aarnet access and cataloguing procedures in australian academic libraries

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This article was downloaded by: [University Of Pittsburgh] On: 05 November 2014, At: 16:00 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK The Australian Library Journal Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ualj20 AARNet access and cataloguing procedures in Australian academic libraries Chew Chiat Naun a a Chew Chiat Naun is currently enrolled in the MA (Librarianship) program at the Graduate Department of Librarianship, Archives and Records at Monash University. He is also employed part-time as a cataloguing assistant at the Monash Main Library. He won the inaugural Mary Ronnie Award with this paper. Published online: 13 May 2014. To cite this article: Chew Chiat Naun (1994) AARNet access and cataloguing procedures in Australian academic libraries, The Australian Library Journal, 43:1, 9-15 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00049670.1994.10755665 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or

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Page 1: AARNet access and cataloguing procedures in Australian academic libraries

This article was downloaded by: [University Of Pittsburgh]On: 05 November 2014, At: 16:00Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

The Australian Library JournalPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ualj20

AARNet access and cataloguingprocedures in Australianacademic librariesChew Chiat Nauna

a Chew Chiat Naun is currently enrolled in the MA(Librarianship) program at the Graduate Departmentof Librarianship, Archives and Records at MonashUniversity. He is also employed part-time as acataloguing assistant at the Monash Main Library.He won the inaugural Mary Ronnie Award with thispaper.Published online: 13 May 2014.

To cite this article: Chew Chiat Naun (1994) AARNet access and cataloguingprocedures in Australian academic libraries, The Australian Library Journal, 43:1, 9-15

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00049670.1994.10755665

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or

Page 2: AARNet access and cataloguing procedures in Australian academic libraries

indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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AARN et access and cataloguing procedures in Australian academic libraries

Chew Chiat Naun is currently enrolled in the MA (Librarianship) program at the Graduate Department of Librarianship, Archives and Records at Monash University. He is also employed part-time as a cata­loguing assistant at the Monash Main Library. He won the inaugural Mary Ronnie Award with this paper.

Manuscript received December 1993

Libraries in Australia now have access through the Australian Academic Research Network (AARNet) to the catalogues of major research libraries in the United States and to RLIN. The telecommunications charges for this access are minimal. This paper discusses the effect this may have on cataloguing procedures in Australian aca­demic libraries.

S USAN MacDougall has observed that Australian librarians are pre­disposed towards ready acceptance of AARNet because of their long

experience of online information networks and because there is among librarians a strong professional ethos of resource-shar­ing.1 However AARNet is received by academic staff, librarians will quite natu­rally look upon it as the latest in a series of developments in networking that goes

The Mary Ronnie Award The Mary Ronnie Award was inaugurated in 1993 and is presented by the Alumni of the Graduate Department of Ubrarianship, Archives and Records at Monash University for work presented by a current student. The award is named in honour of Mary Ronnie who was Chair of the Department from 1988 to 1992.

back to ABN and, before that, to the vari­ous state-based consortia such as the College Libraries Activity Network in New South Wales (CLANN) and Co-operative Action by Victorian Academic Libraries (CAVAL).

Such a view of AARNet's place in library work is well-founded if one recognises the potential of new technology to redefine roles and re-order priorities- as it were, to alter the ecology of existing practices. On the oth­er hand, it is probably misguided if one regards AARN et as merely another 'resource' to be 'shared' - another source of information merely to be stacked on top of existing ones. For under the twin rubrics of'resources' and 'sharing' lies a whole suite of issues, among them questions of collec­tion development, dissemination of knowledge, intellectual property, funding arrangements, conflicting standards and autonomy. A major development like

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AARNet access and cataloguing procedures in Australian academic libraries

AARNet raises questions in all of these areas, and they impinge upon every aspect of library work, including cataloguing, both directly and indirectly. The advent of AARN et is not to be viewed in abstraction from the current library and academic milieu.

The Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) figures prominently in the modus operandi of the cataloguing departments of most major academic libraries in this coun­try. Academic libraries do most of their cataloguing on ABN and rely on its data­base-theN ational Bibliographic Database (NBD)2 - for the greater portion of their records. Any discussion of cataloguing pro­cedures in those libraries will be, to a large extent, a discussion of their relationship to the NBD. In the long run, this is a rela­tionship which is likely to be changed by the resources newly available through AARNet, and in particular by the accessi­bility on the network of the databases of the major American bibliographic utilities.

'Network' is, of course, a generic term. So far as cataloguing procedures are con­cerned, it may be understood to apply to groups of libraries jointly using an online database of bibliographic and associated holdings records. These databases have tra­ditionally served the twofold purpose of supplying cataloguing copy to participat­ing libraries and acting as their union catalogue. In the early days of automation, when all processing was handled on a cen­tral computer, these two functions did not come apart: the central database was repos­itory and source both for bibliographic and for holdings data, and it was the same data­base for everybody. Early computerised networks such as Technilib's very much con­formed to this 'star topology'. Although the development of local integrated library

systems has obviated the purely technical necessity to conduct affairs in this way, ABN continues to be run on what is in essence the same model. Each participant library undertakes to maintain onABN an author­itative record for each item it holds; and for each item holdings information is also systematically entered onto ABN. (The foregoing is something of a simplification, but it holds true in broad outline or at least as an ideal.)

One may discern behind this network structure a kind of 'all for one, one for all' philosophy which is characteristic of Australian academic libraries' general com­mitment to the free exchange of information. This arrangement has a practical rationale as well. The point about a strongly cen­tralised network structure, particularly as embodied in the WLN/ABN apparatus is that it is conducive to a very high degree of uniformity in cataloguing standards. Because the 'database of record' (to borrow Lowell's useful term3) is the central data­base, the network's central cataloguing authorities are in a position to insist on a consistent set of practices-quite apart from the minimum consistency imposed by the technical requirements of the software itself. In the case ofWLN and ABN, stan­dards are buttressed by central reviewing of cataloguing input and by the linking of bibliographic and authority files.

In a nutshell, the present state of affairs has been sustained by a combination of good intentions and pragmatic necessity. Idealism apart, these are some of the factors (note theyarenotmutuallyexclusive)whichhave helped shape current cataloguing prac­tices: • ABN has been the only readily accessi­

ble source of records for copy cataloguing. • ABN has provided a satisfactory 'hit

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AARNet access and cataloguing procedures in Australian academic libraries

rate' for copy cataloguing for most requirements.

• There has been a high priority given to maintaining ABN bibliographic and authority records to a high standard.

• Techniques for transferring records between systems have been fairly prim­itive. None of the above propositions is any

longer true without qualification. The avail­ability of non-ABN cataloguing resources throughAARNethas ramifications for each of them; I mention some of those conse­quences below.

Sources of records ABN's virtual monopoly on records is

reflected in cataloguing workflows across the country: items are first checked against the national database, and if a suitable record is not found, the item is sent for orig­inal cataloguing. Typically, the catalogue record is entered onto ABN and only then transferred to the institution's own system - perhaps on a tape-load which includes the remainder of the requested data as well. Many records on the NBD originate in the databases of such institutions as the Library of Congress or the British National Bibliography but arrive in the NBDen masse via MARC subscription services. Whatever their provenance, they become available to Australian libraries through ABN and are common property. However, with the acces­sibility through AARNet of bibliographic utilities like RLIN, the available sources are multiplied.

Prohibitively high telecommunications charges have prevented widespread use of the utilities until now/ but suddenly tele­communications costs are much less of an obstacle. As Australian libraries begin to take advantage of this facility, there will

be three notable consequences. Firstly, records from these sources will be loaded into the local system before going onto ABN. In these circumstances, there will be a ten­dency (one already apparent in the United States5) for participant institutions to regard the entering of records onto the cen­tral (i.e. ABN) database as purely supererogatory, rather than a matter of prac­tical necessity as it largely is now. Secondly, records procured by participant institutions will not automatically be available to ABN (and thereby to other ABN participants); there may well be rights to be negotiated with the originating utility.6 This may not always be thought worth the trouble. And thirdly, different institutions cataloguing the same item will not invariably make use of the same record. This state of affairs would contradictABNs policy -even now, one often honoured more in the breach than in the observance - of having one record to each bibliographic entity.

Hit rate There are certain classes of material which

are poorly represented on the NBD, such as music scores and East Asian language materials 7- and, of course, the kind of ear­ly imprint material currently being catalogued by the Australian Book Heritage Resources (AHBR) project. As libraries have begun to collect more heavily in these areas, or where they have sought more urgently to make available online their exist­ing collections, such deficiencies in the NBD have been felt more keenly. Individual libraries do not have the time or the staff to do the amount of original cataloguing necessary to make good those gaps.

In these areas the major utilities are often stronger than ABN. For example, the hit rate for Chinese-language materials is reckoned in a recent study to be about ten

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AARNet access and cataloguing procedures in Australian academic libraries

times as high on the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) database as on ABN. 8 Moreover, OCLC and RLIN have already implemented Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) vernacular scripts on their systems, something ABN is yet to do. Libraries with large collections of these materials are certain to resort to the util­ities for MARC records, editing them to suit their own needs. The effect will be to ampli­fy the repercussions already discussed when dealing with sources of records.

ABN file maintenance ABN inherits from WLN a number of

structural features, mentioned earlier, which are conducive to maintaining a 'clean' database. The trouble is, ABN is a larger network with more variable standards of input than WLN, and over the years more and more superfluous or unruly records have littered the database. A 'dirty' database is not only less user-friendly, but in being so tends to sap its users' community spirit: the paucity of authority work being done on ABN may partly be taken as evidence of this. An influx of foreign records of vari­able quality, often reflecting quite different network philosophies, can only exacerbate this problem. Will quality control be as high a priority in future?

Connectivity Cataloguing procedures are determined

in large part by the hierarchies and rela­tionships that hold between databases. These hierarchies and relationships depend, in their turn, on what kinds of data exchange the technology of the day permits. Links between the ABN system and those of its members are well established, but libraries have needed to go to unusual trouble to link up with other databases. The difficulties involved in gaining access to data elsewhere

have created a sort of surface tension hold­ing existing ABN/participant relationships in place, and with them existing catalogu­ing practices. This particular bubble may be about to burst.

As significant, in the longrun, as the actu­al resources AARNet makes available are the protocols which make it possible.9 The Telnet protocol allows communication between systems on the Internet by 'trans­lating' commands issued on local terminals into those used by remote terminals. It is also possible, using a file transfer protocol (FTP), to transmit documents between sys­tems. While there is still a lot of work to be done in this area, it is undoubtedly becom­ing easier to traverse the boundaries between systems. In fact, protocols already exist which would facilitate a much greater degree of interconnection between systems -most notably, the set of standards which fall under the Open Systems Interconnection umbrella - but for the most part, and for varying reasons, these are yet to be put into practice.

UNILINC's recently implemented LIB­LINK service is an example of recent developments. LIBLINK allows AARNet users to search the various New South Wales university catalogues using a common set of commands and screen displays, thus removing one further barrier to easy access. UNILINChasalsoundertakenanABNgate­way project which allows real-time uploading - and downloading of records between the local system and ABN.10

What is likely to be the overall impact of these trends? Probably little will change in the immediate future. The great majority of Australian academic libraries will con­tinue to rely on ABN for most of their cataloguing. Libraries with special collec­tion interests will tap into the utilities with

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AARNet access and cataloguing procedures in Australian academic libraries

increasing enthusiasm. However, for the moment those libraries still rely on cum­bersome dial-up links to import records from this source, a fact which currently limits its usefulness. It may be that CD-ROM prod­ucts such as OCLC's CAT CD45011

, with their MARC export capability, will be the preferred source of data for copy catalogu­ing purposes. (Naturally, many of the ramifications outlined above would still apply in that event.) The number of bibli­ographic records now accessible online has, of course, been increased greatly by the pres­ence on the network of some very large catalogues, such as those belonging to cer­tain American university libraries. Some local cataloguers may get into the habit of cribbing information from this source, although since the universities are not in the business of providing full cataloguing support services to other libraries, they will remain, for cataloguing purposes at least, a less significant source ofbibliographic data than the utilities.12

The longer-term implications are more interesting to speculate upon. Until now Australian academic libraries have been reasonably scrupulous about cataloguing to the standards required by ABN. This is perhaps most evident in the attention giv­en to such things as subject headings and fixed fields. Much of the consistency in Australian cataloguing practices, I have sug­gested, is due to the centralised nature of the network structure in Australia. The growing accessibility of alternative resources will result in a certain degree of decen­tralisation. ABN will no longer be 'in' on all the cataloguing decisions made in aca­demic libraries, and individual libraries will feel encouraged to exercise greater auton­omy in certain aspects of their cataloguing. The use of vernacular scripts not yet imple­mented on ABN is one example of this

autonomy, albeit perhaps a temporary one. But it is not difficult to see how, for exam­ple, a library which collects in a narrow subject area and which obtains a large pro­portion ofits records from non-ABN sources might choose to do authority work on its own system - particularly if it found the relevant authority records on ABN to be in a state of disorder. From here, it would be only too natural for the library to neglect its responsibilities (as we currently see them) to ABN. There would no longer be much incentive for the library to perform the nec­essary maintenance on the ABN authority file, or to ensure the quality of the biblio­graphic record being entered onto the national database. Advances in connectiv­itywould only underscore the problem: ABN records uploaded from local systems will tend to be only as good as the participat­ing library needs them to be. And all these effects have the potential to snowball.

I am, of course, overstating the problem. In the first place, Australian academic libraries remain firmly committed to ABN and it is in their own interests to maintain the integrity of its database. The impend­ing ABN redevelopment will make it easier for them to do so.13 Moreover, in its charg­ingschedulesABNhasaninbuiltfine-tuning device which helps its policies to be carried out smoothly. What we are likely to see is not a rapid disintegration of the system, but a gradual change of policy emphases. For example, Warwick Cathro has dis­cussed the possibility that a small number of major libraries might take greater respon­sibility for maintaining the authority file. 14

There is one very general point which remains to be made, a point which is not directly germane to the topic at the head of this paper, but one which nonetheless strikes me as crucial. AARNet is not a tool

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AARNet access and cataloguing procedures in Australian academic libraries

for librarians, it is a tool for people who seek knowledge. 'Networking' is to be under­stood not primarily as an effort to bring economies of scale to library work-although, to be sure, it partly is that - but as a way of linking information resources and mak­ing them available to people. The notions which have become catchwords of the pro­fession in the last decade - document delivery, the Distributed National Collection, theE-library- are manifestations of that purpose.

AARN et is a milestone in this line of devel­opments because the network has, as it were, burst the bounds of the library and now embraces all members of the academic research community. In cataloguing terms, common access to knowledge entails pre­cisely a higher degree of thoroughness in cataloguing and a greater consistency of standards. The sine qua non for making your collection accessible to network users is to make it clear what you have and to give them the best possible chance of find­ing it. Academic libraries, more than most, will be conscious of their responsibilities in this regard. To take one example, the day cannot be far off when scholars can con­duct a single subject search across several university OPACs. In these circumstances it is more important than ever to maintain common procedures for assigning subject headings in bibliographic records. The trends which AARNet exemplifies might be summed up by saying that today it is not networks that make for high standards, it is high standards that make for networks. With new opportunities come new respon­sibilities.

References 1. S. MacDougall, 'Networkshop' '91, and

the impact of AARN et on academic

libraries' inAARL vol.23 (March 1992), p.35.

2. For the remainder of this paper I will follow the common practice of using the term 'ABN' to denote both the organi­sation and the database.

3. G.R. Lowell, 'Local systems and biblio­graphic utilities: data exchange options' in Information Technology and Libraries vol.lO (June 1991), p.102. Lowell defines the 'database of record' as the database which 'contains the most alh.horitative version of the record reflecting (the library's) specific holdings'.

4. See, for example, L. Bourke, 'Contract cataloguing at CAV AI1 in Cataloguing Australia vol.l9 no.l (March 1992), pp.22-25.

5. See Lowell, op. cit., p.lOO. 6. An instance of this difficulty is described

in B.H. Yeung, 'OCLC CJK350 imple­mentation in the University of Melbourne library' inEastAsianLibrary Resources Group Newsletterno.22 (May 1992), p.23.

7. See, inter alia, Bourke, op. cit. and Yeung, op. cit.

8. Yeung, op. cit., pp.21-22. 9. See, inter alia, D.E. Stanton, 'AARNet

and libraries: an overview' in C. Goodacre (ed.), Networking & Libraries in Australia (ALIA, 1993), pp.31-37 and for a more technical discussion, C.A. Lynch, 'From telecommunications to net­working' in Library Hi-Tech vol. 7 no.2, 1989, pp.61-83.

10. See 'Linking libraries: the UNILINC experience' in Goodacre (ed.), op. cit. A technique for improving record trans­fer procedures across Telnet is described in R. Entlich, W. Fenwick and D. Zhang,

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AARNet access and cataloguing procedures in Australian academic libraries

'Enhancing the processing environ­ment' in Information Technology and Libraries (December 1992), p.332.

11. See C. Symes, 'OCLC CAT CD450 in Australian libraries' in LASIE vol.22 no.5, (March/April1992), pp.119-124.

12. The following considerations might be mentioned in this connexion: (i) OPACs often contain only brief records; (ii) there is no facility for transferring those records to local systems here; (iii) many of those records will have originated from utilities, that may claim certain rights

over their re-use. By contrast, OPACs accessible on AARNet will undoubted­ly have a great impact on reference and research methods.

13. Many of the problems currently affect­ing the database are the direct result of software limitations. It is worth not­ing also that ABN's planned reversion to USMARC will reduce compatibility problems.

14. W. S. Cathro, 'The future of ABN' in Cataloguing Australia vol. 15 no.1, (March 1989), p.8.

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