Cooperative Cataloging at the Intersection of Tradition and Transformation: Possible Futures for the Program for Cooperative Cataloging

Abstract

Shared cataloging has a long history, stretching back over a century to the creation of the Library of Congress’ Cataloging Distribution Service. More recent endeavors such as the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) have taken a much more distributed approach. By many measures, these efforts have been highly successful. But changes to the information discovery environment, especially in the past decade, have complicated bibliographic control practices. This article discusses what changes might impact the Program most significantly and how it might evolve to remain a critical player in the bibliographic control of intellectual resources.

KEYWORDS:

• cooperative cataloging
• future of cataloging
• metadata standards
• training
• automation

Notes

1. Harriette Avram, MARC, Its History and Implications (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1975), 3.

2. For more on Melvyl's history, see: California Digital Library, “A Brief History of the Melvyl® System's Development.” http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/melvyl/dlahistory.html (accessed August 22, 2009). OhioLINK has a very brief description of its history on its homepage. http://www.ohiolink.edu/about/what-is-ol.html#history (accessed August 15, 2009).

3. For a general history of cooperative cataloging issues, see Barbara B. Tillett, “Catalog It Once for All: A History of Cooperative Cataloging in the United States Prior to 1967 (Before MARC),” Cataloging and Classification Quarterly 17 (1994): 3–38. Another extensive treatment of cooperative cataloging is given in Carol Mandel, “Cooperative Cataloging: Models, Issues, Prospects,” Advances in Librarianship 16 (1992): 33–82.

4. The NCCP's history is nicely detailed in Beacher Wiggins, “The National Coordinated Cataloging Program,” Cataloging and Classification Quarterly 17 (1994): 163–188. The summary of the PCC's history given here relies heavily on this paper.

5. Many past initiatives are outlined in reports of the standing committees. Program for Cooperative Cataloging, “Archived Documents and Reports of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging.” http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/reports.html (accessed August 1, 2009).

6. Program for Cooperative Cataloging, “PCC Statistics: BIBCO, CONSER, NACO and SACO Programs.” http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/stats/stats.html (accessed July 30, 2009).

7. Program for Cooperative Cataloging, “Strategic Directions for the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) 2007–2010.” http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/stratdir-2008.html (accessed July 15, 2009).

8. Thomas Mann has been a very vocal and articulate exponent of this view. See: Thomas Mann, “The Peloponnesian War and the Future of Reference, Cataloging, and Scholarship in Research Libraries.” http://www.guild2910.org/Peloponnesian%20War%20June%2013%202007.pdf (accessed August 28, 2009).

9. Other examples include other subject or discipline repositories (for example, the NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository. http://lsr.nellco.org/ (accessed June 26, 2009)) or one of various institutional repositories such as the University of California's eScholarship Repository. http://repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship/ (accessed July 12, 2009).

10. A Web page about the settlement is available. http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/help/bin/answer.py?answer=134644&hl=en (accessed July 15, 2009).

11. Paul Courant, “The Future of the Library in the Research University,” in No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century (Council on Library and Information Resources, August 2008), 23.

12. For more information, see the VIAF Website. www.viaf.org (accessed October 14, 2009).