Dear all,
Bruce's point indicates a historical dimension to this discussion. Several
years ago I ran one day conference on the history of library automation and
one of the points which emerged is the need for a programme of interviews
with those who were involved in the early days of library automation as it
was known at the time. Not something that can left for two long. Even young
Bruce will have to hang up his bow tie some day!
Best wishes
John
Dr John Crawford,
CILIP Trustee and former chair, Library and information History Group
-----Original Message-----
From: A general Library and Information Science list for news and
discussion. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Royan
Sent: 04 March 2010 16:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: retrospective cataloguing
It's interesting to see SCOLCAP mentioned so many times over the last few
hours, and after so long. That project is some 30 years old, and many
lis-linkers may never have heard of it. As the former head of systems on
that project, I can confirm that it was one of a number of pioneering
collaborative library systems being set up in the late 70's, including
SCOLCAP in Scotland, SWALCAP in Bristol, and BLCMP in Birmingham. In the
long run, I guess, we are all dead, and by the end of the 80's all SCOLCAP's
members had gone their separate ways, but in my memory that was more to do
with the increasing availability of affordable stand-alone turnkey systems,
than with any reluctance to share data.
Duncan is absolutely right to point to the world dominance of OCLC in the
shared cataloguing market, but I suspect that I am not alone in feeling that
world domination of any market is not always AN UNALLOYED GOOD THING.
I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of the RLUK proposal, but I do
understand that the current cost of copy cataloguing is still an inhibitor
to retroconversion, so I would have thought that a proposal to make 35
million MARC records freely available to not-for-profit libraries, would
have been generally welcomed, rather than condemned in such extreme terms.
*************************************************
Bruce Royan http://www.linkedin.com/in/bruceroyan
41 Greenhill Gardens, Edinburgh EH10 4BL
+44 131 4473151 +44 77 1374 4731
*************************************************
-----Original Message-----
From: A general Library and Information Science list for news and
discussion. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dunia
Garcia-Ontiveros
Sent: 03 March 2010 17:20
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: retrospective cataloguing
Dear List members,
If your library has a backlog of items awaiting cataloguing you may be
interested to read the following:
RLUK is taking part in discussions with the Joint Information Systems
Committee to investigate options for making its cataloguing database more
freely available with the aim of creating a larger set of holdings data
describing research collections across the UK. This larger data would then
be used to create new collection management tools, in collaboration with the
JISC, which would enable librarians to interrogate and compare collections
in order to prioritise items for digitisation, preservation or relegation.
Since the bibliographical data that RLUK manages underpins Copac, this would
also mean an ever-expanding resource discovery service for researchers and
information professionals.
The fundamental proposition is that those libraries that are prepared to
underwrite putting their collections into Copac would gain access to the 35
million MARC records in the RLUK database, for free. There would be a new,
permissive licence that would allow such records to be freely circulated by
all not-for-profit cultural and heritage institutions.
The hope is that this freely available and freely distributable data would
help such institutions substantially to reduce their cataloguing overheads
and reduce the cost of retroconversion projects. The result of such activity
would help to transform Copac into a truly national catalogue, imbibing
collections from libraries, museums and archives, learned institutions and
private specialist libraries that represent vast and rich materials for all
researchers, wherever they are based.
If you would like to be part of a campaign to renew the call for a national
strategy to support retrospective cataloguing please join
[log in to unmask], a news and discussion list on a national strategy for
retrospective cataloguing and conversion for the library and information and
archives sectors. This list is used by library and information services
staff working on the retrospective cataloguing of collections in university
libraries and other institutions across the UK.
To join the list just visit
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=RETRO Dunia
García-Ontiveros
Head of Retrospective Cataloguing
The London Library
14 St. James's Square
London SW1Y 4LG
Tel. 020 7766 4746
Fax 020 7766 4766
To reduce costs and increase efficiency we would like to use email as our
primary method of communication with members. We ensure our records are
secure and we will not pass on email addresses to any third party without
members’ express permission. Please let us know if you do not wish us to
store your email address on our database and communicate with you in this
way.=
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