLC Minority Scholarship.
Martin Dillon, director of OCLC's library resources
management division.
Collection analysis tool offered to North American library
schools. PRODUCT NEWS
Two win TECH PRO cataloging.
.:0 Katherine Blauer promoted to director of national sales. .:m lSI's The Genuine Article to supply FirstSearch
Martin Dillon now heads library resources management documents.
division. Dynamic Information drops price on some documents for
.:E delivery .
Mark Matson promoted to manager of human resources. Three popular databases added to FirstSearch and EPIC.
Susan Olson appointed director of network relations. 111m Troubleshooting Internet connections.
RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT AMIGOS and OCLC introduce Custom Cut CD for group
collection assessment.
.:El OCLC awards three research grants. IIEE North Carolina State Library pioneers statewide
FirstSearch availability.
OCLC Newsletter
.July/August 1993
No.204
Editor:
Nita Dean
Associate Editor:
Nancy Campbell
Assistant Editor:
Bob Murphy
Editorial Assistant:
Marifay Makssour
Contributing Writers:
Karen Calhoun
Donna Gehring
Elinor Hashim
Helen Hughes
Debbie Hysell
Mark Sellan
Keith Shafer
Art Production/
Desktop Publishing:
Lorna Fletcher
Mickey Hawk
All photos taken by Rich Skopin
unless otherwise noted.
OCLC is an Equal Opportunity
Employer, treating its employees
and applicants equitably without re­gard
to race, color, religion, sex, age,
national origin, handicap, or marital
status.
OCLC Newsletter (ISSN:0163-898X)
is published by OCLC Online Com­puter
Ubrary Center, Incorporated,
6565 Frantz Road, Dublin, Ohio
43017-3395.
Contents of this Newsletter may be
reproduced in whole or in part pro­vided
that credit is given.
OCLC Newsletter is distributed free.
Direct subscription inquiries and
changes of address to: Newsletter
Subscriptions, OCLC, MC204,
6565 Frantz Road, Dublin, Ohio
43017-3395.
OCLC in Dublin, Ohio, can be
reached via the following telephone
numbers:
Ohio ............................ (800) 848-8286
North America ............. (800) 848-5878
Asia Pacific area ......... (614) 764-6188
OCLC Europe
in Birmingham,
United Kingdom ........ 44-21-456-4656
.1111
OCLC, a non-profit membership
organization, is engaged in com­puter
library service and research.
I ....
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FROM K. WAYNE SMITH
' . ~.· - ''..·...-......· "~•·.•. : /' )
~ ~J
Building Our Electronic
Information Highways
On July 14, I attended an important
conference at the library of Congress
on "Delivering Electronic Information
in a Knowledge-Based Democracy." Vice
President AI Gore and Librarian of Congress
James Billington hosted this conference,
which brought together 35 invited
participants from government, publishing,
telecommunications, and the academic,
library, and information user communities.
We examined public policy issues central
to the development of electronic information
resources that will be distributed over the
emerging digital information highways. We
explored three areas: building, locating, and
preserving the electronic store of knowledge;
public and private sector roles; and
mechanisms for safeguarding intellectual
property rights.
As a prelude to our discussions, Dr.
Billington asked us to keep three questions in
mind. 1) How will our society fund the
digitization of non-entertainment items? 2)
What is the proper division of labor between
public and private sectors? 3) Can we afford a
society of information haves and have-nots?
Those questions were still very much on my
mind when, after a day spent contemplating
our 21st century information highways, some
of the participants toured LC's exhibition,
"Scrolls from the Dead Sea." It is impossible
to see that magnificent display without being
reminded of the importance of libraries'
mission of preserving knowledge and passing
it on from generation to generation-and of
the enormity of that task, with history's
thread now fiber optic at one end and clay
and papyrus at the other.
OCLC and its member libraries are among
the original ttailblazers of the Information
Age. With our advanced technological platform
and with our tradition of cooperation and
collaboration, we are uniquely positioned to
participate in the data highways that will
eventually link our past with our future.
77;~
K. Wayne Smith
President and Chief Executive Officer
OCLC
MEMBERSHIP NEWS
Library leaders attend
fourth OCLC President's
Luncheon at ALA
A thousand library leaders attended the
OCLC President's Luncheon, which was
held June 28 at the Hyatt Regency New
Orleans during the American Library
Association Conference.
Nancy Eaton, chair of the OCLC
Board of Trustees and dean of library
services, Iowa State University, was mas-ter
of ceremonies for the OCLC annual
meeting. In her remarks, Ms. Eaton said
that over the next several years, OCLC
will focus on: 1) strengthening and ex­panding
its online reference services­EPIC,
The FirstSearch Catalog, and
electronic publishing; 2) enhancing the
PRISM service in cataloging and resource
sharing; and 3) expanding international
activities to strengthen global access to
information. She stated that the priori­ties
"are based on the belief that library
cooperation and collaboration are more
important than ever. •
John Popko, immediate past president
of the OCLC Users Council, and assistant
director for technical services, University
Libraries, University of Missouri- Kansas
City, covered the highlights of the Users
Council's activities over what he called
"a very productive year.· He said: "I
believe that the Users Council and OCLC
have not only continued their dialogue,
but strengthened it as well."
K. Wayne Smith, OCLC president and
chief executive officer, reported on the
state of OCLC. He summed up OCLC's
recent progress and near-term strategies
for the future by predicting that "it is
going to be fun to be an OCLC member
the next couple ofyears ... OCLC is again
on the cutting edge of change. •
1994 OCLC On the Front Line award nominations sought
I 9 9 4 ·ocLc· ,,_ ....
FRONT
.LINE.
AWARD
Nominations are now
being accepted for the
1994 OCLC On the
Front Une award.
The OCLC On the
Front Une award is pre­sented
each year to an
outstanding reference li­brarian
who makes ef­fective
use of electronic
reference products in his
or her daily work. The winner must demon­strate
knowledge, creativity, and good hu­mor
on the job.
A check for $1,000 and a memento
of the achievement will be presented to
the winner during the National Online
Meeting in New York City next spring.
Renee McHenry, head of public services
at Northwestern University's Transportation
Library, was the 1993 OCLC On the Front
Une award winner. She was nominated by
Jo Cates, head of the Transportation Library.
Previous winners include: Jane Bambrick,
reference librarian and coordinator of online
4 OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993
search services at the Sarah Byrd Askew
Library at William Paterson College,
Wayne, N.J.; and Janice Weide, reference
librarian, online coordinator, and
audio-visual supervisor at the Salem (Ore.)
Public Library.
For more information, or to receive a
nomination form for the 1994 OCLC On
the Front Une award, write: OCLC, Refer­ence
Services Division; MC 236; 6565
Frantz Road; Dublin, OH 43017-0702.
Deadlinefor nominations is March 1, 1994.
Assistance offered to flood-damaged libraries
OCLC is offering assistance to
flood-damaged libraries in the Midwest.
"Although we don't yet have specific
information about the extent of damage to
member libraries in the flooded regions,
we are ready to help those in need resume
providing services as quickly as possible,"
said Kate Nevins, OCLC vice president,
member services.
OCLC will help with recovery of dam­aged
workstations and offline products,
expedite telecommunications line and
workstation instaJlations, and provide
general systems advice and counsel.
Libraries that need assistance should
contact their regional network. Inde­pendent
institutions should contact the
OCLC support and training specialist.
In 1989, OCLC provided assistance to
libraries damaged by Hurricane Hugo and
the California earthquake, and in 1992 to
libraries in the path of Hurricane Andrew.
"We want to let librarians know that
OCLC is committed to helping its mem­bers
when disaster strikes, • said Ms.
Nevins.
I
Washington Report
by Elinor Hashim
J14S2 1 Bills that apply high-perfonnance
computing
and high-speed net­working
technologies
to areas such as educa­tion,
libraries, health
care, and government
information have gener­ated
wide support in
Congress as well as in
the library and education communities.
The bills, H.R.1757 in the House and
S.4 in the Senate, build on the so-called
"Gore II" NREN applications bills intro­duced
in the last Congress. H.R.l757, the
High-Performance Computing and High­Speed
Networking Applications Act of
1993, has been reported favorably out of
)
the House Science, Space, and Technology
Committee and is ready for floor action.
S.4, the National Competitiveness Act (fitle
VI of which is the Information Technology
Applications Program Act) has not yet
been reported out of committee.
H.R.1757 would amend the section of
the High-Performance Computing Act of
1991 that defmed the National Research
and Education Network to more accurately
defme the NREN as a program. Under
H.R.1757, the NREN program would have
three components: research and develop­ment
of gigabit networking hardware and
software; experimental test-bed networks
for developing and demonstrating advanced
networking technologies and providing
connections to networks not commercially
available; and support for researchers, edu­cators,
and students to obtain access to the
Internet for communication with others in
research and education and to allow access
to high-performance computing systems,
research facilities, and libraries.
A section on network access provides
for a connections program at the National
Science Foundation for development of
network services in local communities to
connect educational institutions at all levels,
libraries, and state and local governments
to each other and to the Internet.
MEMBERSHIP NEWS
New Jersey library
logs 45 millionth ILL
A library veteran who started working in
the Burlington County library "temporar­ily"
31 years ago entered the 45 mil­lionth
OCLC Interlibrary Loan request
onJune 28.
Charles Carr, principal librarian at
the system's main library in Westampton
Township, N.J., started working there in
the early 1960s while commuting to
Drexel University in Philadelphia to fm­ish
one credit of his master's degree in
library science.
Today, his extensive "refer­ence
and branch library experi­ence
help him excel at
interpreting bibliographic re­cords,
searching the database, and
initiating requests," said Isabelle
Addis, supervisor of interlibrary
loan at the Burlington County
Library.
Claims of the Paranormal. The Camden
County Free Library, Voorhees, N.J.,
filled the request.
Burlington County Library, the ftrst
of the county library systems in New
Jersey, was founded in the 1920s. The
system also includes ftve branches. Four
people staff the library's interlibrary
loan department: Ms. Addis; Mr. Carr;
Bronwyn Davies, principal library assis­tant;
and Peggy Manser, library assistant.
Burlington County Library is a mem­ber
of P ALI NET, a regional network with
member libraries in New Jersey, Delaware,
Maryland, and eastern Pennsylvania.
The milestone request was for
letters to the editor about an arti­cle
called "Satanic Cult Survivor
Stories" that had appeared in the
spring 1991 issue of The Skeptical
Inquirer, a journal published in
Buffalo, N.Y., by the Committee
for the Scientific Investigation of
• The Burlington County Library, of Westampton
Township, N.J., entered the 45 millionth Interlibrary
loan request. ILL staff Include (from left):
Bronwyn Davies, Charles Carr, Peggy Manser,
and Isabelle Addis.
Applications specified in the legislation
are for education (at all levels, but K-12 is
specifically mentioned), health care, libraries,
and government information (connection
of depository libraries to the Internet and
improved public access to government in­formation).
The bill also calls for a broader advisory
committee than the High-Performance
Computing Act, with wide non-federal mem­bership,
including libraries and education.
Authorization levels were reduced from
the originally proposed levels to ensure
broad bipartisan support in Congress; and
further, no new sums will be authorized.
That is, the money would come from sums
already authorized to various agencies such as
the National Science Foundation, Health and
Human Services, Commerce, and others.
It is hoped that the relevant portion of
S.4 can be amended to include language
similar to that fmally contained in H.R.1757
and proposed by the library, education,
and research communities. This language
pertains mostly to the timetable for the
separation between experimental test-bed
networks and other uses, and operation of
the networks. As it is, however, S.4 contains
many of the strengths of its companion bill,
H.R.1757, and also contains an electronic
libraries component, taken from S.626, the
Electronic library Act, introduced by Sen.
). Robert Kerrey, D-Neb.-Elinor Hashim
is OCLC legislative analyst and chairman
emeritus of the National Commission on
libraries and Information Science.
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 5
Opinions wanted
a
!!!'!J
by Debbie Hysell
The OCLC documenta­tion
department is
looking for feedback
on documentation
and online Help. As
documentation is writ­ten
or revised, and
new electronic docu­mentation
is developed, use.rs' opinions
will be reviewed to make sure documenta­tion
support tools meet their needs.
The following types of comments are
wanted:
• Documents or parts of online Help that
are especially useful
• Materials that users have developed to
replace or supplement OCLC documen­tation
• System features or characteristics that
need more explanation in documenta­tion
or online Help
• Additional documents or Help topics
that are needed
• Information that is especially useful,
missing, incomplete, hard-to-frnd, con­fusing,
irrelevant, or incorrect
• Improvements needed in organization,
table of contents, index, illustrations,
examples, design/format, packaging,
distribution, or online navigation
A new reader comments form, "It's
Your Turn to Write," is being added to the
front of manuals to solicit comments.
Currently, most OCLC manuals have the
reader comments form in the back, where
it seems to be overlooked since few are
actually returned.
6 OCLC Newsletter Juiy/August 1993
MEMBERSHIP NEWS
OCLC begins cataloging project for LC
On July 1, OCLC's TECHPRO service be­gan
cataloging some 1,700 Hungarian­and
Romanian-language books for the
Library of Congress (LC).
"We need to reduce our cataloging
arrearage, but we do not have sufficient
staff who can catalog Hungarian and
Romanian books," said Hugo W.
Christiansen, assistant chief of the arts
and sciences cataloging division at LC.
"We found out that OCLC's TECHPRO
service can catalog in these rare lan­guages
and we will be sending books
there."
"We are very excited to be catalog­ing
for the Library of Congress," said
Maureen Finn, director of OCLC's
conversion and contract cataloging
services division. "We hope that this
will be the first of many cooperative
cataloging ventures between the
Library of Congress and TECHPRO."
The OCLC TECHPRO service,
which provides cataloging and techni­cal
processing on a contract basis, will
catalog the books over the next six
months.
• Multilingual catalogers and technical processing assistants staff OCLC's
TECHPRO section. Seated: Stephanie Callahan. Standing (from left): Cynthia
Whitacre, manager; Barbara Brownell, Anne Ryan, Chris Phillips, Taml Dudley, Glenls
Longworth, Jean McMeans, and Lisa McClain, summer Intern from Indiana University,
School of Library and Information Science. Not pictured: Sandi Jones.
The new reader comments form is
also available in the Internet Doc list. To
retrieve it, send an Internet mail message
to listserv@oclc.org with the command
get doc/forms comments in the body of
the mail message.
To discuss ideas about documentation
with one of the documentation writers or
managers, call the documentation depart­ment
at (800) 848-5878 (USA and Canada),
(800) 848-8286 (Ohio), or (614) 764-6394.
-Debbie Hysell is documentation depart­ment
manager, OCLC.
..
I
Robots move into
OCLC computer room
A StorageTek Automated Cartridge System
(ACS) was recently installed in OCLC's
computer room. The system currently
consists of two tape library storage modules,
each with a robot that stores, retrieves,
and mounts tapes. It represents OCLC's
latest step toward a lights-out computer
room in which the operation of the
computer room is automated.
Each tape silo holds up to 6,000 car­tridges,
or 1,200 gigabytes of information.
A robot arm mounted in the center of the
silo spins around and mounts tape within
11 seconds after a command is received.
The system is currently being used to
augment the existing tape cartridge sub­system,
which is also attached to the
IBM 3090 mainframe. The robotics are
particularly effective in performing weekly
backups that require several hundred
cartridge mounts.
Because OCLC's major platforms are
already interconnected via the Network
Systems Corporation hardware and soft­ware,
the ACS can be used to store and
retrieve data for other systems, such as
Tandem and Data General, as well.
MEMBERSHIP NEWS
• The robot can mount a tape within 11 seconds.
"The ACS will reduce storage costs,"
said Jerry Lynch, operations division direc­tor.
"It provides a new, in-between level
of storage called 'near-line' that is faster
than regular offline tape and far less expen­sive
than online disk and will allow OCLC
to mount large flies of full-text and image
information for on.<femand retrieval. That
could have important implications for ref­erence
services and electronic publishing."
• In June, StorageTek customer service engineers Installed the two tape storage silos In the third floor of OCLC's computer room. If
needed, additional silos can be added to the configuration.
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 7
MEMBERSHIP NEWS
OCLC Users Council
discusses values
by Bob Murphy
The OCLC Users Council met May 23-25
to focus on how values and visions can
affect policies and actions in library
communities.
It was the fmal session in a three-part
discussion series with the theme, "Transform­ing
Technologies: Reconstructing libraries
for the New Information Community."
In February, the Users Council discussed
economic issues facing electronic users
and providers, and last October the group
explored the changing telecommunications
infrastructure and its impact on the future
of libraries.
"Values and Visions = Policies and
Actions" gave delegates an opportunity to
discuss how common values in diverse and
ever<hanging library environments can
help to achieve a common goal-getting
information to users as efficiently as possible.
Nancy Eaton, OCLC Board of Trustees
chair, told Users Council delegates how the
board interprets values as it makes decisions.
Ms. Eaton, dean of library services, Iowa
State University, said many different kinds
of libraries are represented on the OCLC
board. That's important, she said, because
in the end, individuals interpret values.
OCLC's values come from the library pro­fession
and are based on concerns for shar­ing
resources and for access to information.
Other principles are also represented on
the board. "There is a very fundamental
appreciation for intellectual freedom and
access to information by the public as a
cornerstone of democracy," said Ms. Eaton.
"OCLC has a clear fundamental purpose
to serve the public good."
In addition, Ms. Eaton said the board
has legal and fiduciary responsibilities such
8 OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993
as protecting the investment members
have made in OCLC and in the Online
Union Catalog.
Louella Weatherbee, a libra.ry manage­ment
consultant, spoke to delegates about
the kinds of values that endure in times of
technological change, the living values of
an organization-not just values written in
a charter.
Ms. Weatherbee said many librarians
believe that the business of libraries is to
provide high-quality, accurate information
to patrons while respecting their right to
privacy and protecting against forces of cen­sorship.
Organizational values in libraries
are far less clear, and they are rapidly being
replaced by the values of the for-profit infor­mation
sector. Some values of libraries­such
as equitable access to information-are
under siege, she said. "Values are where
you stand when the going gets tough."
In crafting a set of values for a library,
Ms. Weatherbee suggested one should pay
close attention to those areas defined in a
corporate values statement including people
issues, competition, customers, quality,
and productivity. In addition, a library's
values statement must also address equity,
privacy and confidentiality, intellectual
freedom, and diversity in collections, in
resources, and in personnel.
Phyllis Mirsky, associate director for
administrative and public services at the
University of California-san Diego, gave a
status report on field testing of OCLC
Gateway Software in her library.
"Gateway has allowed us the ability to
access multiple systems from a single termi­nal,
to make up to four simultaneous connec­tions
to the various systems, and to quickly
move from session to session," she said.
"Catalogers can cut and paste data between
records in one system or between systems.
Gateway has reduced our reliance on
dedicated OCLC terminals while it has
increased our access to OCLC.
"The ILL staff is enthusiastic about the
use ofOCLC through Gateway," Ms.
Mirsky continued. "Gateway has some
problems that we would like to see im­proved,
but we expect that it will allow
for more effective use of catalogers' time."
K. Wayne Smith, OCLC president and
CEO, updated members on OCLC's "very
satisfactory financial year." He spoke about
enhancements to PRISM, new projects in
reference services and electronic publish­ing,
and the new telecommunications
network, which he said is "performing
superbly."
Dr. Smith also touched on some of
the values that have helped to shape the
library-OCLC relationship over the years.
"Most of us believe in the power of knowl­edge
and education as the world's best hope
against an uncertain future," he said. "Most
of us believe in OCLC's public purposes,
which are to further access to the world's '
information and to reduce the costs of that
information.
"Most of us believe that libraries need
to cooperate with each other because no
single library can meet all the needs of its
users by itself," Dr. Smith continued. "Most
of us believe that OCLC needs libraries and
that libraries need an OCLC-that this has
been a mutually beneficial relationship."
The Users Council heard reports on
telecommunications, reference services,
resource sharing, cataloging, and pricing
from Kate Nevins, OCLC vice president for
member services; Darryl Lang, OCLC assistant
to the vice president of marketing and
sales; and Phelix Hanible, manager of the
OCLC cataloging and resource sharing
department.
In other matters, the Users Council:
• Unanimously approved the 1993-94
Users Council budget.
• Defeated a resolution that would have
allowed networks "to make group
purchases of FirstSearch strips and
re-sell them to members at a price
determined by the networks."
• Unanimously approved the final report
of the Future Use of the Online Union
MEMBERSHIP NEWS
i~-· -.. - ---
'"
Catalog Task Force, in which the task
force proposed to make the OCLC
Online Union Catalog "a database that
should include the best available bibli­ographic
record for any and every
work and that can be searched in
such a way that the database can be
tailored to suit the diverse needs of a
wide range of users."
• Heard a report from Dr. Lang on results
of the Trends in Library Services
Survey-also known as the values
survey. The survey was designed to
gauge members' opinions about issues
such as end-user access versus library
mediation, and current and future use
of electronic library services. Opinions
were tracked by the type of library,
and comparisons were made between
members and the Users Council.
• Elected the 1993/94 Executive Com­mittee:
Kent Hendrickson, president;
Baine Albright, vice president/president­elect;
Tobin Clarke, Jan Keene and
Ellen Waite, delegates-at-large. The
next Users Council meeting is sched­uled
for Oct. 10-12, 1993.
The Users Council comprises delegates
from networks and service centers whose
use of the OCLC System and contribution
to the OCLC database qualify them for
Users Council membership. Delegates
represent the various interests of the
general members of OCLC and ratify
amendments to the Articles of Incorpora­tion
and Code of Regulations of OCLC.
The Users Council also elects six trustees
to the OCLC Board of Trustees. The six
Users Council-elected trustees and three
other members of the library profession
elected by the board assure a majority of
~rariansonthe0CLC~.The~
possesses powers similar to those of
university trustees.-Bob Murphy is
public relations writer, OCLC.
Users Council
meeting minutes
available via
Internet
Minutes from OCLC Users Council meet­ings,
from October 1990 through the
May 1993 meeting, are now available on
the Internet.
"Print copies of meeting minutes
have always been available and serve as a
mechanism for sharing information with
the library community about Users Council
activities," said Betsy Kiser, OCLC Users
Council program director. "Now the
minutes are conveniently available in
electronic form via the Internet."
Ms. Kiser said the Users Council office
will also be using the Internet to corre­spond
with delegates. "The goal is to
provide efficient and effective communi­cation
of large amounts of information
while reducing paper flow."
The Users Council meets at OCLC
three times each year to exchange ideas
and discuss issues important to librarians
and educators using OCLC products and
services.
To receive meeting minutes via the
Internet, send a message to listsenJ@odc.org.
Commands should be typed on separate
lines in the body of the message, not in
the subject line.
Enter the command, index uc to
receive the index of archived minutes.
Enter get [path} {file name} for the
requested meeting minutes. For example,
enter the command get uc minutes.may93
to receive a copy of the May 1993 Users
Council meeting minutes.
~-----~~~~L~ _#1-~iisti~~-~~-_~}
(as of july 26, 1993)
Participating libraries
17,000
Total interlibrary loan
requests
45,439,604
Terminals/
workstations
13,776
Highest OCLC record
number
28,513,677
Location listings
(holdings)
486,137,492
EPIC sessions
(since]anuary 1990)
556,254
FirstSearch searches
(since October 1991)
3,074,593
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 9
California woman
wins LITAJOCLC
Minority Scholarship
The UTA/OCLC Minority Scholarship in
library and Information Technology has
been awarded to an acquisitions parapro­fessional
who plans to attend San Jose
State University, Division of library and
Information Science in the fall.
Shirley Ann Fonseca, acquisitions de­partment
coordinator at the California
State University, Stanislaus library, is the
winner of the $2,SOO scholarship. The
library and Information Technology Asso­ciation
(LITA), a division of the American
library Association, and OCLC co-sponsor
the scholarship for members of minority
groups who are pursuing a degree in li­brary/
information science. The program is
intended to encourage the entry of a mem­ber
of a principal minority group- Ameri­can
Indian or Alaskan native, Asian or
Pacific Islander, African-American, or His­panic-
who is a U.S. or Canadian citizen
into the library automation field.
"Being a librarian is what I really want,"
said Ms. Fonseca. "The scholarship will
help a lot."
Ms. Fonseca graduated from California
State University, Stanislaus, in 1991 with a
bachelor's degree in liberal studies and a
concentration in history. She has four
children, ranging in age from 13 to 22,
and three grandchildren.
In jobs at two academic libraries, she
has had experience with implementing
and using automated library systems. Dur­ing
the two years that she was fmes-desk
supervisor at California State University,
Hayward, the library installed a local
system. She has worked at the Stanislaus
library since 1987 and has used two auto­mated
acquisitions systems. In both jobs,
she used the OCLC Online System.
"I like all areas of technical services," she
said. "I don't know which particular .area
I will go into after library school but sys­tems
are so much a part of them all."
Founded in 1966, LIT A is the only
professional association dedicated solely
to the use of technology in libraries. Its
primary aims are to promote continuing
10 OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993
MEMBERSHIP NEWS
• Kate Nevins, right, vice president, OCLC
member services, presents a $2,500
scholarship to LITA/OCLC Minority
Scholarship winner, Shirley Ann Fonseca,
at the American Library Association
Conference in New Orleans.
education for librarians and information
specialists, to encourage research, to assist
in the development of industry standards,
and to promote legislative action.
Two win TECHPRO
cataloging
"I can't believe I won something that was
really great and useful," said Lydia LaCava,
director, library/Learning Resources Center
Central, Broward Community College,
Davie, Fla. "I was really speechless."
Ms. LaCava, who said she didn't expect
to win when she dropped her business
card at the OCLC booth during the recent
American library Association Conference
in New Orleans, won free TECHPRO
cataloging of SO items.
Collection analysis
tool offered to North
American library
schools
by Helen Hughes
AMIGOS Bibliographic Council and OCLC
are offering complimentary copies of
OCLC/AMIGOS Collection Analysis CD
(CACD), version 2.01, to accredited library
schools in the United States and Canada.
CACD is an innovative collection assess­ment
product, helpful in research, as well
as the training of future bibliographers,
collection development librarians, and
library administrators. Complimentary
CACD copies for accredited library schools
in the United States and Canada will remain
available through fall1993 from AMIGOS,
as AMIGOS and OCLC continue to support
research and training in the field of library
and information science.
CACD is an option ofOCLC/AMIGOS
Collection Analysis Systems, which also
includes Custom Cut CD, Tape Analysis,
and BCL3 Tape Match.
For collection analysis information and
to order a complimentary library school
copy of CACD, contact Helen Hughes,
marketing representative, at AMIGOS:
(800) 843-8482 or (214) 8Sl-8000.
Internet: AMIGOS®UTDALLAS.EDU.
"This is the flfSt time I've ever won any­thing
at ALA," she said. "I've been going
for seven years."
Ms. LaCava said the library's
two-person cataloging staff was also de­lighted
with the prize, which will be used
to catalog audiovisual materials-video
tapes and computer disks.
The·resa Men, technical librarian at
Cray Research in Eagan, Minn., said the
free cataloging of SO items she won in
June at the Special libraries Association
Conference in Cincinnati will be used to
catalog video tapes and conference pro­ceedings.
Ms. Men, who joined the library
......
..I
~
g .,
~
Katherine Blauer
promoted to director
of national sales
Katherine Blauer has
been promoted from
regional marketing
manager in OCLC's
field marketing division
to director of national
sales.
~ 1 • il :er·l)'· ... - I
In her new position,
Ms. Blauer is responsi­ble
for U.S. sales and
the OCLC sales staff based in Dublin,
Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, St. Louis,
and California.
A native of Glasgow, Scotland,
Ms. Blauer began her career in libraries in
1965 as a trainee librarian with the
Glasgow Public Libraries. Following the
then-preferred model of professional
librarianship-combining practical
know-how with academic theory-
Ms. Blauer studied for professional
certification with the Library Association
(UK) while working in various
positions in public and academic libraries.
She was awarded the Albert Cawthorne
prize by the Library Association
for her achievements in the professional
examinations leading to Associateship.
of this supercomputer manufac­turer
in February, said she and
her assistant are working on cata­loging
the library's backlog. "We
need OCLC's help," she said.
• Lydia LaCava, center, won 50
TECHPRO searches at the ALA
Conference In New Orleans.
Pictured with her are, left, Dorothy
Callahan, cataloging assistant, and
Janet Rothhaar, cataloger.
MEMBERSHIP NEWS
Martin Dillon now heads library
resources management division
Martin Dillon, formerly director of OCLC's office of
research, has been appointed director of the library resources
management division, in marketing and sales. His new duties
include the management of OCLC's cataloging, resource
sharing, and tapeloading products, and the online data quality
control section. Dr. Dillon is a graduate of Canisius College
and holds a Ph.D. degree in English from the State University
of New York at Buffalo.
From 1969 to 1985, Dr. Dillon served on the faculty of the
School of Library and Information Science at the University
of North Carolina where his specialties were library automation and information re­trieval.
He attained the rank of full professor.
From 1985 to 1986, he was visiting distinguished scholar in OCLC's office of
research and became director of the office in 1986. He has guided a staff of 30
in the pursuit of research that supports OCLC's mission of improving access to
information.
Dr. Dillon has continued his research, focusing on automatic indexing, interface
design, and access to Internet resources. He has published numerous articles in
the library and information science literature.
From 1970 to 1977, Ms. Blauer worked
in the libraries of the University of Glasgow
and University College London.
After moving to the United States in
1977, Ms. Blauer worked at Carnegie Mellon
University for three years. From 1980 to
1984, she worked in the corporate libraries
of three electrical-power companies.
In 1984, she joined OCLC as a training
and support specialist and, since 1987, has
been a regional marketing manager. She
holds a bachelor's degree in marketing
from Capital University, Columbus, Ohio.
g.
~
2:- ·s
J
~
~ • Theresa Men, left, was selected as
'! winner of 50 TECH PRO searches at the
~ Special Libraries Association
8 Conference In Cincinnati. Also pictured
~ Is library assistant Pat Post.
a.
~
~
f
~
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 11
Mark Matson
promoted to
manager of human
resources at OCLC
Mark Matson has been
promoted to manager
of human resources at
OCLC.
Mr. Matson was for­merly
OCLC's manager
of employee relations
and staff development.
In his new position, he
assumes additional man­agement
responsibility for technical train­ing
and compensation and benefits.
Mr. Matson was initially an OCLC
intern through the Ohio State University
graduate school of business program in
1987. He was then hired as an employee
relations specialist and expanded his contri­butions
through a series of promotions
prior to assuming responsibility for the
entire human resources department.
Before coming to OCLC, Mr. Matson
was director of personnel in the office of
the superintendent of schools for the
Catholic Diocese of Columbus.
A native of Denver, Colo., he earned
a bachelor's degree in urban studies from
the Catholic University of America in
Washington, D.C. He later completed a
master's degree in theology from Boston
College and a master's in labor relations
and human resources management from
Ohio State University.
12 OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993
MEMBERSHIP NEWS
Susan Olson
appointed director
of network relations
Susan Olson, former director of field
marketing services at OCLC, has been
appointed to a newly created position­director
of network relations.
"Networks are important partners
for OCLC," said Phyllis B. Spies, vice
president, marketing and sales, "and
these relationships deserve our focused
attention."
In her new position, Ms. Olson will
work with the Regional OCLC Network
Directors Advisory Committee
(RONDAC), as well as with individual
network directors and their staffs.
"The partnership between OCLC and
the OCLC-affiliated regional networks has
brought the benefits of OCLC products
and services to thousands of libraries in
the United States," said Ms. Olson. "The
role of the network relations office is to
ensure that the partnership continues to
help librarians achieve their service and
automation goals."
From 1974 to 1980, Ms. Olson
worked for the R.R. Bowker Company
in various positions related to electronic
database publishing. She has also
worked in libraries at the University
of Minnesota, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, and the University
of California, Berkeley.
She joined OCLC in 1980 as a library
systems analyst. From 1984 to 1989, she
was manager of local systems implemen­tation.
In 1989 she was promoted to
director of field marketing services.
Ms. Olson is a graduate of the Univer­sity
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and
holds master's degrees in English from
the State University of New York at
Binghamton and in library science from
Syracuse University. •
~
f Q.
w
11.
:::J rn z
~
~
'
_,;
~
RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
OCLC awards three research grants
The OCLC office of research has
awarded three Library and Information
Science Research Grants (LISRG) to
university researchers for 1993.
"We are pleased to be able to sup­port
these projects," said Martin Dillon,
former director of the office of research
and current director of OCLC's library
resources management division.
"University-based research adds an impor­tant
dimension to our research agenda,
and these projects promise fmdings that
should be of broad interest to the library
and information science community."
The grant recipients and their
projects are:
• carolyn 0- Frost, Ph.D., associate
dean, andJosephJanes, Ph.D., assis­tant
professor, School of Information
and Library Studies, University of
Michigan: "An Empirical Test of
Gopher Searching Using Three
Organization Schemes"
Gopher is an example of a commonly
used protocol for searching networked
information. Although the use of net­worked
information is proliferating at
an astounding rate and is providing un­precedented
access to information, the
organization of this information has not
kept up with its use. Likewise, there is
need for a greater understanding of in­formation
searching to design better
searching tools, organize networked
information more effectively, and assist
information providers in the mounting
of networked sources. There has been
little research on how people use
Gopher, or its effectiveness as a search­ing
tool. The proposed project will study
Gopher users' information searching
behavior, identify patterns and problems
in the searching behavior or with the
information retrieval, and recommend
changes for improvement.
• Richard P. Smiraglia, Ph.D.,
associate professor, Palmer School
of Library and Information Science,
Long Island University: "Toward
the Bibliographic Control of
Works: Derivative Bibliographic
Relationships in the Online Union
Catalog"
The purpose of this project is to
fwther the bibliographic control of works
by verifying the extent of derivative
bibliographic relationships in the
OCLC Online Union Catalog and by
testing a conceptual model for a
database of bibliographic works.
The methodology employed wilJ be de­scriptive
survey research of a random
sample of bibliographic families from
the Online Union Catalog and qualita­tive
examination of the most complex
families to assess the efficacy of the
conceptual model.
• James H. Sweetland, Ph.D.,
associate professor, andJudithJ.
Senkevitch, Ph.D., assistant
professor, School of Library and
Information Science, University of
Wisconsin at Milwaukee:
"Evaluating Public Library Fiction
Collections: Is There a Core List of
Classics?"
The project will address the follow­ing
research questions: Is there a core
of widely held adult fiction in the OCLC
database which can be used as a list of
classics? Does this core list relate to
standard lists of recommended fiction
supposedly relied upon by public
libraries in selection and evaluation?
Can one or more standard lists be
recommended as those most likely to
predict librarians' behavior? Is it
feasible for OCLC to consider using the
core list concept to develop a machine­readable
product to assist public librarians
in evaluating their fiction collections?
The OCLC Library and Information
Science Research Grant program awards
grants of up to $10,000 to help foster
quality research by faculty in schools of
library and information science. Projects
are generally completed within one
year, and findings are published in the
OCLC Annual Review of Research and
in other scholarly communications.
Application materials for 1994 will be
available this November. For more
information, contact Keith Shafer,
research scientist, OCLC office of
research. •
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 13
BUILDING AND MAINTAINING
A HIGH--QUALITY DATABASE
THE 28-M ILLION-RECORD OCLC ONLINE UNION CATALOG IS THE
WORLD' S PREMIER BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASE, NOT ONLY IN TERMS OF
DEPTH AND BREADTH OF INFORMATION, BUT IN TERMS OF THE
QUALITY OF THAT INFORMATION. QCLC' S ENTIRE CATALOGING
SYSTEM IS BASED ON COOPERATION AND A COMMITMENT TO THE
QUALITY OF THE INFORMATION THAT IS SHARED AMONG USERS. AND,
AS NEW USES FOR THE DATABASE ARE DEVELOPED FOR NEW GROUPS
OF USERS, THE QUALITY OF OCLC' S BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
BECOMES EVEN MORE IMPORTANT. THE QUALITY CONTROL PROGRAM
FOR THE OLUC NOW INVOLVES PEOPLE, COMPUTERS, AND
COOPERATION ON A MONUMENTAL SCALE.
THE OCLC ONLINE UNION
..,
,;
SPECIAL REPORT
DATABASE QUALITY: lTS COST,
FOCUS, AND FUTURE
CAN WE AFFORD TO CONTINUE
ADHERING TO CURRENT
CATALOGING STANDARDS?
Database quality is an economic issue, al­though
a difficult one to quantify. High­quality
cataloging records increase
cataloging productivity and save staffing
costs because catalogers can accept more
records as they are, without having to take
time to check, correct, or enrich the re­cords.
High-quality records also improve the
precision of reference searching and en­hance
the usefulness of online displays of
search results, making catalogs more effi­cient
and easier to use. High-quality re­cords
maximize the library's investment in
acquiring and organizing its collection, be­cause
if the catalog is accurate and easy to
use, it connects the use.rs with the library's
resources.
by Karen Calhoun
WHERE IS THE BEST PLACE TO
FOCUS DATABASE QUALITY
EFFORTS-WITHIN THE LOCAL
SYSTEM, WITHIN THE REGIONAL
SYSTEM, OR WITHIN THE OCLC
ONLINE U NION CATALOG
(OLUC)?
While focusing quality efforts on the local
or regional system may provide immediate
improvements, making corrections and en­riching
records at the national level, in the
OLUC, is the most effective way to avoid
duplication of effort and save time and
money for everyone.
In response to the need to improve
more records centrally, OCLC has made im·
portant advances in automated correction
techniques in recent years. But OCLC con­tinues
to rely on the partnership with
member libraries, who provide essential da­tabase
quality services by contributing ac­curate
records, by participating in the
Enhance or CONSER programs, and by up­grading
or enriching less-than-full records.
To make a long-range plan for database
quality software development projec ts,
OCLC staff needed to know what was abso­lutely
essential to the membership. In
1987, member libraries responded to an
OCLC survey with their top three database
quality concerns-duplicates, incorrect
subject headings, and incorrect name head­ings.
Although the environment has
changed since 1987, OCLC advisory
groups and member libraries have contin·
ued to name the same top three concerns.
In addition, recent member feedback has
pointed to three other significant con­cerns-
USMARC coding errors and
changes, records containing insufficient in·
formation, and inadequate database coverage.
WILL THE NEED FOR QUALITY
CONTROL AND STANDt\RDS
DISAPPEAR ONCE INfORI\IATION
TECHNOLOGY HAS SUFFICIENTLY
ADVANCED?
To manage the chaos of ever-increasing
amounts of electronic data, we need to im·
prove, not abandon, our ability to control
the forms of headings and other vital data
in our records.
The difficulty arises when adherence to
standards becomes an end in itself, rather
than a means to improving the catalog. In
a 1991 study, "How Catalogers Really Edit
OCLC Records," Walter High found that
from 39 to 55 percent of all editing
changes made to OLUC records did not im·
prove the usability of the record but could
be classified simply as "cosmetic."
While we can no longer afford slavish
adherence to standards which result in su­perficial
manipulation of records, with no
payoff for library users or staff, we must
continue to do our best to make the OCLC
database conform to standards that result
in searching improvements, record enrich­ment,
and enhanced cataloging productiv­ity.-
Karen Calhoun is manager, OCLC
online data quality control section.
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 15
How OCLC AND MEMBER
LIBRARIES ARE IMPROVING THE
ONLINE UNION CATALOG
by Karen Calhoun, Nancy Campbell, and Donna Gehring
T HE ERRORS THAT APPEAR IN
A DYNAMIC COMPUTER I ZED
DATABASE CAN BE CATEGORIZED
AS TOO MUCH (DUPLICATES), TOO
LITTLE (RECORDS WITH
INSUFFICIENT INFORMATION), OR
TOO MANY VERSIONS (HEADING
OR CODING ERRORS).
Problems for both the technical and
public service areas of the library arise
from these errors. Productivity goes down
when catalogers have to evaluate duplicate
records and decide which one is best to
use, when they need help from a supervi­sor
to ftx coding errors or add missing in­formation,
and when they have to spend
time verifying and correcting name or sub­ject
headings. Time is wasted when interli­brary
loan staff must combine holdings
from multiple records to determine the
best lender string. Thoroughness is sacri­ficed
when reference searchers miss rele­vant
citations because words in a subject
heading are spelled incorrectly.
The OCLC Online Union Catalog is
used by libraries to catalog some 125,000
items per day and is growing by nearly
50,000 records per week. Managing and
improving the quality of this vast database
of the library world's information is a chal­lenge
that is being met by:
• OCLC staff, including researchers in the
office of research, who analyze data­base
quality problems and create proto­type
solutions; the database quality sec­tion
staff, who write and implement
software for automated programs that
16 OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993
improve the quality of the database;
and members of online data quality con­trol
and tapeloading/database services
sections, who work with OCLC users,
make manual corrections, plan tapeload­ing
projects, provide input on user re­quirements
to developers, and assist
with testing of new software
• Cataloging staff in OCLC member librar­ies,
including those who participate in
cooperative programs such as Enhance,
CONSER, minimal-level upgrade, and da­tabase
enrichment
• Software programs that identify and cor­rect
errors automatically
Too Much: Duplicates
Duplicates happen. Whether added to
the database after insufficient searching or
through older tapeloading software, dupli­cates
clutter a database and spread hold­ings
among multiple records.
Human efforts reduce duplicates. Until
1991, duplicate records could only be
ftxed manually. Member libraries have
been reporting duplicates to OCLC online
data quality control section (ODQCS) staff
since the early 1970s. ODQCS staff mem­bers
have merged an average of 20,000 du­plicates
per year over the last several years.
Duplicate Detection and Resolution
(DDR). OCLC researchers, led by Edward
T. O'Neill, consulting research scientist in
OCLC's office of research, began studying
the problem of duplicate records in the
OLUC in 1986. Based on the observed "be­havior"
of the OLUC, they designed algo­rithms
to identify duplicate records for
monographs in the books format and to
merge them so that no data is lost and the
resulting record is richer than either of the
matching records. The formula for identi­fying
a match is to compare a set of 14
weighted elements within the record, such
as title, International Standard Book Num­ber
(ISBN), and place of publication. The
similarity of the elements is measured and
expressed in a metric, such as 0.92753, for
a mergeable pair of records.
Using the researchers' algorithms,
OCLC development staff members have
created software programs that work
through the OLUC, from A to Z, identify­ing
potential duplicates in the books for­mat,
weighing their similarities, and, when
appropriate, merging records. Since the
implementation in 1991 of DDR, 688,854
duplicate records for books have been
eliminated. To eliminate that many dupli­cates
manually, it would take ODQCS staff
members over 30 years.
Serials Extended Match project. Until
the development of the Serials Extended
Matching Algorithm in 1992, OCLC could
only tapeload serials records that matched
an existing record through a unique nu­meric
key, such as the OCLC control num­ber,
International Standard Serial Number
(ISSN), or Library of Congress Control
Number (LCCN). "Records for older seri­als
rarely have any numeric key while
newer records often lack a unique key,"
said Dr. O'Neill. The result was that OCLC
was adding only a few tapeloaded holdings
to serials records.
To reduce the number of duplicate re­cords
being introduced by tapeloading,
-.
,J
Retain
OLUC an 18092786
NO HOLDINGS IN OCL - 16 OTHER HOLDINGS
OCLC: 8092786 Rec stat:
Entered: 19820125 Replaced:
Type: c Bib lvl: m
Repr: Enc lvl: I
Accomp: Mod rec:
Desc: a Int lvl:
1 040 XXX c XXX d XXX d mlc
2 028 22 Z.8492 b Editio Musica
3 045 2 v5v8
4 048 b wd01 a ka01
5 090 M1027 b .B14
6 090 b
7 049 OCLC
c
19900620
Source: d
Format: c
Comp: co
Dat tp: s
8 100 1 Bach, Johann Christian, d 1735-1782. w en
Record 1 of 1
Used 19920827
Lang NIA
Ctry hu
LTxt: n
Dates: 1979,
9 240 10 Concertos, m bassoon, orchestra, r E major; o arr.
10 245 00 Concerto per fagotto e orchestra in Mi maggiore I c Johann
Christian Bach ; riduzione per pianoforte, kozreadja Zaszkaliczky Tamas .
11 260 Budapest : b Editio Musica, c c1979.
12 300 1 score (32 p.) + 1 part (15 p.) ; c 30 em.
13 500 Stamped on cover: Sole selling agent, Boosey & Hawkes, inc .
14 650 0 Concertos (Bassoon) x Solo with piano.
15 700 10 Zaszkaliczky, Tamas. w en
Delete
OLUC an 117706899
NO HOLDINGS IN OCL - 1 OTHER HOLDING
OCLC: 17706899 Rec stat:
Entered: 19850610 Replaced:
Type: c Bib lvl: m
Repr: Enc lvl: M
Accomp: Mod rec:
Desc: i Int lvl:
1 040 XXX c XXX d m.c.
2 048 b wd01 a ka01
3 090 b
4 049 OCLC
c
19881110
Source: d
Format: c
Comp: co
Dat tp: s
5 100 1 Bach, Johann Christian, d 1735-1782. w en
Record 1 of 1
Used: 19880331
Lang: NIA
Ctry: hu
LTxt: n
Dates: 1979,
6 240 10 Concertos, m bassoon, orchestra, r E major; o arr.
7 245 00 Concerto per fagotto e orchestra in m maggiori I c Johann
Christian Bach ; riduzione per pianoforte, kozreadja Zaszkaliczky Tamas.
8 260 Budapest : b Editio Musica, c c1979.
9 300 score (32 p.) and part; c 30 em.
10 500 Ace. arr. for piano.
11 650 0 Concertos (Bassoon) x Solo with piano.
• These two records describe the same musical score. The second will be deleted, and the
holdings will be attached to the retained record.
OCLC investigated a number of ways to im·
prove tapeload record-matching algo­rithms.
The Serials Extended Match
project, installed in June 1992, was de·
signed to improve record-matching algo­rithms
for tapeloaded serials records. Its
success has enabled OCLC to load large
numbers of external files of serials records,
enriching holdings information while pro­tecting
the integrity of the database.
Other batch processing enhance­ments.
Loading resource files, such as the
library of Congress computer ftles and Na·
tiona! library of New Zealand records, will
require further development and testing.
OCLC's Resource File Batch Processing En·
hancements project is under way. Its goal
is to ensure that important data from these
records is retained and that the risk of in·
troducing duplicate records from these
sources is reduced.
Too LiHie: Records Containing
Insufficient Information
FuWMi.nimal records. The OCLC
PRISM service allows catalogers to enter
Level I records that include full cataloging
data or Level K records that contain "mini·
mal-level" data. Based on AACR2 stand·
ar<ls, Level I cataloging is applied to most
items; Level K can be applied to items of lo­cal
interest, such as theses or pamphlets,
that might not be cataloged at all other­wise.
Level K records often lack call num­bers
and subject headings.
When libraries contribute minimal re·
cords to the shared database, they reduce
the productivity of other catalogers who
must spend time adding information to the
records to make them useful. They also re·
duce the effectiveness of the database for
reference searching because minimal re·
cords sometimes barely identify an item.
OCLC and the Cataloging and Database
Services Advisory Committee have identi·
fied four points for solving the problem of
records with insufficient information:
1. Maintain standards for minimal-level
(Level K) records
2. Encourage full cataloging (Levell)
for as many materials as possible
3. Allow authorized users to upgrade
less-than-full records
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 17
4. Provide new ways to add call num­bers
or subject headings to minimal-level
records
Database enrichment by users. OCLC
encourages authorized PRISM users to up­grade
and replace master records in the
OLUC. A cataloger can now add call num­bers,
subject headings, contents notes, and
physical description information (pages,
size, etc.) to the master record. Duplica­tion
of cataloging effort has been reduced
because those fields don't have to be
added by each institution that uses the
record.
Upgrade of CIP records. Cataloging-in­publication
(CIP) records were introduced
in 1971 to speed up the availability ofU­brary
of Congress cataloging. Filling in the
blanks (number of pages, size of item, etc.)
and verifying publication data have been
ongoing tasks, repeated by every cataloger
who used the record, until PRISM made it
possible for one library to upgrade the mas­ter
record and provide the information for
all subsequent users of the record. OCLC
and the Ubrary of Congress completed a
cooperative project to upgrade older CW
records (pre-1983) in February 1992. This
summer, OCLC is adapting PRISM catalog­ing
software so that libraries that partici­pate
in the Enhance program will be able
to upgrade more information in CW
records online.
New input standards manual. In
August, OCLC will publish Bibliographic
Formats and Standards, a guide to and
description of machine-readable biblio­graphic
records in the OLUC. This new
manual will consolidate the information
previously published in the eight OCLC
format manuals and Bibliographic Input
Standards.
Too Many Versions: Heading
Errors and Coding Errors
Automated authority control When
name headings or subject headings don't
conform to their authorized form, it is diffi­cult
to search PRISM, EPIC, The FirstSearch
Catalog, or the library's local system and
lmd all items for that subject or name.
Incorrect headings also add to the cata­loging
workload when catalogers have to
correct fields rather than simply accept
18 OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993
Before
OLUC an 121138133
NO HOLDINGS IN OCL - 2 OTHER HOLDINGS
OCLC: 21138133 Rec stat: c
Entered: 19900228 Replaced: 19920602
Type: a Bib lvl : m Source: d
Repr: Enc l vl K Conf pub: 0
Indx : 0 Mod rec Govt pub
Desc: Int l vl Festschr: 0
1 040
2 090
3 049
4 100 1
5 245 00
6 260
7 300
After
F/B: 1 Dat tp: s
XXX c XXX
b
OCLC
O' Faol a i n, Julia. w 1n
Women in the wall.
b Avon, c 1976.
278 p. : b ill. ; c 18 em.
OLUC an 121138133
NO HOLDINGS IN OCL - 2 OTHER HOLDINGS
OCLC: 21138133 Rec s t at: c
Entered: 19900228 Replaced: 19920602
Type: a Bib 1vl: m Source: d
Repr: Enc lvl: I Conf pub: 0
Indx: 0 Mod rec: Govt pub:
Desc : a Int lvl: Festschr: 0
F/B: 1 Dat tp: s
1 040 XXX c XXX d XXX
2 020 0380005921
3 090 PR6065 .F3 b W6 1976
4 090 b
5 049 OCLC
6 100 1 O'Faol a i n, Julia. w 1n
7 245 00 Women in the wall I c J ulia O'Faolain.
8 260 New York : b Avon, c 1976.
9 300 278 p. : b ill. ; c 18 em.
10 651 0 France x History y To 987 x Fiction.
11 600 00 Radegunda, c Queen, consort of Chlotar I,
d d. 587 x Fiction. w en
Record 1 of 1
Used: 19920602
Lang: eng
Ctry: XX
Cont:
Illus:
Dates: 1976,
Record 1 of 1
Used: 19920602
Lang: eng
Ctry: nyu
Cont:
Illus:
Dates: 1976,
King of the Franks,
• This minimal-level record (Level K) was enriched by an OCLC cataloging library to Include
an ISBN number, a call number, publication Information, and subject headings.
,)
I
the record as is. Mistakes are easy to
make, and as long as catalogs are built key­stroke
by keystroke, even the most consci­entious
catalogers will make errors.
As careful as contributors to the OLUC
are, little mistakes can result in big omis­sions
when the catalog is used for online
reference searching. For example, an
author entry for "Branaugh, Kenneth"
won't show up with the other "Branagh,
Kenneth" records when an EPIC or
FirstSearch query is entered for "Branagh."
In addition, with changes in cataloging
rules, perfect records can be rendered in­correct
unless global changes can be made
to update older records to the new form.
Among OCLC's earlier correction pro­jects
were two automated AACR2 name
heading conversion projects in the Online
Union Catalog. In 1981 and 1987, the
AACR2 name conversion software com­pared
text from name heading fields in bib­liographic
records with heading and
reference fields in Library of Congress
name authority records. When exact
matches to authority record headings or
references occurred, the bibliographic
heading was either verified as being author­ized
or changed to match the authorized
form in the LC Name Authority File. More
recently, OCLC began a massive authority
control corrections project on May 14 in
which automated software works through
the OCLC database to identify and link vari­ant
forms to the correct form of name and
subject headings. The project contains
two parts: an initial phase of sophisticated
global correction of personal and corpo­rate
name headings and the third phase of
automated subject heading correction.
(fwo earlier phases of automated subject
heading correction, in 1990 and 1992,
made 3.1 million corrections.)
The current name correction projects
use "intelligent software" that can correct
widely varying forms of name headings.
Rather than simply comparing headings to
a ftle of authorized headings and cross ref­erences,
these programs use algorithms
that weigh factors within the record to
identify matching headings and link them
to the correct form.
OCLC expects at least 5 million correc­tions
to variant forms of name and subject
Users comment on database quality
by Bob Murphy
Maintaining high-quality records in the
Online Union Catalog is most important
to those on the front lines-those creat­ing
new records or looking for existing
ones in the database.
For these librarians, a high-quality da­tabase
means increased productivity,
fewer mistakes made, and easy access to
records and materials they're seeking.
Veteran catalogers have seen the
OLUC change over the
years.
National Archives Library in Washing­ton,
D.C. "I have no problem with it."
As an Enhance librarian, Mr. Cornelius
said he believes the biggest problem in
database quality begins when records
are first entered.
"If people would take just a little
more time when they enter records, it
would help to prevent some of the re­pair
work that takes so much time to do
later," he said.
An Enhance librarian will
"We've seen a real evolu­tion
in the growth of the da­tabase
and in the quality of
the database," said Sandra
Herzinger, chair of the cata­loging
department at the
University of Nebraska­Lincoln
libraries.
HWE'VE SEEN A
always have work to do. But
Mr. Cornelius said catalogers
are working harder so that
he has "less and less work to
REAL EVOLUTION
IN THE GROWTH OF do as time goes on."
THE OA TABASE AND With better guidance and
standards to follow, the qual-
IN THE QUALITY OF ityofrecordshasimproved.
Ms. Herzinger has been
working with the OLUC
since 1975. "For a time, we
had a lot of records that
THE DATABASE."
"I think things are more un­der
control," he said. "Peo­ple
are tending to do the
right thing when it comes to
-sandra Herzinger
were incomplete. The data-base
was not nearly as good as it is to­day.
I think it has improved greatly­particularly
over the last few years."
Ms. Herzinger said the enhanced data­base
and the availability of authority files
online allow support staff to get in­volved
where only library professionals
used to tread. "We don't have to rely as
heavily on professionals to establish
headings," she said. "It speeds up the
whole process."
Database clean-up projects have
helped, too, Herzinger said. "We don't
have to scrutinize the records quite as
closely. We don't have to have as many
items reviewed by professional staff.
Our authority unit doesn't have as much
clean-up to do."
"I think the database is in excellent
shape-especially considering the size
of the database right now," said John
Cornelius, head of cataloging at the
cataloging."
"OCLC publications-such as the Bib­liographic
Input Standards-and training
have helped catalogers to understand
what is needed from them," said Agnes
Grady, head of cataloging for the Univer­sity
of Tennessee, Knoxville, Library.
With better guides to standards, catalog­ers
are better equipped to enter high­quality
records.
Once records have been entered, Ms.
Grady said the OCLC staff has developed
reliable ways to correct previously cata­loged
entries that are not up to standard,
or that have changed since they were
first entered.
"OCLC has covered the quality issue
on several fronts," said Ms. Grady.
"They have helped define standards for
catalogers. The staff has also provided
ways to identify records that need help
and to perform groups of corrections by
machine."-Bob Murphy is public rela­tions
writer, OCLC.
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 19
n 81089984
ol 2553972
ol 22898262
ol 19950126
ol 6533898
5022314
5023812
5022620
5024156
5022176
9286 0
37838 y
37831 0
37839 y
37830 0
27 *Knickerbocker, H. R. $q (Hubert Renfro), $d 1898-1949
1 Knickerbocker, Hubert Renfro, $d 1989-1949
1 Knickerbocker, H. R. $q (Hubert Renfrom), $d 1898-1949
5 Knickerbocker, Hubert Renfro, $d 1898-
3 Knickerbocker, H. R.
• There are five forms of name for this historian. The first listing is the correct one. The other listings are samples of inaccurate entries.
headings when the project is fmished later
this year.
USMARC coding. The coded information
in the fixed fields at the beginning of the
MARC record includes information essen­tial
for the computerized indexing of re­cords,
including language, country, and
date of publication. If a FirstSearch or
EPIC user, for example, limits a search to
records written in Chinese, the computer
looks for only for records with the "chi"
code in the "Lang:" field.
Obviously, coding errors can cause seri­ous
retrieval problems. But changes in the
USMARC format can make perfect records
useless unless the system makes global up­dates.
Without these updates, it becomes
difficult to share records across databases
and systems.
PRISM validation. OCLC introduced
more stringent online validation of the US­MARC
content of records with the PRISM
service to prevent coding errors from en­tering
the database in new records and to
ensure that the records exported to the lo­cal
system or copied onto a library's ar­chive
tape meet MARC standards. Three
studies of validation failure rates-on the
whole database (5.8 percent), on fre­quently
used records (2.1 percent), and on
records entered since PRISM validation
was introduced in 1990 (0.4 percent)­show
that PRISM validation is an effective
database quality tool.
Scanning the database. PRISM valida­tion
studies have identified problem areas
that can be corrected by database scans.
Scans may also be used when OCLC imple­ments
updates to the USMARC Format for
Bibliographic Data. For example, during
Update No. 4, OCLC ran a scan to convert
three-<:haracter ftxed·field country codes to
two characters for the former Soviet Union.
20 OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993
Conclusion
The quality partnership. OCLC has
made important progress in developing
automated sofrware to improve database
quality, but member libraries and
OCLc-affiliated regional networks continue
to play an essential role.
Member libraries provide essential data­base
quality efforts by contributing accu­rate
records, participating in cooperative
programs, and by upgrading or enriching
less-than-full records. The networks pro-vide
vital support and training so that mem­bers
can comply with AACR2 rules and US­MARC
coding practices.
Contributing, upgrading, enriching, and
correcting the records in the OLUC are
combined efforts that improve the central
shared database for all users.-Karen
Calhoun is manager, OCLC online data
quality control section. Nancy Campbell
is public relations writer, OCLC. Donna
Gehring is marketing communications
specialist, OCLC.
Changes and Corrections in the OLUC
July 1992-June 1993
Type of Change Record
Manual changes by ODQCS staff:
Names 154,452
Subjects 28,643
Serials 6,613
Music 3,851
Other 73,992
Processing duplicate records manually:
Merges 10,185
Duplicates deleted 12,102
Automated corrections:
Database scan corrections 1,797,077
Duplicates deleted by DDR (cumulative) 688,854
Changes made by OCLC members:
Enhance 93,892
CONSER 44,700
Minimal·level upgrade 57,999
Database enrichment 118,883
OCLC NACO participation:
Authority records added 94
Authority records changed 893
,I
'!
)
Task force reports
on future use of
OLUC
by Bob Murphy
During its May meeting, the OCLC Users
Council unanimously approved a task
force report that recommended ways to
resolve the basic conflict between the
need for high-quality records in catalog­ing,
and the need for easy access to the
entire bibliographic universe for searchers.
The Users Council Task Force on the
Future Use of the Online Union Catalog
proposed the creation of a Universal Cata­log
based on the existing OLUC and com­plemented
by a set of databases to be
called "enrichment ftles" -records that
may not be up to the standards required
for inclusion in the OLUC.
The task force began its study with
the idea that bibliographic records that
do not adhere to prevailing standards for
completeness and formatting can still be
of considerable value. Such records can
support acquisitions, collection develop­ment,
reference, interlibrary loan, and pa­tron
access. They can also support
cataloging by being transformed into
complete records.
The enrichment ftles proposed by the
task force "may contain sets of other-than­standard
records or they may contain
ftles of standard records that for contrac­tual,
technical, or other reasons cannot
be merged with the Online Union
Catalog."
The task force cited many reasons for
creating such enrichment ftles instead of
loading them all into the OLUC. The re­port
stated that "the addition of other­than-
standard records might reduce the
value of the Online Union Catalog," and
the task force warned that "the addition
to the OLUC of records that do not meet
the prevailing standards might encourage
member libraries to enter substandard re­cords
for their current cataloging."
Quality of the OLUC was one of the
task force's top concerns. "The essential
• William Gray Potter
problem is how to provide access to
these records while preserving the value
of the OLUC as a database of records that
meet the prevailing standards for com­pleteness
and formatting," the task force
report stated, as part of its mission.
"Completeness of records was impor­tant
to us," said William Gray Potter,
chair of the task force and director of li­braries,
University of Georgia. "It was
the reason we recommended going with
the enrichment ftles. We saw a lot of re­cords
that did not meet prevailing stand­ards,
and we didn't want to mix them
with the records that did. Still, we recog­nized
that the incomplete records are
also very valuable."
"The recommendation of the task
force is not a direct order, but a recom­mendation.
And it complements the gen­eral
direction in which OCLC seems to
be moving as a result of the Harvard ret­rospective
conversion project, in which
OCLC will be creating a special database
of the older Harvard records that fall out­side
contemporary cataloging standards
and make it available to the library com­munity,"
said John Popko, immediate
past president of the OCLC Users Coun­cil
and assistant director for technical
• John Popko
services, University Libraries, University
of Missouri-Kansas City, at the OCLC
President's Luncheon during the recent
American library Association Conference.
Phyllis B. Spies, OCLC vice president
for marketing and sales, commended the
task force for its work and said OCLC
will respond in two ways to the commit­tee's
recommendations.
"First, we will redouble our efforts to
identify and obtain collections of bibliog­raphic
records that can be considered for
inclusion in the OLUC or as enrichment
ftles by the committee's defmition,"
stated Ms. Spies, in a letter to the Users
Council Executive Committee.
"Second, we will initiate an inquiry in
research and development into how best
to provide access to enrichment ftles.
"That's the kind of response we
wanted from OCLC," said Dr. Potter.
"We wanted OCLC to take our report se­riously.
We're satisfied that OCLC is tak­ing
a position to address our concerns,
and we're pleased that they have found
our work useful."
-Bob Murphy is public relations
writer, OCLC.
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 21
SPECCAL REPORT
CooPERATIVE
PROGRAMS PROMOTE
QUALITY
by Nancy Campbell
CONSER. The 19 national and full-member participants in the CONSER (Cooperative
Online Serials) Program continue to authenticate serials records in the CONSER database,
which resides in the OCLC Online Union Catalog. The total number of complete, correct,
and unique records is approaching 6oO,OOO. CONSER records are now linked to the jour­nals
cited in 25 reference databases available in The FirstSearch Catalog and the EPIC serv­ice,
which assists users in determining whether the serial titles in which they fmd citations
are available in their local library or if they need to place an interlibrary loan request or
document delivery order.
USNP. The U.S. Newspaper Program has added six more state participants- Alaska,
California, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Wyoming-and recently produced the
fourth edition of its union list. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities,
38 states and nine national repositories have entered or are now entering their holdings
into the U.S. newspaper database within the Online Union Catalog. It will eventually con­tain
detailed holdings information on an estimated 250,000 newspaper titles published in
North America since 1690.
Enhance. Through the Enhance Program, 111 member libraries have volunteered to up­grade
Online Union Catalog records by adding information and correcting certain types of
errors. In 1992/93, there were 93,892 records enhanced, bringing the total number of re­cords
enhanced since the program began in 1984 to over 750,000.
Database Enrichment and Minimal-Level Upgrades. Following the guidelines of
OCLC's Database Enrichment Program, authorized catalogers can add call numbers,
subject headings, and contents notes when they are not included in the master record.
Authorized libraries can also upgrade records input with a minimum of information.
OCLC encourages enrichment and upgrading of records by issuing credits for improved
records.
NACO/LSP. Libraries that participate in the National Coordinated Cataloging Operation
(NACO), formerly the Name Authority Cooperative Project, submit name authority records
to the Library of Congress for inclusion in LC's Name Authority File. OCLC's NACO librar­ies
send their records via OCLC's LSP (Linked Systems Project) connection to LC.
NCCP. Founded in 1987 by the Library of Congress and the Association for Research
Libraries, the National Coordinated Cataloging Program (NCCP) includes eight libraries
trained to catalog at LC's high-<J.uality level. Beginning this summer, NCCP libraries will
have the option of cataloging directly on the OCLC PRISM service and making their re­cords
available immediately to LC and to OCLC member libraries.
Fiction Project. Launched in 1991, the Fiction Project implements the American Library
Association's Guidelines on Subject Access to Individual works of Fiction, Drama, Etc.
With the objective of enhancing subject access to works of fiction, the project has two
parts: a cooperative program of OCLC, LC, and five libraries to enrich LC records that rep­resent
works of fiction, and the enrichment of records in the OCLC database as a whole.­Nancy
Campbell is public relations writer, OCLC.
22 OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993
CONSER MEMBERS
National Members
Library of Congress
National Agricultural Library
National Library of Canada
National Library of Medicine
National Serials Data Program
Full Members
Center for Research Libraries
Cornell University
Harvard University
Indiana University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
New York State Library
U.S. Government Printing Office
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Florida, Gainesville
University of Georgia
University of Michigan
University of Pittsburgh
University of Texas, Austin
University of Washington
Associate and Affiliate Members
BIOSIS
Chemical Abstracts Service/Library
Services
EBSCO Publishing
U.S. Newspaper Program participants
ENHANCE LIBRARIES
American Bible Society
American Museum of Natural History
Asian Shared Information Access
Auburn University
Boston University
Bowling Green State University
California State Polytechnic University,
Pomona
California State University, Los Angeles
Capital University Law Library
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Center for Research Libraries
Chicago Public Library
College of DuPage
College of St. Scholastics
Columbus (Ohio) City Schools
Cranbrook Academy of Art Library
DeKalb County (Ga.) School System
District of Columbia Public Library
Duke University
Eastern Washington University
Eastman School of Music, ARL RECON
Eastman School of Music
Florida International University
Florida State University
Florida State University Law Library
George Washington University
"
/
SPEC lA .T
ENHANCE LIBRARIES (CONT.) U.S. Government Printing NACO PARTICIPANTS Texas State Library
Office
THAT USE THE OCLC U.S. Government Printing
Harry Ransom Humanities University Microfilms Office
Research Center, UT International LSP SYSTEM University Microfilms
Austin University of Arizona International
Harvard University, Houghton University of California, Los
ATLA Cooperative: University of California, Los
Library Angeles • Billy Graham Center Angeles
Harvard University, Cataloging
University of California, San
• Catholic Theological Union University of California, San
Support Service • Jesuit-Krauss-McCormick Diego
Harvard University, Yenching
Diego Seminary
Library University of Chicago • Mennonite Historical Library
University of Chicago
Hunter College University of Colorado, Boulder • North Park College and University of Colorado, Boulder
Illinois State Library University of Dayton
Theological Seminary University of Dayton
• Trinity Evangelical Divinity University of Florida
Indiana State Library University of Florida School University of Georgia
Indiana University, Music ARL University of Georgia • United Library Garret
RECON Evangelical University of Illinois
Indiana University
University of Illinois, Chicago • Christian Theological University of Maryland
Lehman College
University of Illinois, Seminary University of Pittsburgh
Louisiana State University
Agricultural Library, ARL ATLA Preservation Program University of Texas, Austin
RECON Center for Research Libraries University of Washington
Lutheran Theological
Seminary (Pa.)
University of Illinois Harvard University Washington State University
Michigan State University
University of Kansas Indiana University
Minneapolis Public Library University of Maryland, Joint Bank, Fund Library FICTION PROJECT
Baltimore Health Sciences
Minnesota Historical Society Library
Louisiana State University PARTICIPANTS
MIT, Technical Pubs, ARL University of Maryland,
Massachusetts Institute of
RECON College Park
Technology Arlington Heights Memorial
Multnomah County Library University of
Minnesota Historical Society Library, Arlington Heights,
National Agricultural Library Missouri-Columbia
Montana State Library Ill.
National Agricultural Library, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
NACO Music Project members: Cleveland Public Library,
Cooperative Project • Indiana University Music Cleveland, Ohio
National Archives & Records University of North Carolina. Library Library of Congress
) I Service Greensboro • Eastman School of Music OCLC
New England Conservatory University of North Carolina, • Northwestern University Saint Louis Public Library, St.
New York Public
Chapel Hill Music Library Louis, Mo.
Library- Research Libraries University of North Carolina, • University of California, San Stockton-San Joaquin County
New York State Library Chapel Hill, Music Library Diego, Music Library Public Library, Stockton,
University of North Carolina,
• University of Louisville Music Calif.
North Carolina Department of Library
Cultural Resources Chapel Hill, Health • Vassar College Music Library William T. Jerome Library,
North Carolina Foreign
Sciences Library • Washington University Music Bowling Green State
Language Center University of North Texas Library University, Bowling Green,
North Carolina State University University of Oregon National Agricultural Library
Ohio
Oberlin College University of Pittsburgh National Library of Medicine
Ohio State University University of Richmond New York State Library
Public Library, University of San Francisco Northwestern University
Charlotte-Mecklenburg
University of Southern
Oberlin College
County
California OCLC Online Data Quality
Purdue University
University of Strathclyde
Control Section
Rochester (N.Y.) Public Library Ohio State University
Russell Sage College University of Tennessee, Knoxville Philadelphia Authority File
Saint John's University Library
University of Texas, Austin
Cooperative:
San Diego County, Law library • Pennsylvania Archives
San Francisco State University University of Virginia • Academy of Natural Science
St. Louis University Law School University of Washington • Bryn Mawr College
• Haverford College
State Historical Society of University of Wisconsin, • St. Charles Borromeo
Wisconsin Madison • Swarthmore Friends Historical
State Library of Ohio University of Wisconsin, Society
Stony Brook Institute of Milwaukee • Swarthmore Peace Collection
Advanced Studies, World University of Wyoming • Presbyterian History
Religions Vanderbilt University
Association
SUNY, Brockport
• Free Library of Philadelphia
Syracuse University
Virginia Polytechnic and State • Balch Institute
University St. Louis University School of
Texas A&l University Washington University at St. Law
Texas A&M University Louis Serial Record Division, Library
Texas State Library Washington University at St. of Congress
U.S. General Accounting Office Louis, Law Library State Library of Ohio
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 23
SPE(?:!IAL REPORT
fOUR AREAS WORl<. TOGETHER
TO MAINTAIN OLUC QUALITY
Improving the quality of the Online Union
catalog requires various kinds of expertise.
OCLC draws staff from several divisions to
work together on this important function.
Office of research staff members analyze
problems in the database and create
prototype solutions. Software developers in
the technical services development division
design and write the software for programs
that work their way through the database,
fixing massive numbers of problems quickly
and efficiently. Experienced librarians and
cataloging paraprofessionals staff the online
data quality control and
tapeloadingldatabase services sections in the
marketing and sales division. These
front-line people deal with OCLC users and
represent the users' needs in the planning of
corrections projects and other quality
improvements.
by Nancy Campbell
OFFICE OF RESEARCH
Edward T. O'Neill, consulting research scientist: "To keep this massive job
manageable, I focus on how much has been accomplished rather than on how
much still needs to be done."
"I like having the opportunity to do interesting, challenging, and significant
research which benefits the library community."
Mike Osklns, consulting systems analyst: 'We need to automate the
corrections process as much as possible by applying authority files to the
Online Union Catalog, automatic deduping of the OLUC, and by providing
automated database quality tools to our users."
"Database quality work provides an intellectual challenge. I particularly like
seeing the improved indexing and efficiencies that result from our work."
Kerre Kammerer, senior systems analyst: 'We did 'detective work' in old
editions of the Library of Congress Subject Headings to trace the evolution of
certain subject headings."
TAPELOAOINGIOATABASE SERVICES SECTION,
MARKETING AND SALES DIVISION
Jay Weltz, database specialist: "Automated processes have made
database maintenance more manageable than in the past, but it is still
overwhelming when you contemplate the size of the OLUC. What is not
yet automated must be done one record at a time, so I try to do what I can,
as accurately and in as timely a fashion as I can."
"Duplicate Detection and Resolution, the Names Correction Projects,
and the Subject Headings Correction Projects have been enormous efforts
that have resulted in a cleaner, more consistent database. When you
couple these with the vast improvements in PRISM access, such as scan
title index and keyword searching, you have better means to better
information."
"Never is there a dull moment in this job. The challenges seem endless,
the variety of tasks vast, and the excitement of working at a nerve center of
the bibliographic universe doesn't fade."
Ellen Caplan, consulting database
specialist: "I have been working with
developers on various database scans to
reduce the number of validation errors and
obsolete coding practices-it's been a
satisfying, frustrating, and eye-opening
experience."
"I like working with users to resolve
cataloging and coding problems before
records are entered in the OLUC--to me,
that is the ultimate in quality control."
Cheryl Cardiel, tapeloadlng/database
services assistant: "The
Marianne Kozsely, database specialist: tapeloading/database services section "I enjoy the detailed nature of
this work and helping libraries and networks understand tapeloading."
works together as a team. When problems
occur, whether large or small, we work
together and help each other resolve them." I~
a;
ti:
!
\
~ .J
~------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------~~
24 OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993
)
l
DATABASE AND OFFLINE PRODUCTS
DEPARTMENT, TECHNICAL SERVICES
DEVELOPMENT DIVISION
Doug Perkins, manager, database quality
section: "Software for database quality is
based on prototypes which define the scope
of the problem and solve it at the same time.
A full appreciation of the problem often goes
hand in hand with the solution:·
Paul Ferguson, systems analyst:
"Teamwork-the constant interaction with
staff in the office of research and the
marketing and sales division--keeps me up
to date with new problem areas in database
quality."
Bruce Mortland, systems analyst:
"Software for new products must be balanced
by the varied needs of all users, but
database quality software corrects errors that
everyone recognizes as problems. When we
correct a record, it becomes more accessible
and easier to understand for all users."
Roger Rosenbeck, senior systems
analyst: "Software for database quality has
been developed in phases, rather than trying
to fix all classes of problems in one extremely
large project."
Jerry Wood, senior systems analyst: "The
difference between developing software for
database quality rather than for new products
is that database-quality software is more
dynamic. The challenge is the same--to be
creative and flexible, while still meeting
deadlines."
Jeff Young, senior systems analyst: "The
size of the OCLC database always presents
a challenge. It's difficult to comprehend the
magnitude of the changes when millions of
records are affected."
Gary Smith, senior consulting systems
analyst: 'We've performed literally dozens
of scans in the past few years. Over 90
percent of the records in the OLUC have
been touched by at least one scan."
'We keep a list of corrections we'd like to
make--currently, we have about 40 items on
the list Periodically, we select the five or six
which appear to have the best payback and
concentrate on those."
Dan Patterson, senior systems analyst:
'We have recently completed scans of the
database to correct records for major
microforms and to set Library of English
Literature field 533 inconsistencies.
Next is a listing of records with
007 -$a-greater-than-one character [general
material designations that are coded
incorrectly]:'
"Scan work provides variety, good people,
and constant learning. I really enjoy scans
using the assembler programming language."
ONLINE DATA
QUALITY CONTROL SECTION,
MARKETI~G A~D SALES DIVISION
Karen Calhoun, manager: "To give you an idea of the experience
level of the 1 0 people in my section, together we had 55 years of
cataloging experience before coming to OCLC and we have 71 years
of experience at OCLC, including 51 years in the online data quality
control section."
Carol Keethler, senior quality control assistant: 'When I started in
1978, OCLC was only in the United States. There were no CJK
records online, more limited searching capabilities, and no direct
access to the Library of Congress database. Until PRISM
enhancements, more of our job had to be done by hand."
Linda Gabel, senior quality control librarian: "PASSPORT
software and PRISM enhancements have made our job easier­they
help us identify areas that need work and clean them up quickly
and efficiently. I have enjoyed working on the Fiction Project; its
expansion of subject access to a whole new field of materials has
benefited OCLC members and the library community."
Robert Bremer, senior quality control librarian: "We know we
can't correct every error, so it's important to focus first on problematic
areas such as headings and validation errors. The implementation of
automated correction projects, such as Duplicate Detection and
Resolution and the Name and Subject Headings Correction Projects,
has greatly improved the quality of the OLUC:'
Susan Westberg, quality control librarian: "As the algorithms are
developed and put into production, many problems will be fixed
automatically. Our group will work on areas that are not addressed by
the global clean-ups."
Brenda Block, senior quality control assistant: "I like this job
because there is always a variety of challenging projects to work on.
learn something new from each project."
Susan Walker, senior quality control assistant: "Monograph
duplicates are under control now in the OLUC because of the
Duplicate Detection and Resolution project:•
Julie Whitley, quality control assistant: "My philosophy of keeping
up with the problems in the database is to find and identify problems,
think of ways I can solve them with the resources and tools I have,
and always ask questions."
Sandy Cooper, quality control assistant: "I work on several project
teams--flames, serials, and Harvard. It is very challenging."
Rebecca Dean, quality control librarian: 'We have a responsibility ~
to our users to maintain as clean and precise a database as possible. :§
We rely on users to let us know about problems, and we work as a £
section to correct them, depending on the size and nature of each ~
problem." e -' ! ~------------------------------------~
"We've teamed tbrough
barsb experience tbat
errors in tbe database
lead to increased effort
on tbe part of our
users."
INTERVIEW
Martin Dillon
The former director of OCLC's office of research, now
director of the library resources management division,
talks about OCLC's long-term focus on database quality
Recently named director of OCLC's library resources
management division, Martin Dillon fll'St came to
OCLC in 1985 as visiting distinguished scholar
while on leave from the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. The following year, he was
appointed director of OCLC's office of research.
From 1969 to 1986, he served on the faculty of
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
where he held teaching posts in both library
science and computer science. Dr. Dillon holds
a bachelor of science degree in English from
Canisius College, Buffalo, N.Y., and a doctoral
degree in English from the State University of
New York at Buffalo, where he was an NDEA
(National Defense Education Act) fellow.
He has conducted numerous experimental
studies and is widely published in library and
information science journals.
Newsletter: Why is the quality of
records in the OCLC Online Union
Catalog so important?
Dillon: Our major concern is the efficient
use of the OLUC by catalogers, reference
librarians, and library patrons. We've
learned through harsh experience that errors
in the database lead to increased effort on
the part of our users. Consider for example
the question of duplicates. When a cataloger
sees two records that look very much alike,
he or she has to make a decision on which
of the two records is appropriate. It is
similar for the scholar. Do the two records
reflect different intellectual content? Are
they different editions of the same work?
That decision, done over and over again, is
costly for everyone. Even worse are variant
forms of authors' names, misspellings, or
other differences. These kinds of errors
cause items not to be retrieved when they
should be.
Newsletter: Is OLUC quality a high
priority in OCLC's office of research?
In the library resources management
division?
Dillon: For quite a few years the office of
research has devoted three full-time senior
staff to research into the design of automatic
error detection and correction procedures.
Our view has always been that we can afford
quality only to the extent that we can supply
effective automated tools for achieving it.
This research was remarkably successful,
and we feel that we have developed very
advanced facilities that can be used in
a production role with the Online Union
Catalog. In addition, as long as I've been
here, we've had more than 10 full-time staff
devoted to making corrections manually to
the database. In recent years, using our auto­mated
facilities, their primary role is review.
Through the software we've developed,
we've been able to multiply the effective­ness
of our experts many times over.
26 OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993
~
)
Newsletter: Are there fewer errors in
the database now than there were 10
years ago?
Dillon: Many fewer. I would like to have
that quantified, but it would not be an easy
job. When we frrst embarked on our long
path of developing automated tools, one of
our incentives was the estimate we made
that the number of errors in the database
was growing despite the heavy investment in
human correction. We are currently apply­ing
our algorithms to subject headings, per­sonal
and corporate names, and geographic
names, and we estimate that this process will
remove 5 million errors from the database.
We can certainly hope that not that many
new errors will be introduced at the same
time!
Newsletter: As cataloging becomes
more and more automated, will quality
increase or decrease?
Dillon: I think that quality has to be differen­tiated
into two types. In the frrst type fall
such things as spelling errors or name vari­ants.
The second type has to do with the ap­propriateness
of a class or a subject heading
and requires human intellect for a high de­gree
of correctness. I believe that we are im­proving
in the first type; as we begin to
automate the second type, quality may de­cline
somewhat.
Newsletter: You've been associated
with OCLC since 1985. How has the
commitment to quality changed over
that time?
Dillon: It has gradually increased over the
years. More staff are devoted to database
quality today than there were at that time.
Originally we had only the cataloging ex­perts.
To these have been added the three
INTERVIEW
senior staff in research. When their work
had matured, development staff became in­volved
in transforming research algorithms
into production tools. We now have an inte­grated
team of marketing, research, and de­velopment
staff that is both correcting the
Online Union Catalog and creating a set of
tools that can be used to improve the catalog
of any library.
Newsletter: What's the major
challenge in maintaining database
quality?
Dillon: I would say that there are two major
challenges. The first is in surmounting the
technical difficulties in automating the detec­tion
and correction of errors. When data­bases
get as large as ours, the contribution of
individual humans is severely limited. The
task is so large that no practical number of
humans could handle it. The second
Martin Dillon
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 27
"Patron needs have
increased our
sensitivity to many
aspects of database
quality."
INTERVIEW
challenge is convincing the intellectual lead­ers
in the library world to maintain their
commitment to quality in the Online Union
Catalog.
Newsletter: What cataloging trends
affect the quality of bibliographic
records?
Dillon: One trend is cataloging simplifica­tion,
which aims at reducing the complexity
of cataloging rules. Depending on how you
interpret that, database quality could suffer.
For example, authority control is under at­tack
in libraries because of its high cost.
Oversimplification of authority practice
could lead to an inability to distinguish
among names. Indeed, a second trend is to
do away with authority control altogether,
arguing that keyword searching provides suf­ficient
retrieval effectiveness to achieve a pa­tron's
ends. My experience tells me that the
larger the database, the more necessary is
authority control, and the more troublesome
is a dependence on keywords.
Newsletter: What contributions are
libraries making to database quality?
Dillon: Database quality starts with the in­put
of quality records. Many of our member
libraries create bibliographic records that
can't be improved on. The Library of
Congress has always played an important,
even crucial, role in maintaining the quality
of cataloging and bibliographic records
nationally, both through high-quality catalog­ing
and through the establishment and main­tenance
of standards. OCLC is a strong
partner with LC in this effort. We have
many collaborative projects where our
strengths are combined to advance catalog­ing
quality. I should mention also the
Enhance libraries, which have assumed a
major responsibility in enriching biblio-
28 OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993
graphic records in the Online Union Catalog
through corrections and additions to exist­ing
records. This is an instance of the coop­erative
effort that has always been a
cornerstone of OCLC's success.
Newsletter: What's the effect of
OCLC's move into reference services on
quality control priorities?
Dillon: A cataloger's use of the database i~
very different from use by a patron or
scholar. Reference use of the database
helped us take a broader perspective be­cause
subject retrieval spans the whole data­base
and all fields. Browsing of keyword
indexes, author indexes, and subject-term in­dexes
shed a harsh light on misspellings and
errors of all types. Subject retrievals often
disclose duplicate records in the database
that would not be apparent during catalog­ing.
Moreover, patrons are sometimes less
patient than catalogers with minor distinc­tions
between records. Patron needs have
increased our sensitivity to many aspects of
database quality.
Newsletter: How do you view the
report of the Users Council Task Force
on the Future Use of the OLUC?
Dillon: I feel that it's useful and important
and establishes priorities for us. The future
of the Online Union Catalog depends on its
inclusiveness, its ability to assimilate data­bases
of many sorts and retain its effective­ness.
It's worth mentioning in this context,
however, that the kinds of databases we will
be adding will vary enormously in their qual­ity,
adding to the difficulties we've been dis­cussing.
The task force report evidences a
concern for maintaining the high level of
quality in the Online Union Catalog and
recommends establishing separate files as a
partial solution.
)
Newsletter: What are the
strengths/ weaknesses of automated
correction software?
Dillon: I've heard it said that automated
spelling checkers have increased the number
of errors in business prose. If this is so, it is
because spelling checkers create false confi­dence
in their users, who give them too
much credit. Spelling checkers identify and
correct only certain kinds of errors. Like
spelling checkers, the great strength of auto­mated
correction software is that it vastly re­duces
human effort in identifying certain
kinds of errors. However, it must be prop­erly
applied. Automated correction software
will always require careful application, con­stant
supervision and review, and continuing
improvement.
Newsletter: Do minimal-level records
present a particular database-quality
challenge?
Dillon: You bet they do. We spoke about
duplicate records. It is often impossible to
tell when a minimal-level record matches a
full MARC record correctly. This inability can
prevent a library from improving its catalog
through automatic matching and updating.
Newsletter: Have the library budget
restraints of recent years affected the
quality of records entered into the
OLUC?
Dillon: One might expect that to be so, but
we haven't been able to quantify that in any
way. We certainly fear that continuing pres­sure
on library budgets will eventually lead
to an inability to maintain the high quality of
records input. This fear creates a strong
motive for us to provide database-quality
INTERVIEW
services to libraries, thus enabling them to
achieve the same high quality but at greatly
reduced costs.
Newsletter: Have OCLC members'
attitudes toward database quality
changed?
Dillon: I don't think that their attitudes
have changed. What has changed is their
ability, given today's economic circum­stances,
to achieve a level of database quality
consistent with their education and training,
and I might add, consistent with what we
feel are the needs of their patrons.
Newsletter: What database quality
problems are created by the electronic
environment we're moving into?
Dillon: We're all pretty sure that the Internet,
which will enable patrons to search diverse
databases of journal citations and full text,
will uncover difficulties and problems that
we haven't yet even dreamed of. We're
worrying now about keeping straight a mon­strous
10 million names in our Online Union
Catalog. It is likely that there will soon be a
billion people signed on to the Internet.
Now that's an authority control problem.
Considering only the journal literature, why
shouldn't a patron be able to retrieve all arti­cles
by a certain author, or all articles about a
certain corporation, or all articles about a
geographic place? None of these is remotely
possible today.
Newsletter: Will the OLUC ever be
completely error free?
Dillon: I have promised to personally give a
party for the database quality team when the
last duplicate is removed from the database. •
"It is likely that there
will soon be a billion
people signed on to the
Intemet. Now that's
an authority control
problem. "
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 29
lSI's The Genuine
Article will be a
FirstSearch
document supplier
Users of the OCLC FirstSearch Catalog will
soon be able to order documents from The
Genuine Article.
The Institute for Scientific Information
(lSI) and OCLC have agreed to add lSI's
The Genuine Article as a document sup­plier
to The FirstSearch Catalog's online
document ordering service. It is sched­uled
to be available later this summer.
The Genuine Article will join UMI
Article Clearinghouse and Dynamic
Information as suppliers of documents
found in ArticleFirst, one of the databases
available in the OCLC FirstSearch Catalog.
All offer delivery by fax, overnight mail,
and first -<:lass mail.
The Genuine Article is a leading supplier
of documents to the international scientific,
technical, and medical communities and
is supported by lSI's collection of over
6,000 journals from around the world. Its
comprehensive, multidisciplinary coverage
includes areas of research such as applied
PRODUCT NEWS
microbiology, environmental issues, oncol­ogy,
and superconductivity.
The Genuine Article features its own
in-house collection of journals-which
means that, in many cases, those ordering
documents will receive original tear
sheets. If an original copy of an article is
not available, The Genuine Article will
send a photocopy-along with a guarantee
that copyright royalties have been paid.
The online document ordering option,
part of the OCLC Dispatch Service, gives
library patrons using OCLC's FirstSearch
Catalog the ability to order serials articles
found in OCLC databases. Currently,
Dynamic Information provides documents
found in ArticleFirst, and UMI Article
Clearinghouse supplies documents found
in ArticleFirst and Periodical Abstracts.
OCLC will soon expand its Dispatch Service
to permit users to order documents in
other FirstSearch databases. With a variety
of suppliers and prices available online,
users may choose the one that best suits
their needs.
The OCLC Dispatch Service also in­cludes
the FirstSearch link to PRISM ILL,
which allows patrons to create interlibrary
loan requests that are electronically trans­ferred
to an institution's ILL review me.
Dynamic
Information drops
price on some
documents for
delivery
Dynamic Information, a document
supplier for users of ArticleFirst on
OCLC's FirstSearch Catalog, has low­ered
its price from $12.50 to $8 (U.S.)
for some documents delivered by first­class
mail.
The price was dropped on docu­ments
that have lower royalty fees.
Most documents supplied by Dynamic
Information will be offered at the
lower price.
Articles in the Journal of the Ameri­can
Medical Association are among
those available for the $8 ftrst-<:lass
mail delivery charge. Other titles
with the $8 pricing include Byte,
Transactions of the ASAE, Journal of
the Acoustical Society of America, and
Maclean's.
Three popular databases added to FirstSearch and EPIC
OCLC has recently added MEDUNE, Education Index, and
Biological & Agricultural Index to its online reference services,
The FirstSearch Catalog and the EPIC service.
MEDUNE, the well-known index for all areas of medicine;
Education Index, covering all aspects of education; and Biologi­cal
& Agricultural Index, which indexes journals ranging from
the popular to the professional, bring the total number of data­bases
available on FirstSearch to 36, and on EPIC to 40.
"Th~ addition of these databases furthers OCLC's efforts to
bring information on a broad range of subjects to librarians, via
the EPIC service, and to library users, via The FirstSearch Cata­log,"
said Tam Dalrymple, OCLC reference services.
MEDUNE, produced by the National Library of Medicine, indexes
over 3,500 journals published in many countries. In addition to clini­cal
and experimental medicine, MEDUNE provides citations, many
with abstracts, to materials in dentistry, nursing, veterinary medicine,
nutrition, pathology, psychology, and other health-related fields.
Its coverage on FirstSearch and EPIC runs from 1985 to the
present, and it is updated monthly on both services.
30 OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993
Education Index is the online version of the H.W. Wilson Co.'s
printed database of the same name. It indexes articles from
over 400 English-language periodicals and yearbooks as well as
selected series and supplements. Education Index covers all
levels and sectors of the education community from preschool
and kindergarten to special education, high school, and college.
Its coverage on FirstSearch and EPIC runs from)une 1983 to
the present, and it is updated monthly on both services.
Biological & Agricultural Index is also an online version of a
popular H.W. Wilson index. It cites articles from more than 240
periodicals published in the United States and elsewhere and also
provides coverage of biographical sketches, reports of symposia
and conferences, review articles, selected letters to the editor,
special issues, and abstracts. Almost half of the citations relate
to agriculture. The rest cover fields such as animal husbandry,
botany, ecology, food science, forestry, horticulture, and zoology.
Its coverage in FirstSearch and EPIC goes from 1985 to the present,
and it is updated monthly on both services.
Troubleshooting
Internet connections
by Mark Sellan
~ ~
. ' )
..
Users connect to
OCLC's PRISM service
using either dial ac­cess
or dedicated line.
But users of OCLC's
EPIC, FirstSearch, or
Electronic Journals On­line
systems have the
option, in addition to
dedicated line and dial
access, to connect via the Internet. For
many institutions, the Internet provides
easy, affordable access since they already
maintain an Internet connection for other
research or support endeavors. The vari­ety
of these connections is as diverse as
the variety of resources available on the In-
) ternet.
How these resources are accessed and
what resources are available vary greatly
from one institution to another. Some sys­tems
are configured with customized
menu screens allowing access to many dif­ferent
resources such as e-mail, local li­brary
catalogs, super<omputer centers, or
other online systems, such as OCLC.
Other systems use a simple command-line
interface where users must know particu­lar
commands to access resources such as
e-mail or local catalogs. Many large institu­tions
support multiple Internet-accessible
systems, each with a unique configuration.
For User and Network Support (UNS),
this diversity presents a great challenge.
To meet it, the UNS support role has re­cently
been fine-tuned to provide better
handling of Internet connection problems.
Because of the complex nature of the In­ternet,
UNS staff must work in conjunction
with other OCLC telecommunications staff
as well as staff at the user's site.
UNS staff have been attending training
classes to learn about the Internet and to
develop troubleshooting skills to address
basic Internet connection problems.
Armed with better understanding of the In-
) ternet along with close working relation­ships
with OCLC Network Support Section
PRODUCT NEWS
AMIGOS and OCLC introduce Custom Cut
CD for group collection assessment
by Helen Hughes
AMIGOS Bibliographic Council and OCLC have announced the expansion of their
joint venture, OCLC/AMIGOS Collection Analysis Systems, to include a group collec­tion
development option: Custom Cut CD. Available immediately from AMIGOS,
Custom Cut CD is an innovative collection assessment product for cooperatives to
use to identify individual collection strengths and weaknesses and also to compare
holdings with individual libraries in a group and the group as a whole.
OCLC/AMIGOS Collection Analysis Systems now includes four diverse collection
assessment tools: Collection Analysis CD, Custom Cut CD, Tape Analysis, and BCL3
Tape Match. For more information, contact Helen Hughes, marketing representative,
at AMIGOS: (800) 843-8482 or (214) 851-8000. Internet: AMIGOS®UTDALLAS.EDU.
staff, UNS will be better equipped to help
expedite problem resolution.
When users have problems connecting
to OCLC using the Internet, UNS staff con­sider
three basic possibilities: problems
can be at OCLC, at the user site, or some­where
in between. The Internet is a com­plex
collection of interconnected
networks using special protocols to insure
data is sent correctly and received intact.
Each network is connected to other net­works
using routers-specialized comput­ers
to manage sending and receiving
packets of information.
To localize problems, UNS staff will at­tempt
to logon to the system in question
using telnet. Telnet is used to logon to a
remote computer through the Internet.
UNS staff members verify whether or not
the system in question is operational by
logging on using a variety of access meth­ods,
in addition to telnet. If UNS staff can­not
logon successfully using any access
method, then computer operations staff
are notified, and the system is assumed to
be down. If staff can logon using an ac­cess
method other than telnet (Internet),
the problem is assumed to be within some
part of the Internet.
The next step requires UNS staff to de­termine
whether the break in communica­tion
has occurred between OCLC and its
Internet connection or further out in the
network. To help make this determina-tion,
UNS staff may run a ping test. Ping is
a test which bounces a message back and
forth between two computers across the
network. UNS begins by pinging its own
router to determine if OCLC's connection
to the Internet is good. If this ping test
passes, UNS will forward the problem to
the Network Support Section for further
testing and request assistance from the
user's system administrator. If the ping
test indicates a problem with OCLC's con­nection
to the Internet, UNS escalates the
problem for computer operations staff to
resolve.
Other non<ommunication problems oc­cur
as well. For example, users sometimes
report that they can see text sent by OCLC
but cannot see the text they type. This is a
configuration problem which needs to be
addressed by their system administrator.
These kinds of problems are difficult for
UNS staff to diagnose since they involve
the user's complex operating environment
which UNS staff cannot access. Fortunately,
though, these problems are usually easily
corrected once the system administrator is
contacted. More than ever before, users,
system administrators, and UNS will be
working together to address increasingly
complicated communication issues.­Mark
Sellan is technical documentation
specialist, OCLC.
OCLC Newsletter July/August 1993 31
PRODUCT NEWS
North Carolina State Library pioneers
statewide FirstSearch availability
by Nancy Campbell
North Carolina libraries of many types-public, academic, com­munity
college, special, and school-will soon have access to
The FirstSearch Catalog, OCLC's online reference service to
over 30 databases.
On behalf of 88 libraries, the State library
coordinated a group purchase of
288,500 searches from OCLC through
SOUNET, the Southeastern library Net­work.
Using library Services and Con­struction
Act Title Ill funds for interli­brary
cooperation and resource shar-ing,
the State library subsidized each library's purchase by pay­ing
15 percent.
The combination of sizes and types of libraries has made the
arrangement possible. Large academic libraries-Wake Forest
University, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at
Greensboro- have placed the largest orders of searches, ena­bling
small private colleges, community colleges, and public,
II II
OCLC Online Computer library Center, Inc.
6565 Frantz Road
Dublin, Ohio 43017-3395
TRAINING COORDI NATOR
special, and school libraries to order smaller numbers of
searches at the high-volume rate.
The libraries will access FirstSearch through lincNet, the
University of North Carolina's educational
computing service. "This program uses
telecommunications to expand the walls
of the library from the building out to the
community," said Diana Young, director
of network operations, State Library of
North Carolina. "Making FirstSearch avail­able
on the North Carolina Information Net­work
moves the point of contact from within
the library to anywhere a patron wants to use it."
Thirty-eight high schools will have access to FirstSearch through
partnerships with local community colleges and public libraries.
"Our philosophy is that the earlier we can get students on the
system, the better use they can make of it as adults," said Ms.
Young.-Nancy Campbell is public relations writer, OCLC. •
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