23rd Annual Innovative Users Group ConferenceApril 13th – 16th 2015

RDA Conversion from an academic and a public library perspective

A Tale of Two Libraries

D

Or, how we learned to stop worrying and love the new cataloging standard.

Dana MillerHead of Metadata and Cataloging Dept.UNR LibrariesIUG 2015 MinneapolisTuesday, April 14, 2015

RDA Backfile Conversion at the

University of Nevada, Reno:

RDA

How our love affair with RDA began…• December 2012: I heard about and contacted a regional trainer who

taught workshops on RDA.• February 2013: Robert Maxwell came to UNR Libraries to teach a

week-long workshop on RDA bibliographic and authority records.• April 2013: While attending IUG conference I discovered Marcive’s

monthly RDA conversion service for new and modified bibliographic records, a free add-on with our existing monthly authorities processing service.

• March to October 2013: MCD comes up with local procedures and best practices for new bib records for all formats going forward, original as well as copy cataloging • Some formats we left copy and vendor records in AACR2 to be “bounced back”

as RDA by Marcive’s monthly service• Other formats we modified or created records in-house as RDA records. • We became an RDA cataloging department!• BUT- we still had 1.5 million legacy AACR2 records in our catalog!

The First Pitch…

• In August 2013 Joan Chapa had sent a note about a backfile authorities processing/RDA Conversion (RDACS) project. As a longtime Authority Award Club member UNR was eligible for a one time discount from Marcive.•We got a quote. It certainly sounded nice to take care of the backlog and the discount was substantial, but our budget had recently been repeatedly slashed. • In September 2013 I began drafting a proposal to library administration. Over the next six months I spent my time reminding, pestering, redrafting, cheerleading….

The Second and Third Pitch…

•Meanwhile Vicky Hart took over as our rep for Marcive while Joan Chapa became Director of Marketing. • By February I had written complete catalog RDA conversion into my annual goals statement for 2014. The topic had been broached several times but not decided.• In April 2014 Vicky contacted us introducing herself and reminded us about the backfile conversion discount and its August 2014 deadline.

Finally, with substantial support and negotiation from Assistant Dean for Collections and Knowledge Access Services, Steven Harris, the answer from library administration was yes!

Why we went with Marcive and a bulk conversion:

Feasibility• Over 60 bibliographic tags and 50 authority tags have to be updated

or added to accommodate RDA. • Doing this in-house was not a reasonable option- and we estimated it

would take fifteen years and cost at least twice the conversion service price to send our backfile through monthly bounce-back services.

Support• Other larger libraries with more staff had by then converted their

access points to RDA in-house, but they had full systems support while at the time we had no IT positions in the library. University IT would not be open to a project like this.

Why we went with Marcive and a bulk conversion: (continued)Knew what to expect• Previous III customers such as University of Houston and Evansville-

Vanderburgh Public Library had given presentations on their conversion plans and experiences.

Affordability• The 2014 discount price was affordable for us, based on our existing

customer status and the cents per record for the tier of # of bib records that UNR had.

Labor and Staffing• Outsourcing was both far cheaper and a far better use of labor.

Vendor Relationship• We already had a very good relationship with Marcive and liked their

monthly bounce-back service.

Timeline during implementation

Aug. 1: We put the files on the server in bundles of 50,000• While our records were out for conversion, catalogers refrained from making

edits to existing bib records; item and order records were accessible and adding brand new records was fine.

Aug. 18: Test file came back for review (10 working days later) • Found one issue: some diacritic characters most often used in Russian language

materials came back unrecognized. We had Marcive adjust a setting to make it indexable in Sierra

Aug. 20: We signed off on the formal work order and settingsSept. 3: Marcive completed the entire conversion and sent us the files from FTP (10 working days from order to delivery)Sept. 12: We finished reloading our 1.5 million bibs! (in 9 days)• During bib reloading all tech folks refrained from loading new records,

particularly large batches, except during scheduled times. Automated authorities processing was temporarily halted, as well as any Sierra software updates.

Sept. 19: We finished reloading authority records! (in 5 working days)

Bibliographic Cleanup: Legacy metadata rules your outcome!

Biggest issue? •Unspecified 338 rdacarrier fields

Affected small numbers of records for:

• Books (~530 records)• Computer files (~6 records)• Film and video (~170 records)• Kits (~40 records)• Non-musical sound recordings (~ 20

records) • Graphic materials (~280 records) • Manuscript map and manuscript music

(~5 records)• Serials (~200 records)

Larger numbers of records affected for:

• Microforms (~100,000 records) • Maps (~3500 records) • Theses (~5500 records)• Manuscripts and Archives collections

(~1700 records)

Miscellaneous funk: • Bad 300 fields (~5000 records) –missing punctuation, no spaces, no

subfields… blame it on vendors!• 260s that did not flip to 264 (~950 records) – legacy metadata didn’t meet conversion

rules• Random 300/GMD types (~1100 records) –338 returned with |2 local instead of

rdacarrier.

Notably we completed 90% of all of this cleanup by November 2014- that’s only two months with only a few people working on it!

Examples of failed RDA flips due to legacy metadata - Small numbers of oddball records (1 of 4)

• This record had a stray character “}” in the GMD which flipped the 338 to the nonexistent carrier of microform} instead of microfilm reel or microfiche, and flipped the subfield 2 label to “local” instead of rdacarrier.

Examples of failed RDA flips due to legacy metadata- Small numbers of oddball records (2 of 4)

• The nonstandard content and improperly formatted 300 explains the unspecified 338.

Examples of failed RDA flips due to legacy metadata - Small numbers of oddball records (3 of 4)

• This multi-part monograph did not flip the 260 to a 264 because the PCC guidelines prefer not to change them for.

•However, we wanted them changed so cataloger intervention was required.

Examples of failed RDA flips due to legacy metadata - Small numbers of oddball records (4 of 4)

• This record had different publication and copyright dates in the 260 |c field, which usually failed to flip to a 264.

Examples of failed RDA flips due to legacy metadata - Larger trends- Microforms unspecified

•We initially had 100,000 records for microform where missing or vague information in the 300 field generated a 338 carrier as unspecified rather than microfilm or fiche.•However using Global Update and pulling the contents of the 533 field, I was able to clean these up easily in a couple days.

Examples of failed RDA flips due to legacy metadata - Larger trends- Maps assumptions

•Maps were somewhat problematic because map content can come as a sheet, as an atlas (i.e volume), or as digital content.

•We had to review and edit many map records with unclear legacy data.

• This example shows the flip formula assuming cartographic material is a volume despite the 300 field, as well as a non-flipped 260 field.

Examples of failed RDA flips due to legacy metadata- Larger trends- Theses unspecified

• Theses also tended to have issues with 33x sets due to having different content in trigger fields.

Examples of failed RDA flips due to legacy metadata- Larger trends- Manuscript collections (1 of 3)

•Many manuscript and archives records had non-standard contents in the 300 fields and thus did not flip correctly.

• “Cubic feet” in the 300 was not enough to trigger the 33x set to populate.

Examples of failed RDA flips due to legacy metadata- Larger trends- Manuscript collections (2 of 3)

•Here is another example of nonstandard content in the 300 field, and repeated and thus competing 300 fields, and confusing Material Type, resulting in a failed flip for the whole 33x set as well as the |2 on the 338.

Examples of failed RDA flips due to legacy metadata- Larger trends- Manuscript collections (3 of 3)

• In this example the 338 was triggered, but to the wrong carrier type.•Manuscripts catalogers would recognize 2 pages to require carrier “sheet” but in the formula the presence of “pages” meant the 338 carrier automatically became “volume.”

Authorities Cleanup: chose 2 reports

1. Unrecognized headings: currently working through. The majority of these seem to involve headings that have typographical or formatting errors in the bib records. We prioritized these because they have more effect on user results.

Contain the following categories:• Topical subjects (completed Feb 2015)• Geographical subjects (begun March 2015) • Uniform titles • Corporate headings (begun March 2015) • Meeting names (completed March 2015) • Personal names 

2. Undifferentiated personal names: those where more than one person shares the same headings and there isn’t enough information to differentiate them.  • Plan to begin in July • Not as straightforward or visible as unrecognized headings

Plan to complete all unrecognized headings by end of 2015!

So how do we like it? We love it!!!

• Our catalog is cleaner than it’s been in years and we didn’t have to do most of the work.

• We have more consistent metadata with the cleanup we’ve undertaken.

• Having converted we feel like we are ready for the new bibliographic universe.

• Converting to RDA was one factor that prompted us to split legacy multi-format records (a work in progress) and assign format icons, giving the catalog a refreshed look.

• We’re excited to perform a holdings reclamation with OCLC this year in late May.

 

It also had positive effects on our Discovery layer… • We run Summon as a discovery layer, and the changes we made in

preparation for RDA and in cleanup after had a big impact on the reliability of Summon in finding online resources from the catalog.

• The conversion made our records a little more consistent and therefore made the metadata mapping to Summon work a little better.

• We have no trouble with year limits in Discovery due to RDA or mixed AACR2 and RDA catalogs that some libraries have. • We are mapped for year limits as: 260 |c (to cover vendor/brief

records and temporary AACR2 records before they are flipped); 264_1 |c; and 264_4 |c (for everything RDA)

 

If we can do it, so can you!

In our experience having your backfile converted to RDA is well worth all the preparation, the downtime, the cleanup, and the cost.

…Or as Mark Twain may have said:

Thank you!! Contact danamiller@unr.edu with further questions.