Cataloguing and Indexing Group
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Catalogue and Index Periodical of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) Cataloguing and Indexing Group Editorial September 2011, Issue 164 Contents Welcome to issue 164 of Catalogue & Index. 2-4 Special collections access in an independent We hope you enjoyed our RDA-themed issue, and that you have been environment: looking forward to finding out everything you always wanted to know retrospective cataloguing about retrospective cataloguing. We bring you tales from university and at Bishopsgate Library special libraries, full of trials and tribulations, triumph and tragedy, as well Edward Weech as the job cuts and loss of funding that we have (most of us anyway) 5-7 Towards a New Era: become used to in the last few years. We hope we have some answers Collections Preparation and some ideas for you in this issue. at the University of Birmingham We also have an opinion piece on RDA, which is sure to get your Jackie Sumner argumentative juices flowing. 8-11 Slow, slow, quick, Our next issue, for publication at the end of the year (before Christmas, quick, slow – fingers crossed), will be on the theme of indexing. As ever, if you have retrospective conversion anything to share, please contact us. We are always eager to hear from at the University of our readers. Nottingham Janet Wharton Heather Jardine 12-15 Coming full circle, the London Library ([email protected]) Retrospective Cathy Broad Cataloguing Project Dunia García-Ontiveros ([email protected]) 16-19 Retrospective cataloguing at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge: a new(ish) professional’s perspective Jenny Sargent 20-23 Is RDA ReDundAnt? Sue Batley Special collections access in an independent environment: retrospective cataloguing at Bishopsgate Library Edward Weech, Deputy Library Manager, Bishopsgate Library Situated between Spitalfields and the City of London, a stone‘s throw from Liverpool Street Station, stands Bishopsgate Library, part of Bishopsgate Institute. Although it was opened as an independent lending library in 1895, Bishopsgate Library‘s lending function was long ago usurped by the Corporation of London lending libraries. In recent years, Bishopsgate has focused on consolidating its status as one of the country‘s leading independent special collections and reference libraries. Bishopsgate has flourished as an independent institution and continues to offer free public access to all its printed and archival collections. Among Bishopsgate Library‘s extensive holdings are around 100,000 printed items. These comprise the personal libraries of Victorian political figures such as Charles Bradlaugh, George Jacob Holyoake, and George Howell, as well as more recent collections like the Freedom Press and Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive libraries. The overall thematic focus of the collections is the nineteenth and twentieth century history of London, labour, freethought and humanism, co-operation, and protest and campaigning. The library is currently open six days a week and operates two public service desks, including a dedicated Researchers‘ Area. However, it has quite a small staff, which incorporates one qualified librarian and three qualified archivists among a staff of seven (four full time and three part time). Bishopsgate largely missed out on the retrospective cataloguing campaigns of the 1990s. From 2005, the library embarked on a retrospective cataloguing project, whose aim was to create a single integrated online catalogue to act as a portal for accessing records for all the library‘s holdings. This was a major element of the Library‘s strategic decision to reorient itself as a special collections library that provided some reference services, rather than a reference library that held some special collections. Promoting remote access to the collections, and increasing visibility and use among academic and other user groups was a central component of the new strategy. Various timescales for the project were discussed, but it was generally agreed that an attainable though challenging goal would be to complete the retrospective cataloguing project in ten years (by 2015). Bishopsgate Library‘s special collections had all been catalogued onto card indexes. At the outset of the project, it was decided to create original records by cataloguing ‗book-in-hand‘, rather than to convert the card catalogues. The aim of this was to ensure that the online catalogue was as accurate as possible. It was also felt to be a manageable task, considering the relatively low number of books (by the standards of retrospective cataloguing projects) to catalogue. A suitable library management system was adopted, which was chosen largely because of the ease with which it could integrate simultaneous searching of the library and archive catalogues: there has been an archival cataloguing project taking place at the same time as the library cataloguing project. The retrospective cataloguing of the library‘s printed collections was begun by senior library staff in 2005. It was decided to recruit a team of volunteer cataloguers to assist with the cataloguing of certain parts of the collection. It was also decided to adopt a method of cataloguing individual special collections, one at a time. Considering that most collections at Bishopsgate contain between 500 and 7,000 items, this seemed like an appropriate way to proceed: it divided the project into manageable chunks; made complete collections available for researchers to search on the OPAC; and gave a regular sense of achievement. The cataloguing project got off to a relatively slow start. There were fewer than 2,000 records on the OPAC by the end of 2005, and under 3,500 by the end of 2006. There was some improvement the following year but still only 8,200 records by the end of 2007. Clearly, such a pace was inadequate considering the targets that had Catalogue and Index 2 been set; the project would take over twenty years at this rate, rather than ten. Several reasons can be identified for the slow rate of cataloguing. The main cause was that retrospective work was simply added to the existing responsibilities of available staff, rather than viewed as an additional task that required dedicated attention. There was also a relatively low level of expertise which meant that records were often also of a poor quality, and some volunteers lacked the appropriate aptitudes for the work. Accordingly, a dedicated library cataloguer was recruited in 2008 to take responsibility, in the first instance, for cataloguing one of the library‘s most important special collections, the George Howell Library. It was also necessary to review existing cataloguing guidelines and provide extra training for library staff and volunteers. The volunteers programme has been an important part of the retrospective cataloguing project. It has focused on a discrete part of the collection: the books in the London Collection, which is the library‘s largest single collection. All volunteers are given training in library cataloguing and work under the supervision of a professional member of staff who checks all the records they create. At any one time, we have a team of between three and six cataloguing volunteers who contribute half a day each week. In this way, a larger number of records is added to the catalogue than would otherwise be possible, and it is ensured that the records are of a suitable quality. It should be noted that the use of volunteers in the library is limited to this purpose: volunteers are never asked to provide public services in the library, and they are not used to replace paid staff. The practice of giving individual cataloguers a collection or part of a collection has been maintained. This provides periodic milestones as collections are completed, which helps keep morale high. It also benefits researchers, who can be more confident that a catalogue search will yield everything the library has on a given subject, rather than covering an incomplete selection of the library‘s holdings. The changes to the organisation of cataloguing at Bishopsgate led to a significant improvement in the rate of new records generated. The number of library catalogue records almost doubled from 8,200 to 16,300 over the course of 2008, and again to 30,700 by the end of 2009. The rate slowed in 2010, and there were 40,700 by the end of that year. However, progress in 2011 has been good, and the library will pass 50,000 records some time during the autumn. The library closed for nine months due to building works in 2009-2010. This partly accounts for the high rate of cataloguing in 2009, as library staff spent almost all their time cataloguing rather than attending to public services. Moreover, the library lost its dedicated library cataloguer in early 2010, which largely accounts for the lower rate of cataloguing in that year. Also, the later stages of the project will see a greater number of existing records edited, and a diminishing number of records created anew. Progress, however, continues to be good, and at current rates the library should pass 100,000 catalogue records in 2015-2016. This represents very good progress considering that the library had completed just 8% of the project after the first three years. As the retrospective cataloguing project continues, the library spends an increasing amount of time considering the best ways to promote the collections. This is especially important as there is no ‗captive audience‘ in the form of students, lecturers, or staff attached to the library. Instead, the library relies on external visitors coming to make use of the collections. As well as building and maintaining relationships with other libraries, universities, and so on, the library is very keen to be involved in external cataloguing projects. As such, we were delighted to upload our catalogue records (over 40,000 at that stage) onto Copac in early 2011.