History
In the Fall of 2002, a Task Force to Explore the Use of a Publication History Record (formerly known as a Universal Holdings Record) was constituted by the CONSER Publication Pattern Initiative. The members appointed to this Task Force were:
Cecelia Boone, Minitex
Ed Glazier, Research Libraries Group
Rebecca Guenther, Library of Congress
Diane Hillmann,
Jean Hirons (ex-officio) [replaced by Les Hawkins on Jean's retirement]
Cathy Kellum, OCLC
Margi Mann, OCLC
Frieda Rosenberg,
Sharon Wiles-Young,
The charge to the Task Force was the following:
The group determined that one year should be the goal for completing this charge, with major parts of the work to be done prior to the ALA summer meeting in Toronto so that discussion and feedback could be accomplished in that venue. Not surprisingly, that ambitious schedule slipped considerably, but despite that, the Task Force has accomplished a great deal.
The Task Force's first meeting
was held at the ALA Midwinter meeting in
Following is a summary of the issues reported out by the small groups. Links
to the full reports from the small groups are linked from the list above and in
the summaries. Of particular help to the Task Force in getting started on its
work was the discussion hosted by the MARC Formats Interest Group at the
Issue: Naming the Beast
During the MFIG meeting in
"A Universal Holdings Data Record includes the complete pattern and published holdings of a particular title. It does not reflect the holdings of a particular library, but does express an "ideal" complete run or set of a particular bibliographic entity."
As a starting point, this definition was sufficient, but as discussion ensued it was clear that the name itself created confusion. There was fairly strong feeling that now was the time to address this issue, and that it was critical to getting the message across about the usefulness of the concept.
To that end, the group explored the issue on its internal discussion list and came up with several alternate suggestions. After a straw poll at the MFIG meeting, the group settled on "Publication History Record."
Issue: Expected Functionality of Publication History Data
The group that prepared the report on Key Uses by Libraries and Others in the Community made several important points:
Issue: Relationship with union lists and/or union listing
The group that reported on the Impact on Union Listing suggested a number of additional items. Looking at union listing in its broadest possible sense, they identified potential secondary uses of Publication History data for union listing, emphasizing automated hooks between citation databases and the run of a title held by a library (also called 'reference linking'), automated ILL lender routing and collection gap reporting to collection managers, and other possibilities for automating verification, validation and updating now done by humans.
The group emphasized that what needed exploration was not only the impact of the Publication History Record on union listing, but also the impact of union listing on the PHR. They felt that as the larger group moved forward with specifics on what information would be included in Publication Pattern Records, created use cases to describe its potential, and clarified the relationship to FRBR work, they might make additional recommendations.
Issue: Relationship to the Bibliographic Record
Ed Glazier (as a group of one) reported to the Task Force on the Relationship to the Bibliographic Record. He listed the various points in current descriptive practice where information on numeric and alphabetic designations, frequency, and specific notes are prescribed. The report points out that much of the data now included in bibliographic records has proved to be confusing to users, and substituting a holdings display based on a publication pattern could be even more so, arguing that we should consider this data primarily as management, not user data.
Ed points out that the MARC 21 Format requires a location in the 852 field, but our current practices for the Publication Pattern Initiative Pilot Project have taken quite another path. He suggested that we might look beyond the current holdings record as we consider the 'platonic ideal' of Publication History information, but should, at the very least, clarify the current situation better for potential processors of the data we're now creating.
In the end, the group felt that the Publication History record should be considered conceptually part of the bibliographic description of a published title, in more detail, certainly, but not really separate in intention and function.
The "Super-Record"
Clearly a breakthrough for the group was Frieda's attempt to think through the FRBR issues. She drafted a report (latest version available at: http://www.lib.unc.edu/cat/mfh/serials_approach_frbr.pdf) that sparked considerable discussion both within the TF and in the Initiative, and was widely distributed beyond that group. Although the "super-record" concept deals with bibliographic issues endemic to serials, it enabled the group to begin to see where the Publication History Record might live in the bibliographic universe. At this stage, there is considerable interest in this approach, and we hope that the Initiative can move forward in this area.
In the two years that the Task Force has been working on the issues of Publication History, much progress has been made in thinking through these issues. During that time, initial concerns have been set to rest, and new possibilities opened up. The Task Force feels that its assigned work is complete, and any remaining issues should be taken up by other groups.
As part of its final meeting at Boston Midwinter, the group made the following recommendations to CONSER:
All Task Force documents and reports are gathered at: http://content.nsdl.org/dih1/PubPatt/index.html
Respectfully submitted,
Diane Hillmann, Chair
Rev. 4/19/05 dih