ALA's Association for Library Collections & Technical Services hosts YouTube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/alctsce/

ALA's Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) launched a YouTube channel in February 2012 to host its growing collection of webinar presentations. Currently, there are five playlists available (some webinars are featured on more than one playlist): Collections, Cataloging, Preservation, Institutional Repositories, and RDA Series Webinars. Within each playlist is a wide variety of presentations; on the "Preservation" playlist, for example, you can find videos addressing topics such as disaster preparedness, mold prevention and remediation, and digital preservation. The topics covered on the "Collections" playlist include effective subscription management, the rise and fall of reference collections, evaluating e-resources, and buying library materials on the out-of-print market. The "Cataloging" playlist includes a presentation with the memorable title "Cataloging Icky Things, or, If You Can Catalog a Book, You Can Catalog Anything!"  Those who are preparing for the implementation of RDA will appreciate the 19 webinars featured in the RDA Webinar Series, including "Cataloging Law Materials with RDA."

Print Management at "Mega-scale"

Lavoie, Brian F. Print Management at "Mega-scale": Regional Perspective on Print Book Collections in North America. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research, c2012. At: http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2012/2012-05.pdf

Using a mega-regions ("geographical regions defined on the basis of economic integration and other forms of interdependence") framework to model regional consolidation of shared print book library collections, this report explores a counterfactual scenario where local US and Canadian print book library collections are consolidated into regional shared collections. The analysis in this paper builds upon findings from the OCLC Research report, Cloud-sourcing Research collections: Managing Print in the Mass-digitized Library Environment (2011), and draws upon bibliographic and library holdings data from the WorldCat database.

App-titude

In its latest issue, The Charleston Advisor launches a new regular column focusing on "apps of interest in the library community".  The initial column provides a brief overview of vendor mobile apps with the promise of closer examination of specific apps in the future. Additionally, formal reviews of some apps will be offered in the review section of this publication.

Program for Cooperative Cataloging task group issues list of RDA training materials

The PCC (Program for Cooperative Cataloging) Standing Committee on Training Task Group on RDA Training Materials submitted its final report to the PCC Standing Committee on Training in May 2012. The Task Group was charged with collecting existing RDA training materials to be used for PCC training.  The 36-page report contains an extensive list of freely available RDA training materials created by a wide variety of libraries and organizations. After gathering and evaluating more than 100 resources, the Task Group created an annotated list of 38 recommended resources. The recommended materials are divided into six categories: general documentation, theoretical foundations, introductions to the RDA Toolkit, RDA for general cataloging, RDA for special formats, and RDA and authority records. Libraries nationwide will benefit from the wide dissemination of these RDA training materials, regardless of whether they are PCC members or not. The Task Group report is available at: http://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/sct/documents/Final%20Report%20of%20the%20SCT%20RDA%20Training%20Materials%20Task%20Group.docm.

Digital Preservation in a Box

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance just unveiled a new resource, Digital Preservation in a Box. This is an online collection of resources for the learning and teaching of digital preservation. Please see the following blog post on the Signal for more information about the collection:

http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2012/07/digital-preservation-in-a-box-have-a-look-inside/

The Digital Preservation in a Box is located at: http://dpoutreach.net/

The site contains the following resources:

*Digital Preservation 101 – introductory materials, including videos, articles, and tutorials explaining the concepts involved in digital preservation
*Glossary – collection of glossaries from various institutions and programs, containing explanations of relevant terms
*Preservation by Format – where to find information for specific digital formats including photographs, audio, video, email, etc.
*Digital Preservation Tools – basic tools listed for either “consumer” or “information professional”
*Digital Storage – some options geared towards personal archiving or the basic knowledge needed to understand preservation storage technology.
*Resources for Educators – curriculum guidance and teaching materials
*Marketing and Outreach – links to marketing materials that can be adapted to support specific events.
*Event Guidance – what you need to know to prepare a digital preservation event at your institution
*Brief Introduction to Digitization – all about scanning, and making the distinction between digital preservation and digitization

ALCTS/LITA slides available

PowerPoint slides from the LITA/ALCTS Authority Control Interest Group Programs from ALA Annual 2012 are now available on ALA Connect.

Their speakers were:

Janis Young, Library of Congress - LC update to the Authority Control Interest Group.

Gary Strawn, Northwestern University - RDA and the LC/NACO authority file.

Ana Cristan, Library of Congress - Name authorities - What's new?

Karen Anderson, Backstage Library Works - Planning for RDA authority conversion.

 

PCC issues guidelines for the 264 field

http://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/documents/264-Guidelines.doc

On June 11, 2012 the Program for Cooperative Cataloging issued guidelines for the use of the 264 field in the MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data. The 264 field is used for encoding information pertaining to the production, publication, distribution, manufacture, and copyright date associated with resources. The repeatability of the 264 field allows for separate encoding of each of these different functions, which were previously all rolled up into the 260 field. The enhanced granularity of these data will facilitate machine processing and hopefully improve discovery and retrieval of resources. While acknowledging that 260 and 264 fields may coexist in pre-RDA records and in RDA records created prior to the implementation of the 264, the guidelines state that all new original RDA records should use the 264 field. In an email dated June 12, 2012, Jay Weitz of OCLC confirmed that OCLC users may now begin to use the 264 field in accordance with the PCC guidelines (http://listserv.oclc.org/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1206b&L=oclc-cjk&D=1&F=P&P=408). If your library uses records downloaded from OCLC, you may already have records with 264 fields in your catalog, even if you didn't create those fields yourself! Catalogers will want to make sure their ILS recognizes the 264 as a valid field. You will also want to check out how this new field displays in your online catalog. In my library's OPAC, we discovered that the 264 will not appear in the "brief" display without some tweaking by our staff.