Maritta, the head of our cataloging and bibliographic services department asked if we could post this announcement on our blog, we’re always happy to share information about RDA with our readers, so here you go.
Backstage is pleased to announce its participation plan for the current US National Test for RDA. (more…)
We’re excited to announce that the 300 field validation that we’ve been working on is now in place and working. We add this to the hundreds of other corrections and validations that we make to bibliographic records as we process them. Judy, one of our Project Managers, explains the new process:
In an effort to continue improving our bibliographic validation services, we’ve been writing some cleanup steps for the 300 field. Nothing drastic of course — just some “straightening out” changes. The cleanup takes place only on records marked with ‘a’ in leader byte 6 … non-print bibs such as media, electronic resources, microforms, etc. are left as-is. Here’s a list of what the programming will do:
As with any of validation rules, these are optional, and if necessary, we can work with you to develop exactly what you’d like. These rules are now being included by default in our processing. We hope you find them useful!
Nate Cothran, our head of Authority Control recently returned from the Mid-Winter session of ALA. This is what he had to report:
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 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:
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:
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
John Reese, the former Product Manager for Authority Control, has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer within our company. John is still available to all of us and we welcome his input whenever we get a chance to hear it.
This also means that Nate Cothran has been promoted to Vice President of Automation Services. What does this mean for you and your library? It means that the same dedication you are used to seeing with John will continue with Nate. It also means that you can feel free to contact Nate [ncothran[ a t ]bslw.com] or [800.288.1265 x255] with any questions or concerns you may have.
We thank you for your continued service and look forward to working with you always.