State of the union: union catalogues in the Scottish information environment

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State of the union union catalogues in the
Scottish information environment

• SUNCAT the Serials Union Catalogue for the UK
• www.edina.ac.uk/suncat

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Background

• UKNUC Feasibility Study
• Serials Report Tony Kidd, Rob Bull
• SUNCAT Scoping Study
• Information Power Ltd.
• JISC RSLP funded
• Purpose - to develop a UK Serials Union
  Catalogue
• Phase 1 February 2003-December 2004
• Phase 2 January 2005-December 2006
• Partnership between the University of Edinburgh,
  through EDINA, Ex Libris
• Associate Partners - Cambridge, Glasgow, National
  Library of Scotland, Oxford

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Project Management

• EDINA
• Co-directors of SUNCAT Project
• Peter Burnhill
• Christine Rees
• Ex Libris
• Julie Booth
• Dominic Nast
• Steering Group (Chair Derek Law)
• Advisory Group (Chair Peter Burnett)
• Bibliographic Quality Advisory Group (BQAG)

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Work Packages

• Bibliographic Work Package
• Natasha Aburrow-Jones (EDINA)
• Moira Whitson (EDINA)
• User Requirements Work Package
• Zena Mulligan (EDINA)
• Liz Stevenson (Edinburgh University Library)
• Advisor Tony Kidd (Glasgow University Library)

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SUNCAT aims

• SUNCAT primary aims
• Location of serials, including information about
  access
• Source of high quality bibliographic records for
  downloading to local catalogues
• Additionally - to raise consciousness of the
  importance of quality serials information among
  UK researchers and librarians

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Contributing Libraries Phase 1

• British Library
• National Library of Scotland
• National Library of Wales
• Imperial College, London
• London School of Economics
• Manchester Metropolitan University
• Queens University, Belfast
• University of Birmingham
• University of Bristol
• University of Cambridge
• University College, London

• University of Durham
• University of Edinburgh
• University of Glasgow
• University of Leeds
• University of Manchester
• University of Newcastle
• University of Nottingham
• University of Oxford
• University of Southampton
• University of Wales, Cardiff
• University of Warwick

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User requirements - interface

• User requirements display and functionality
• Accessibility and Usability
• Aleph 500 already deployed for other union
  catalogues
• Dialogue with California Digital Library, and
  review of other Union Catalogue OPACs
• User testing
• Focus group - Librarians
• Individual sessions - Researchers Academic
  staff
• Extended testing Phase 1 Libraries

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Electronic journals

• Increasing proportion of holdings are electronic
• Growing archives of back files
• Preliminary survey of current practice
• Single or separate records
• Access and holdings subscription information
• Research undertaken

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SUNCAT Phase 2

• Pilot service launched January 2005
• Coverage extended to include a further 60
  libraries
• Range of library types extended to include
  special libraries, research collections
• Research and development work ejournals
• Testing and development of interface

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Bibliographic Quality Advisory Group (BQAG)

• Natasha Aburrow-Jones (EDINA)
• Tony Kidd (University of Glasgow)
• Sue Miles (University of Oxford)
• John Nicklen (National Library of Scotland)
• Slawek Rozenfeld (Special Advisor)
• Hugh Taylor (University of Cambridge)

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Content

• During Phase 1, the Project worked with serials
  data from 22 UK research libraries to establish a
  critical mass of titles, with good geographical
  coverage and as wide a subject spread as possible
• ISSN Register CONSER
• Ex Libris Aleph 500 software, already used by
  other Union Catalogues, notably the California
  Digital Library

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SUNCAT How does it work?

• Centralised union catalogue
• Records stored in one large database
• Records deduplicated to view using Aleph
  functionality
• Records merged on the fly

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SUNCAT A national serials union catalogue

• Non-subject specific
• Covers more than University libraries alone
• Covers the UK as a geographical entity

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How does SUNCAT obtain records?

• Dialogue between library and SUNCAT project team
• Contributing library ftps a file to SUNCAT
• Data specification is drawn up by the team, and
  approved by the contributing library
• Data is converted according to data specification
• Data is loaded into SUNCAT

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Data specification for A. N. Other University
Library

• SUNCAT
• Data Specification- A.N. Other University Library
• Date May, 2005
• File name ltpath namegt/anotheru.20050506.aa
• Record count 25,012
• General Information
• MARC format MARC21
• Local control number 001
• Roman scripts ANSEL
• Non-Roman scripts None
• Tag 880 Not used
• Transcription of non-Roman scripts ALA-LC
  Romanization tables
• Holdings
• Holdings tags will be in 852, 866 tags
• Ignore all holdings tags except 852, 856 and 866
  (see below for massaging).
• Fixes
• Data manipulation
• Local tags to be stripped
• 999

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SUNCAT Standard Bibliographic Manipulation

• Change in tag 022 (ISSN) lower case x to upper
  case X
• Change 245hcomputer file to helectronic
  resource
• Strip 510 tags (only indicator 10,1,2)
• Change 6XXxPeriodicals to vPeriodicals only
  when it is the last subfield in the tag

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SUNCAT Phase 1 contributing libraries LMS

• Aleph
• Endeavor Voyager
• GEAC Advance
• Innopac
• Innovative
• Talis
• Unicorn

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SUNCAT what is the matching process?

• Deduplicated union catalogue
• Complex matching algorithm
• Preferred record display
• 3 stage selection process for matching
• List of Common Titles (LOCT)
• Matching above format

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How does SUNCAT work?Matching

• 1. Matching algorithm
• identification of candidate pool
• algorithm applied, with points threshold for a
  match
• 2. Selection of preferred record for display
• different points system determines which record
  is preferred
• 3. Composition of display record
• the preferred record has holdings elements from
  non-preferred records added for display

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SUNCAT The Librarians Interface

• Download
• Assisted matching

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SUNCAT Other developments

• Updates
• Notifications

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SUNCAT standards

• Entry standard
• Upgrading standard

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SUNCAT Entry Standard

• From all data specifications
• Reject records which do not contain the
  following
• Leader cp 7 s
• 008
• 245a
• 852
• Reject records which do contain the following
• Leader cp 5d (initial load only)

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SUNCAT Upgrading Standard (I)

• Guide
• MMandatory
• MAMandatory if applicable
• DDesirable

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SUNCAT Upgrading standard (II)
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SUNCAT Upgrading standard (II) (contd)
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SUNCAT development schedule

• Phase 2 January 2005-December 2006
• Expansion of service to include data from 60
  contributing libraries
• Phase 3 2007-
• Steady state service

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SUNCAT

• SUNCAT pilot service
• www.edina.ac.uk/suncat
• SUNCAT Project
• www.suncat.ac.uk
• Natasha Aburrow-Jones
• natasha.aburrow-jones_at_ed.ac.uk
• Liz Stevenson
• L.Stevenson_at_ed.ac.uk