The Cost of Inaction

We all know that budgets are tight and it’s not always easy to integrate preservation work, especially when it comes to multimedia. However, failing to implement a preservation and/or conservation strategy can have its own costs. To help determine what that cost is, as well as to help prioritize collections, AVPreserve has developed the Cost of Inaction Calculator (COI Calculator).

While AVPreserve is a firm that works with institutions to help them better manage, use, distribute, and preserve their media assets and metadata, "they have developed the COI Calculator as a free tool to help users analyze multimedia collections and make more educated decisions about what to digitize, what to perform lower levels of preservation on, and what to leave in its native state. According to their site, the COI Calculator "helps organizations analyze the implications of varying levels of preservation action when dealing with legacy audiovisual collections. COI adds a data point to ROI, or Return on Investment, and helps articulate what stands to be lost or gained in terms of access, intellect and finances based on different scenarios around digitization, physical storage, digital storage, and media longevity." To help explain the goals of the Cost of Inaction Calculator, they have put together a short video that can be viewed here.

Draft LC-PCC Policy Statement on facsimiles and reproductions available for comment

The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) has issued a draft LC-PCC Policy Statement which outlines proposed exceptions to the RDA instructions regarding facsimiles and reproductions. RDA currently instructs catalogers to describe a facsimile or reproduction by "record[ing] the data relating to the facsimile or reproduction in the appropriate element. Record any data relating to the original manifestation as an element of a related work or related manifestation, as applicable." The draft Policy Statement proposes deviating from this instruction by recording certain elements as they apply to the original resource, and using the MARC 533 field to record certain other elements as they pertain to the reproduction, mirroring LC's practice under AACR2 chapter 11. In addition, the draft Policy Statement sets forth guidelines on a provider-neutral approach to cataloging print-on-demand materials and photocopies.

The PCC is soliciting feedback on the proposed Policy Statement until September 26. To read the draft, go to the PCC's homepage (http://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/) and look under "What's New."

Cataloger's Desktop interface changes and training resources.

The Library of Congress is rolling out a new interface for the Cataloger's Desktop product on September 10, 2014. This new interface will be simpler and cleaner; focus will be on search and retrieval instead of table of contents browsing.  The text of the announcement is posted at http://www.loc.gov/cds/desktop/New_Cataloger%27s_Desktop_UI-2014-07-01.pdf.

The Cataloger's Desktop Training and Tutorials page provides links to presentation slides and recordings from recent webinars, plus links to "Quick Tips" documentation.