There’s a line from the Simpson’s where Flanders takes his family to Moe’s Family Feedbag.  When Moe curses while waiting on a table, Flanders says, “I expect that kind of language at Denny’s, but not here!”  That was the general feeling during the 3-day conference for COSUGI when it came to Florida’s weather—we expect that kind of cold weather where we were coming from, just not in Florida.

SirsiDynix has no control over the weather, so we can’t fault them for holding the conference during one of the coldest times since 2002.  Other than being able to see your breath in the morning or at night, the actual conference part of the stay was very nice.

By some estimates, there were around 600 attendees to COSUGI.  Many of those were no doubt employees of SirsiDynix, but there was a very healthy number of library staff coursing through the Coronado Springs Resort where the conference was held.

As for Backstage, we had a booth set up (#216) right next to data2—both of whom we work with.  The mornings tended to see the most traffic through the exhibit room, with it tapering off towards the afternoon.

On Wednesday, March 3, SirsiDynix hosted a dinner party at Disney Hollywood Studios, called “Streets of America.”  That portion of the park was leased, so a large group of us could dance & dine the night away listening to 80’s music blaring from a professional DJ and his decked out van.  Though the cold threatened to sully the mood, at least there was a smattering of heat lamps to help ease the chill.  Those of us (me) that didn’t think to also pack a sweater were very grateful for the extra warmth—or we could have joined in on the impromptu dancing!

COSUGI also conducted a lot of different meetings, discussion groups, and presentations.  In all, it was a very fruitful trip, even though I hear the tomato crops really took a beating while we were there.

Nate Cothran

Recently, we partnered with Bowker’s Syndetic Solutions to provide our customers with another choice when it comes to table of contents (TOC) enrichment. The Bowker service is designed to complement and serve as an alternative to our existing TOC service through Blackwell.

Our clients who use the Bowker service will see immediate benefits in:

1. Lower cost
2. Faster turnaround

For the new service, we host the entire Bowker database on our servers and integrate regular weekly updates. Because the database resides locally, we are able to repurpose some of our highly efficient MARS routines, fully automating the enrichment process and keeping costs on our end to a minimum. Then we pass those savings on to you.

In addition to Table of Contents field (505), we also provide Summaries (520) and Fiction Profiles (69X). And we only charge you for the enrichments your records actually receive, regardless of how many options you may have selected.

Housing the database locally allows us to track how many and what type of enrichments a record receives, so we can bill at a lower price for records that are only enriched on one or two elements.

Besides lowering the cost of enrichment, hosting the Bowker data at Backstage dramatically reduces the time your records spend out of your system for processing. Your records will be processed and returned to you with the same quick turnaround you’ve come to expect on your authority control.

With the database in-house, we can integrate the entire TOC enrichment workflow into your Current Cataloging process, or you can select groups of records for stand-alone enrichment.

Because each library’s ILS configuration is unique, we allow you to choose where you prefer to place the Bowker data. For example, you can place the 505 data from the Bowker record in a 970 field on your record.

You may prefer that existing data in your records be retained over potential Bowker matches in the same field. If you like, we can keep your content and not enrich on that particular element

The point is that you have more choices.

RDA will fully replace AACR2. This should go without saying, but I thought I’d better say it anyway. Even though the rules will be replaced, the RDA Toolkit will contain the full text of AACR2. The idea may be that if you know where a rule is specified in AACR2, you can look it up and it will cross link to the RDA rule. This should be a fairly handy feature for those of us who have worked with AACR2 for a long time.

Also mentioned was the ability for user generated content to be accessible in the RDA Toolkit. Whether this will be restricted to sharing information within your institution, or how it will be spread to other institutions is up in the air.  I’m not sure if this is something they’ve thought too much about yet.

A subscription can be for a single individual user or multi-user. If multiple users will be connecting, you will have a profile login in addition to your user login. This allows one institution to have a single or a few RDA licenses but have many more users, but there can only be as many users logged in at a time as there are licenses. For example, if you have 3 subscriptions you could have 10 (or more) users with their own profiles, but only 3 could connect at a given time.

The RDA Toolkit is a web-based collection of documents, and it’s been put together in a pretty slick manner. The current visuals don’t do justice to the functionality that the website offers, though I’m sure those visuals (graphics, fonts, and design) will be updated prior to launch. For example, the RDA tab (found on the upper left side of the screen) gives one access to an expanding tree-view of the RDA rules. Clicking a category will take you to the section in the chapter you’ve selected. You can place and share bookmarks and notes inside of the document. It’s very well done, as I said. My concern is that clicking on a subheading or a chapter opens the entire chapter; the example he showed would have been 95 pages if printed. The processing power needed to run all of the javascript code and the sheer amount of data being worked with leads me to believe that there could be some very slow pages, especially for users with older computers, slow internet connections, or heaven forbid are still running Internet Explorer 6.

Inside the documents you’ll find a plethora of links and cross references, nicely color coded and branded as to what sort of information they lead to. For example, links to other sections in the RDA rules book are coded in blue, while links to glossary terms have a triangle.  They also include links between the AACR2 rules and corresponding RDA rules.  This will be really useful when moving from AACR2 to RDA.

Searching RDA will allow you a nice number of options.  I particularly liked the fact that you could sort the results in terms of relevancy or order they appeared in the document.  You are also able to limit searches to specific chapters, sections, media types, content, examples, etc.

A fair amount of time was spent discussing how they wanted to work with vendors to allow them to link into the Toolkit within their products (to give specific helps and instructions).  However, the institution will still need a subscription or the links won’t work. Another topic people are worried about is a print version. They seem to believe that it isn’t necessary, or a good idea.  You can print each chapter on your own, however, like I mentioned earlier, chapter 3 alone was 95 pages which would be quite costly to print.  Plus you would lose all of the cross linking that you get with the electronic edition.

They mentioned an open access period from launch (expected June, 2010) to August 31^st, 2010.  After the open access period, you will be able to get a 30-day free trial to test the RDA Toolkit before purchasing a license. One nice feature:  if you set up bookmarks and links during your trial you won’t lose them when you purchase a license.

For more information and to be added to an email list, email rdatoolkit@ala.org or visit http://www.rdaonline.org

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/639494355

Registration is quick and easy (and free apparently) and will cover these topics (from the above link):

• Description of the RDA Toolkit
• Overview of the RDA Toolkit contents at launch and beyond
• Tour of the RDA Toolkit interface including Search, Browse, Bookmarks, Workflows, Maps, and more
• Launch timeline
• Details of the Complimentary Open Access period
• RDA Toolkit pricing for the US
• Linking from external products to the RDA Toolkit

February 8 – 1 hour : 21:00 – 22:00 GMT (4:00 pm EST)

February 9 – 1 hour : 16:00 – 17:00 GMT (11:00 am EST)

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/991492442

Disclaimer: One of our Backstage staff (Maritta Coppieters) attended the all-day training session at ALA, but then also had to jump on a plane to England, so these updates are based on conversations I had with Maritta before she left:

• LC is making allowance to put the authority control number in the heading in a $0, so that the heading will link to a specific authority record. LC isn’t going to implement this right now and will still be linking with the actual authority record, but it is something they are planning.
• Lots of rules are going away and becoming more intuitive.
• Old Latin abbreviations are being discarded.
• The rule of thumb is: Key it like you see it.
• The focus isn’t so much on editing and conforming things to a set of rules, more like representing the material as you find it. The idea is that if you download content from a publisher and the book title has an abbrevaition, you leave it the way it is.
• Trust the item in hand rather than applying a set of rules to it.
• LC will publish RDA by June ALA. Then we have 3 months to train and practice. Then another 3 months to test specific scenarios and report back to LC. Then LC will take 3 months to write up the results (Q1 2011).

The RDA Toolkit price has been set at: $325 for the first user, $55 for each additional user. This price is set to be an annual subscription, rather than a one-time fee. As a comparison, the AACR2 life-time price is around $95 per user (non-members).

More information regarding the RDA Toolkit can be found here:
http://celeripedean.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/the-rda-toolkit/

Stay tuned as we prepare a more comprehensive update about the direction RDA is heading and how we are a part of it.

Backstage kicked off the year right by attending the ALA MidWinter conference held at Boston, MA.  Even the weather cooperated.

On Saturday, January 16 at 7:30am EST, the Authority Control dept hosted a Users Breakfast at the Seaport Hotel, which was just a hop, skip & a jump away from the new conference center itself.  The breakfast was quite good and we had many clients and Backstage personnel co-mingling.  It was also a great opportunity for me, Nate Cothran, to finally meet with a lot of you at last.  Though I have attended ALA in the past, this was my first chance to attend the breakfast.

John Merrill, our CEO out at Bethlehem, PA said a few words about our recent acquisition of the “PresRes” from OCLC, which handles Microfilm duplication, Storage and other Digitization services.

I was also able to give a brief introduction to a couple new services we have to offer immediately:

• MAX – Mars Authority eXpress
• Bowkers TOC – Table of Contents enrichment

MAX can return your processed Current Cataloging bibs typically in less than an hour (our system can process about 20,000 recs/hr).  This service costs a bit more, and it is especially useful for libraries that need their records processed & returned immediately.  The great thing about MAX is that there is no minimum fee or schedules that need to be fussed over; simply send in your records through our website any time of the day in whatever size file works for you and we will get the results back to you fast.

Backstage Authority Control has also incorporated the Bowkers/Syndetics TOC database.  What this means is that we now have a direct means of providing you with enriched (TOC, Summaries, Fiction profiles) content as part of your normal bib processing.  Since we maintain the database in-house, this reduces the cost on our end and we pass those savings onto you by also lowering the cost of what you may have been paying elsewhere.  We also thinks it makes sense to charge you only for the enrichments you actually receive.

Both MAX & Bowkers TOC are in place today.  If you’re not sure whether either of these makes sense to your library, please ask us to setup a sample run for your records.  At Backstage, we love to run samples for our customers as it helps us refine the process for them and also gives our clients the assurance they need for these exciting new services.  For more information on these services, please feel free to contact me, nate@bslw.com, or your Sales Representatives from Backstage.

You’ve made it this far in the blog post, only a little further!  I had the opportunity to attend some great presentations at ALA regarding cataloging and so I would like to pass the links to our forum that contain my notes:

• Catalog Management Interest Group
• Catalog Form & Function Interest Group

Karen Anderson was scheduled to attend the all-day training session for RDA (Resource Description and Access) at ALA, but unfortunately slipped on a patch of ice at her house and broke her arm.  So Maritta Coppieters, our Bibliographic Services Product Manager, attended in her stead.  Maritta also had to catch a plane to England on Sunday, January 17, but I was lucky enough to glean some of her notes regarding the latest updates on RDA.

While we still plan on sending out regular updates on RDA (of which Backstage is one of the vendors training on it), I have posted my notes from Maritta in our forum:

• RDA Updates from ALA MidWinter 2010

There has been a lot of chatter (AUTOCAT) regarding the pricing for the RDA subscription and we will continue to follow this closely.

My thanks to all of you that I was able to meet at ALA!  I look forward to meeting many more of you in Washington, DC for Annual this June.

Nate Cothran,

Product Manager, Authority Control Services

To whet your appetite, here is a brief taste of the two services we are ready to roll out:

· MAX – MARS Authority eXpress. A service with no minimum record requirements that also promises you your records within an hour of receipt?

· Bowker TOC Enrichment – Backstage has partnered back up with the Bowker service, which provides TOC & Summary enrichment at a reduced price.

To find out more information about this as well as the ongoing updates with RDA, we would like to invite you to our MARS Breakfast Meeting, to be held on Saturday, January 16th from 7:30 am to 8:30 am. This meeting will take place at the Seaport Hotel (directions inline), near the conference center and we will have an RSVP link up very soon on our website. We are hoping that this timeframe allows you to come meet with us, listen to a brief update on these services and the status of RDA and still give you enough time to make your way for the 9:00 am sessions at the conference.

Nate Cothran and Karen Anderson will be attending as well as a few others from Backstage. We can’t wait to see you all there!

ALA_Boston_Hotelmap_FINAL-1

ps. These were created using JibJab’s Elfyourself at http://www.elfyourself.com It’s a fun way to spend a few minutes.

Karen, our resident Authority and RDA Librarian tells us:

An announcement about a delay in the publication of RDA was posted on the RDA listserve:

RDA: Resource Description and Access will be published in June 2010.  While we regret this delay in release of RDA, the transition from publication of AACR2 as a printed manual to release of RDA as a web based toolkit is a complex process with many interdependencies.

The updated text of RDA incorporates recommendations from constituencies and other stakeholders approved at the JSC meeting earlier this year.  The revised text has been successfully loaded into the RDA database.  The product is currently undergoing thorough quality review and testing in preparation for release.

We recognize that customers and prospective users of RDA need reliable and timely information for planning and budgeting.  We are confident that this revised deadline is a realistic target for publication of RDA.

Pricing and purchasing information will be introduced at the time of the ALA Midwinter Meeting, 15-18 January 2010.

The last I heard, RDA is still scheduled to be published this month, and I know many are anxiously awaiting it.  (Either in excitement or trepidation!)  I saw this link to slides from an update about RDA given to the California Library Association Annual Conference on November 2.  It not only gives a good overview of RDA and its underlying models, but goes over the new data elements in RDA and some basic differences between RDA and AACR2 with examples to illustrate them.  There are also helpful links.  I really love the title:   “Help!  The new Cataloging Code is Coming!”  This presentation will surely help.

http://alcts.ala.org/crgwiki/images/1/10/RDA_CLA_Presentation.pdf