Search

Libraries are actively exploring ways to use Linked Open Data (LOD) services to enhance discovery and facilitate the use of collections. Emblematica Online, which provides integrated discovery of digitized emblem books, incorporates LOD in its design. As an implementation prerequisite, the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) and Library of Congress (LC) Linked Data Service APIs were used to reconcile name and subject strings from legacy catalog records with global authoritative links from LOD resources. This case study reports on the automated reconciliation process used and examines the efficacy of the APIs in reconciling name and subject heading entities. While a majority of strings were successfully reconciled, analysis suggests that data cleanup, rigorously consistent formatting of metadata strings, and addressing challenges in existing LOD resources and services could improve results for this corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, the Library of Congress (LC) rejected a proposal to change headings in the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) that refer to undocumented immigrants as "Illegal aliens." Two years later, a Subject Analysis Committee (SAC) working group submitted recommendations regarding how and why LC should change the LCSH "Illegal aliens."1 That same year, LC decided to cancel the "Illegal aliens" subject heading, which Congress subsequently sought to block.2 Congress eventually required LC "to make publicly available its process for changing or adding subject headings . . . [and use] a process to change or add subject headings that are clearly defined, transparent, and allows input from stakeholders including those in the congressional community."3 In response, LC paused their plan to change "Illegal aliens." In June 2019, a new SAC Working Group on Alternatives to LCSH "Illegal aliens" was convened to survey local institutions implementing changes to the subject heading and to chart a path for librarians to address the subject heading at the organizational level. At the 2020 ALA Annual Conference, the working group presented their report. This paper builds upon that report and details next steps both for the working group and library professionals who plan to implement changes at their own organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to report on a quantitative analysis of the LCGFT vocabulary within a large set of MARC bibliographic data retrieved from the OCLC WorldCat database. The study aimed to provide a detailed analysis of the outcomes of the LCGFT project, which was launched by the Library of Congress (LC) in 2007. Findings point to a moderate increase in LCGFT use over time; however, the vocabulary has not been applied to the fullest extent possible in WorldCat. Further, adoption has been inconsistent between the various LCGFT disciplines. These and other findings discussed here suggest that retrospective application of the vocabulary using automated means should be investigated by catalogers and other technical services librarians. Indeed, as the data used for the analysis show somewhat uneven application of LCGFT, and with nearly half a billion records in WorldCat, it remains a certainty that much of LCGFT's full potentials for genre/form access and retrieval will remain untapped until innovative solutions are introduced to further increase overall vocabulary usage in bibliographic databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides analysis of a large online survey that was distributed to the cataloging community in 2018. The survey aimed to answer a number of important research questions to gain a general sense of the current state of Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms (LCGFT) usage. Findings include an overall broad acceptance of LCGFT, suggesting that the LCGFT project has been successfully embraced as a new controlled vocabulary; however, the adoption of the vocabulary remains uneven, especially between different types of institutions and different areas of the LCGFT vocabulary. Additionally, training points to a much-needed area for improvement as the survey found that the vast majority of non-users of LCGFT had never received vocabulary training. Survey results also suggest that retrospective LCGFT application, particularly using automated means, presents forthcoming challenges for librarians and library IT staff. Despite these limitations and challenges, survey results make it clear that LCGFT has become a widely accepted part of the bibliographic universe that helps to make genre and form information explicitly accessible to library users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catalogers have been establishing corporate body name headings (and other entities) in their original language in the official form, as they appear most frequently on the title pages of publications for print publications, for many years. A random sample of corporate headings from the Library of Congress Name Authority File created during 1998-2002 was searched on the Web via Google to find corporate Web pages. The purpose of this research is to begin to answer the question: Does the current way of constructing corporate authority records still help users find resources by and about corporate bodies in the online public access catalog in this Web-oriented environment? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the significance of search engines to both the librarian and the patrons in Washington, D.C. Creation of the Collaborative Digital Reference Service (CDRS) by the Library of Congress; Objectives of CDRS; Mechanism of the service.

As a user population of libraries, veterans have been a much discussed topic for the past several years. Most of the literature has focused on outreach efforts but included very little input from veterans themselves. As part of a larger project to capture veteran narratives of service, and using the Library of Congress Veteran's History Project protocol, veterans were asked about library use and reading habits while in the service. This study sought out feedback from veterans on how they view the library, how they use the library, and what improvements or changes they would like to see in the libraries that they visit. This small study revealed several trends in how veterans viewed themselves, including being self-sacrificing for the good of the whole, being reserved about veteran status, and having a strong sense of community. The trends observed in this small sample can be used to better focus outreach efforts towards this special-needs population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of e-book usage in one interdisciplinary research collection, for library and information science (LIS), at a large research institution. Drawing from the social sciences, humanities, and computer science, LIS exemplifies the challenge of analyzing use of interdisciplinary collections that cut across Library of Congress (LC) class ranges normally used to analyze disciplinary differences in the existing literature. The analysis also explores use factors beyond LC class that usage studies rarely examine, including genre and audience level, and changes in use over time across categories. This study contributes both to understanding the usage of LIS e-books as an exemplary interdisciplinary collection and to developing options for analyses of e-book collections that maximize the utility of usage reports despite their challenges. As e-book collections mature and the utility of comparing used versus unused titles wanes, such strategies will become necessary to make more nuanced decisions for e-book collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs about the 2019 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference organized by ALSC's Special Collections and Bechtel Fellowship Committee, a group of eight guests were treated to a presentation of some of the rare wonders for children at the Library of Congress (LC) while in Washington, D.C. It mentions that children's books are in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division; foreign language books are in other divisions.

The article presents a study on search transaction logs examination from web-scale discovery tools conducted at Indiana University campuses. Topics discussed include collecting search queries from transaction logs, categorizing queries based on the Library of Congress Classification schedules, and subjects and skills that teaching faculty and librarians communicate for improving information literacy instruction.

The article examines class differences between middle-class and lower-class protagonists as portrayed in Newbery Medal-winning novels. Topics discussed include list of books identified by the Library of Congress (LOC) believed to shaped American society including "Mark, the Match Boy" by Horatio Alger Jr., "Charlotte's Web" by E. B. White and "The Cat in the Hat" by Dr. Seuss, and explanation on social and economic survival depicted in the novels.

The article focuses on the services offered by the Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) in the U.S. It provides overview of the legislative history of the NDIIPP as well as its selected program initiatives. It also commends the effort of the administrator of the NDIIPP of pursuing its mission of promoting and maintaining access to information.

Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) programs have been established in many libraries, but there is no agreed upon set of metrics to evaluate the programs' performance. With that in mind, the University of Arizona (UA) formed the On-Demand Information Delivery (ODID) Metrics Team in January 2012 to establish metrics to evaluate their PDA program. This paper examines the results of the team's findings and provides an extensive analysis of the purchases by Library of Congress (LC) classification, publisher, format, etc. The discussion includes an analysis of the process and challenges of measuring a PDA program based on UA's experience. This paper also provides a list of key metrics that the authors argue that every library with a PDA program should monitor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contextualizes aspects of the Library of Congress (LOC) history in relation to being a national library and analyzes evolution of the different meanings of national library as applied to LOC. Topics discusses the birth of LOC on April 24, 1800 after Congress set aside 5,000 U.S. dollars to buy books for the use of Congress and the functions performed by LOC having the most extensive collection of Americana and offering programs for the blind and services to research libraries.

The US cataloging community is an interorganizational network with the Library of Congress (LC) as the lead organization, which reserves to itself the power to shape cataloging rules. Peripheral members of the network who are interested in modifying changes to the rules or to the network can use various strategies for organizational change that incorporate building ties to the decision-makers located at the hub of the network. The story of William E. Studwell's campaign for a subject heading code illustrates how some traditional scholarly methods of urging change--papers and presentations--are insufficient to achieve reform in an interorganizational network, absent strategies to build alliances with the decision makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents insights on the future of technical services in special collections libraries. According to the authors, the time has come for major changes in the description of information. They mention the adoption by the Library of Congress of the Resource Description and Access (RDA). They note that digitized library and special collection materials which are largely managed by the library's technical services division have been the source of content used in carrying out the work of humanists and librarians. Particular focus is also given to linked data and metadata used in libraries and archives.

The library community is discussing ways to use metadata created at the beginning of the bibliographic supply chain to reduce costs associated with cataloging and remove redundant work between publishers and libraries. The ONIX standard holds promise because many of the data elements found within ONIX can be mapped to the MARC standard. The Library of Congress (LC) has developed an ONIX-to-MARC Converter that is being used to create MARC bibliographic descriptions directly from publisher-supplied ONIX metadata for new publications received through its Electronic Cataloging in Publication Program. This paper presents background information on ONIX, provides detailed information on how the ONIX-to-MARC Converter functions, presents findings of a test of the ONIX-to-MARC Converter, and discusses the pros and cons of using ONIX in the daily work of a large cataloging operation. Use of the ONIX-to-MARC Converter has reduced the time needed to create bibliographic descriptions, facilitated the inclusion of enriched metadata to bibliographic records, and provided the LC cataloging staff with records that are comparable to high-quality copy cataloging records. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the steps by which the 2008 End of Term (EOT) archive, which holds more than 160 million U.S. government documents online, was created and the plans for the 2012 collection. The EOT Archive was created though collaboration of groups including the Library of Congress (LC), the Internet Archive (IA), and University of North Texas (UNT). Topic discussed include collection curation, distribution of data among EOT partners, and a focus on judicial branch websites for 2012.

In this review, the author discusses key trends in acquisitions found in the professional literature published in 2008 and 2009. During this period, the decline of funding for libraries led to more creativity in purchasing materials. The move from primarily print collections to more electronic journals, databases, and e-books became more pronounced. The Big Deals began falling out of favor because of shrinking library budgets. Workflow continued to change as skills required for print acquisitions adapted to the needs of electronic publications. Approval plans continued to survive in an environment where e-books were increasing in usage and popularity. The volatile vendor market escalated during this period causing consolidations of companies into "mega" companies. Electronic resources continued to create challenges for acquisitions librarians who were trying to find the best tools and workflows to manage the resources while also developing the ability to negotiate and interpret e-content licenses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the authors' views on finding books with characters who were the product of donor sperm in libraries the U.S. The authors cite that they have not found the book in the Library of Congress (LC) due to the inconsistencies of cataloging in LC. They state that finding these books are important due to the added challenges for parents to explain to their child that he/she was created with the assistance of a third party. Overview on the list of books for children conceived through sperm donation, egg donation, and embryo donation are offered.

Library catalog systems worldwide are based on collections of MARC records. New kinds of Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)-based catalog retrieval systems, displays, and cataloging rules will build on ever-growing MARC record collections. Characterizing the kinds of information held in MARC records is thus an important step in developing new systems and rules. This study examined the incidence and prevalence rates of MARC fields in two different sets of library catalog records: a random selection of bibliographic records from the Library of Congress online catalog and a selection of records for two specific works, Lord of the Flies and Plato's Republic. Analysis showed that most fields were used in only a small percentage of records, while a small number of fields were used in almost all records. Power law functions proved to be a good model for the observed distribution of MARC fields. The results of this study have implications for the design of new cataloging procedures as well as for the design of catalog interfaces that are based on the FRBR entity-relationship model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Library of Congress (LC) decided to suspend creating series authority records on May 1, 2006 and to transcribe all future series statements as untraced. To evaluate the effect on cataloging workload at Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries, bibliographic records were examined for untraced series statements from June 1, 2006 to December 31, 2007. Series titles were then searched in the Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF) and corrected to match the authority record, if necessary. Series titles not found in the LCNAF were evaluated according to current cataloging rules and corrected of necessary. Of the 53,911 records added to OSU Libraries' catalog during the study, 977(2 percent) had an untraced series statement. Only 60 (6 percent) of the 977 were records created by the LC after the 2006 decision. The majority of records (64 percent) with untraced series statements were records created by the Government Printing Office. Many untraced series were also found in records for materials with publication dates before 2000, most resulting from a serials retrospective conversion project. The data suggest that the LC's policy change has not created a large cataloging burden and, with relatively little effort, OSU Libraries catalogers are able to continue to provide users with authorized series title access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a historical review of the events and institutional influences in the nineteenth century that led to the development of the Library of Congress (LC) card distribution program as the American version of a national bibliography at the beginning of the twentieth century. It includes a discussion of the standardizing effect the card distribution program had on the cataloging rules and practices of American libraries. It concludes with the author's thoughts about how this history might be placed in the context of the present reexamination of the LC's role as primary cataloging agency for the nation's libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a speech by Janet Swan Hill, Associate Director for Technical Services at the University of Colorado Libraries in Boulder, Colorado, delivered at the New England Technical Services Librarians Annual Conference in Worcester, Massachusetts, April 4, 2008, in which she discussed the ramifications of recommendations made by the U.S. Library of Congress (LC) Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control.

A list of online resources of documents related to African American history and culture from the federal government in the U.S. is presented. It includes the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the National Park Service. A list of documents available from each source is also presented.