Collection Services held a cataloguing forum this morning and reached the following decisions.
Now that OSMOSIS is operational, holdings will no longer be added to Te Puna when records are catalogued. Our Te Puna holdings will be updated at the time of each OSMOSIS snapshot (normally at three month intervals.) However, original records will continue to be added to Te Puna as they are catalogued.
Tables of contents (TOCs), descriptive summaries, and author’s affiliations were discussed in the context of these no longer being available via Te Puna beyond October this year. After October it is proposed that this content is purchased from Blackwells Book Services for monographic works where TOCs are lacking. It is felt they would considerably add value, particularly to edited works. Should this proposal get the nod, other staff may recommend monograph titles they feel would benefit from the inclusion of TOCs.
For works with an LC record that has TOCs, summaries and links to publishers information (quotes from blurbs, book jackets, biographical information, etc.)
Cat Forum has decided that all the 856 links that connect to publisher’s information, contents and biographical information etc will now be retained i.e. if there are TOCs in the record we will still keep the 856 link to contents. Links in LC records are considered durable.
There will be a project set up shortly to look at issues surrounding e-books, including the cataloguing issues.
Judging by the lack of comments, I fear that I may have given the impression that these matters were not up for discussion. I should have added, "about what we would like to do" to the first sentence. Similary we think the 856 links should be retained, but that too is up for debate.
I suspect as this has now fallen down the counterculture chronological list this may not generate a lot of discussion however…
I can’t imagine a book that would not benefit from having contents detailed on the catalogue. In my view if we are going to make use of Blackwells for TOCs then we should use ISBN to automatically load all TOCs wherever they are available. What else does the Blackwells service make available or is TOCs all they offer? Where not available and an 856 already exists then that should be retained as although not searchable like included TOCs it is still better than no contents at all.
I’m also for TOCs when we can get them. Is the Blackwells TOC link one that opens a separate window when users follow the link, or are they part of the record itself? I’m thinking more of the latter.
From what I have seen they are included in the record which is ideal as then it is searchable. Whatever PAC we end up with next ideally it would make very clear the option of searching title only or searching contents etc also. The last review of the PAC made it clear users had an expectation of TOCs and more – basically the sort of functionality available elsewhere on the web.
I think that these options should be discussed in the Catalogue Replacement project. We need to carefully weigh up the cost/benefit of having local TOC rather than linking to external TOC sources. I have just seen the Syndetics pricing for TOC which seems quite reasonable.
Longer term there are all sorts of data that can enhance our print and electronic collections. We will not be able to store these locally. This needs wider discussion.