Sage Catalog Committee Meeting April 6th, 2020
Attendees: John Brockman, chair (Baker), Celine Vandervlugt (La Grande), Dea Nowell (UCSLD), Jenny Simpson (Nyssa), Laurie O’Connor (Harney), Leeann Baldwin (Hermiston), Leslie Carlock (Lake), Lisa Hauner (OTLD), Mary Reser (Gilliam), Ryan McGinnis (La Grande), Tracy Hayes (Lake), Ann Zuehlke (Hood River), Beryl Shea (Harney), Beth Ross (Sage), Jon Georg (Sage), Heather Spry (Baker), & Mary Mitchell (Arlington).
Minutes
John let people read through the minutes and gave a brief overview of what was discussed at the previous meeting in February. He asked for questions about the minutes, corrections, or vicious objections. Recording links for every meeting is at the bottom of the page after they’re posted on the website. John asked for someone to motion to approve the February minutes, Ann motioned to approve, Laurie seconded, minutes approved.
Goals from last meeting
The subcommittees have been finalized:
Cat levels subcommittee:
Heather Spry (Baker County) (Chair)
Lisa Hauner (Oregon Trail
Leeann Baldwin (Hermiston)
Ellen Mosier (Pendleton)
John Brockman (Baker)
RDA adoption subcommittee:
John Brockman (Baker County) (Chair)
Ann Zuehlke (Hood River)
Dea Nowell (Umatilla County)
Celine Vandervlugt (La Grande)
Tracy Hayes (Lake County)
Marsha Richmond (Klamath)
Heather Spry (Baker County)
John is very grateful to all the subcommittee members who are volunteering their time to help! These are ambitious goals but John is committed to getting these things done and they will be beneficial to the committee going forward.
Questions from members
John asked if anyone had any cataloging questions/problems to ask the committee.
Tracey and Leslie had a question about a discrepancy with the publisher, Image Comics, the record says the place of publication is Berkeley, California but the item says it’s from Portland, Oregon. The item in hand is a third printing so it’s theorized that Image Comics moved their offices from Berkeley to Portland. Contact another library that has a holding for the item and verify the information on the book. Looking up a title in WorldCat gives location information on the right side of the screen, sometimes this helps in verifying differing locations. Ryan explained that Image Comics did change locations in 2016.
599 Temp records
If you are CAT2 and creating an original record 599 fields are necessary. This does need to be reviewed by a mentor and is the purpose of the 599 field in our system.
The purpose of this field is to indicate that the item record is incomplete and needs to updated. This isn’t to be used as a lazy way of making this someone else’s problem. Don’t just add the tag as a “safety valve” because you’re unsure if it’s complete. If you’re importing an item into our system and the 599 is in the record, please delete it.
Beth and Jon Georg have been working through the backlog of records with the 599 tag. Some of the records have been brief and had incorrect subject headings but others look they were imported and the tag was just inserted. Don’t just add the tag as a “safety valve” because you’re unsure if it’s complete. If you’re importing an item into our system and the 599 is in the record, please delete it.
Many fields that have a 9 in them are indicators of local field information. Most of these can be deleted when they’re being imported from z39.50.
Punctuation training!
A punctuation cheat sheet has been created for everyone to use. Disclaimer: not everybody does everything consistently between OCLC & LOC. This is going to be used as the current Sage standard for punctuation. John thinks the most important part of the cheat sheet is the three general rules at the top.
General rules for punctuation:
- Don’t add a period after existing punctuation at the end of a MARC field.
- Don’t omit/remove final punctuation from abbreviations, initials, or other punctuated data.
- These guidelines WILL conflict with newer punctuation standards (e.g. PCC, OCLC). When in doubt, contact your mentor.
Please use the sheet if you’re unsure about punctuation, it does give some specifics and went through a lot of people to be as accurate as we could make it.
PCC updated their punctuation guidelines and have started omitting a fair amount of the terminal punctuation in certain descriptive fields as of March 2019 (this doesn’t affect access points). This is being brought up because you may start seeing records that have a lack of terminal periods. To help this be recognized, in the desc fixed field we usually see “a” for AACR2, and “i” for ISBD, when PCC guidelines are being used, you will start seeing “c” for ISBD Punctuation Omitted.
Beth brought up the fact that PCC guidelines have been updated and the 2019 changes aren’t in the cheat sheet, is the cheat sheet going to be updated to reflect these changes?
John says that the Punctuation cheat sheet basically outlines what the policy is now and how Sage is doing and has been doing. It’s more closely aligned with how our OPAC is now. At a future date the new PCC guidelines may be adopted but this is mostly an overview of how current Sage catalogers should be addressing punctuation. It’s an attempt to be as consistent as possible at this point in time and adjustments can be made in the future.
Jon Georg suggested adding a note to the top of the Punctuation Cheat Sheet page that says if the punctuation isn’t matching what is on the cheat sheet that it might be a PCC record and to check the DESC fixed field.
The link to the document with the PCC guidelines will be posted with the minutes.
The Punctuation Cheat Sheet can be found on the Catalog Resource page on the Sagelib website.
John made a fun quiz of a single question for everyone to take:
QUIZ
A.)
=245 10$a1984 /$ca novel by George Orewell ; with an afterword by Erich Fromm.
=264 \1$aNew York :$bHarcourt Brace,$c[1977].
=264 \4$c©1949.
B.)
=245 10$a1984 /$ca novel by George Orewell ; with an afterword by Erich Fromm.
=264 \1$aNew York :$bHarcourt Brace,$c1977.
=264 \4$c©1949.
C.)
=245 10$a1984 /$ca novel by George Orewell ; with an afterword by Erich Fromm.
=264 \1$aNew York :$bHarcourt Brace,$c1977.
=264 \4$c©1949
D.)
=245 10$a1984 /$ca novel by George Orewell ; with an afterword by Erich Fromm.
=264 \1$aNew York :$bHarcourt Brace,$c1977
=264 \4$cc1949
There were some differing guesses but the correct answer is C.
Here’s why! The problem with A was that the 264 1 field ended with a closing bracket and did not need a final punctuation, the problem was also with 264 4 there is no period at the end of this field. The problem with B was that there was an unnecessary period after 264 4. The problem with D was in the 264 1 it was missing the terminal punctuation because it didn’t have other punctuation, there was also just a c in the 264 4 and did not have the copyright symbol.
If there is a publication and copyright date on the resource, the brackets are unnecessary. Usually when you see the date in square brackets, the date has been taken from the copyright date and there’s no specific publishing date.
While on the subject of 264 and using the OCLC page John briefly went over the indicators.
https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/2xx/264.html
2nd Indicator Function of entity
0
Production
1
Publication
2
Distribution
3
Manufacture
4
Copyright notice date
Depending on what type of item you are cataloging, you may see and use a couple different 264 fields. Books generally use 264 \1 and 264 \4 fields. If the publication information is not available and you can find distributor information use that. For DVDs and Music, distributor is a more important element.
OCLC is generally a good source of information because it tells you how each field is used and gives you examples of correct practice.
(Heather likes to type field numbers and “MARC” into google to get the OCLC results for that field if she needs clarification on a field)
If you see punctuation being duplicated in the OPAC from what you see in the MARC record let Beth know so she can figure out what’s causing it.
Work at Home ideas!
John suggested if you needed some work from home ideas for training that WebJunction is a good option. They’re a little old but they’re all free and many have good information, you just need to create an account.
https://learn.webjunction.org/?_ga=2.58751149.1635014171.1590017942-1533320488.1586819624
Library Juice Academy has an introductory RDA course all you have to do email them for access and it’s free!
https://libraryjuiceacademy.com/sample-course/
Next cataloging meeting is 6/1/2020.
Keep calm and catalog on!
Recording –> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOQerEMsoLo