BIBCO Standard Record (BSR) guidelines for printed books

The PCC Policy Committee (PoCo) has set January 4, 2010 as the implementation date for the BIBCO Standard Record (BSR) guidelines for printed books as outlined in the Final Report of the Task Group on BIBCO Standard Record Requirements.   

●       The PCC has posted the BSR guidelines, Metadata Application Profile (MAP), and a BSR FAQ to support implementation.  

●       Libraries contributing BSR records for printed books (excluding rare books) using the BIBCO Standard Record requirements will use the single encoding level “blank.”  This replaces the use of BIBCO Full and Core standards for printed books. 

●       Libraries contributing BIBCO records for rare books, electronic books, and materials in non-book formats will continue to code full records “blank” and core records “4”, until BSR guidelines can be developed. 

●       Encoding level “4” will remain as a valid encoding level in OCLC for earlier BIBCO core records and for records not contributed as PCC printed book records in the future.  It is understood that batch loading processes by libraries that catalog in local systems may result in some BIBCO core level records entering OCLC even after January 4, 2010. 

●       The Standing Committee on Standards is charged with developing BSR guidelines for rare books, for electronic books, and for monographs in non-book formats, in consultation with appropriate stakeholders. 

●       The Standing Committee on Training is charged with developing training materials aimed primarily at libraries joining the BIBCO program.

The full BSR announcement: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/bibco/BSRAnnouncement.pdf

Searching for legal opinions and journals on Google Scholar

Google itself has an interesting discussion of its new Google Scholar legal opinions and journals search engine, now in Beta, on its blog:

As many of us recall from our civics lessons in school, the United States is a common law country. That means when judges issue opinions in legal cases, they often establish precedents that will guide the rulings of other judges in similar cases and jurisdictions. Over time, these legal opinions build, refine and clarify the laws that govern our land. For average citizens, however, it can be difficult to find or even read these landmark opinions. We think that's a problem: Laws that you don't know about, you can't follow — or make effective arguments to change. Starting today, we're enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. . . . We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the work of several pioneers, who have worked on making it possible for an average citizen to educate herself about the laws of the land: Tom Bruce (Cornell LII), Jerry Dupont (LLMC), Graham Greenleaf and Andrew Mowbray (AustLII), Carl Malamud (Public.Resource.Org), Daniel Poulin (LexUM), Tim Stanley (Justia), Joe Ury (BAILII), Tim Wu (AltLaw) and many others. It is an honor to follow in their footsteps. We would also like to acknowledge the judges who have built this cathedral of justice brick by brick and have tried to make it accessible to the rest of us. We hope Google Scholar will help all of us stand on the shoulders of these giants.

CS-SIS has a good overview of the new Google Scholar service, citing other sources, like the Just in Case, the Case Western Reserve Law School Library Blog, which have done some actual testing. According to Andrew Plumb-Larrick, in Just in Case, it sounds like sometimes Google Scholar works well, and sometimes it doesn't. It cites to full text opinions, but journal articles tend to be hosted by third parties and not available in full text. Its search mechanism, based on citation analysis, works differently from the usual keyword approach, which makes it interesting. There will be more to come on this one.

Classification at a Crossroads

I don't think many of us use the Universal Decimal Classification, but the materials for the 2009 International UDC Seminar are now available on the web, and they seem quite interesting even apart from the UDC. Topics include: Classifying Web resources; Classification and thesauri; Classification frameworks, concepts, structure and relationships; and Classification and the Semantic Web, as well as other topics. Worth a look.

Found via Catalogablog

That 2.0 thing

Who among us is not tired of hearing about Library 2.0? But here (via here) are the notes to a talk Jessamyn West gave recently, encouraging librarians "to think about the content that they may be generating elsewhere [via blog, twitter, facebook, whatever] and how to bring that back to their library’s website." If you put it that way, it doesn't sound quite so insipid after all.

MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data Updated - new fields to accommodate RDA

The MARC 21 Bibliographic Format has been updated through Update No. 10 (October 2009). The update includes several changes to accommodate RDA. For instance, 336 (Content Type), 337 (Media Type) and 338 (Carrier Type). 

Changes to the MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data that resulted from Update No. 10 (October 2009) are displayed in red print.

(http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/ecbdhome.html)

PCC Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate Policy and Standards Division decisions

ACQUISITIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC ACCESS DIRECTORATE
POLICY AND STANDARDS DIVISION

SUMMARY OF DECISIONS, EDITORIAL MEETING NUMBER 46

November 18, 2009


PSD policy specialist responsible for this weekly list: L. Dechman


CLASSIFICATION

BS2098.5.A-Z
 Private versions of the New Testament would be better classified in BS2095, which does not restrict the kinds of versions and revisions that are classed there.  A number for the Paul version will be established at BS2095.P38-.P382.  The proposal to establish a private versions number in BS2098.5 was not approved.


SUBJECT HEADINGS

Subdivisions to be added to lists of free-floating subdivisions:

 H 1154, Languages
  $x Age differences (May Subd Geog)

 H 1200, Wars
  $x Mountain warfare

Other decisions:

Conspiracy theory
 The heading Conspiracy theories was approved on WL 09-37.  The proposal was not necessary.

John C. Green School of Science (Princeton, N.J. : Building)
 This heading falls into the category of buildings that have the same name as the corporate body residing in them, and according to SHM H 1334, the corporate heading should be assigned.  The proposal was not approved.

Palmer Hall (Princeton, N.J.)
 The authority record indicates that Palmer Hall was completely gutted and renamed Frist Campus Center.  Frist Campus Center (Princeton, N.J.) is a heading that appears on this list (WL 09-46) and is approved.  Palmer Hall (Princeton, N.J.) will be added as a UF on the Frist Campus Center record.  The proposal for a separate heading for Palmer Hall (Princeton, N.J.) was not approved.


From the PCC list

New Searching Tool for Google Books

A recent message from Bryan Carson of Western Kentucky University Libraries to LAW-LIB reported that the Chronicle of Higher Education reported recently that the group of college libraries working with Google on their book scanning project, the HathiTrust Digital Library, has released its own search tool for Google Books. According to the article (which can be found at http://tinyurl.com/yc3nlhv), this will return all pages with the search term. This is an improvement over the regular Google book search, which only returns a partial result list.

This search tool is especially important now that Google Books has actually digitized a fair number of opinions, statutes, treatises, and legislative hearing records. Carson reports that a student searching his library for the 1919 Civil Code of California found it in full text on Google Books.

The Hathitrust Digital Library Search can be found at http://catalog.hathitrust.org/