Presents the concept of the cooperative copy cataloging and contrasts
it with the bibliographic utility model. The explosive growth in the number
of Z39.50 accessible libraries around the world means there are plenty of
libraries that carry the same materials that you are looking to catalog
in your own local collection.
Library of Congress is a primary source for
free cataloging copy (MARC records) in North America and the world
but there are many other libraries that can be accessed and may provide
records using different subject classification schemes, or perhaps
using different character encoding schemes. This can be particularly important
for those cataloging foreign language materials.
The world is becoming
a smaller place and the requirement to catalog, search and display
non-Latin based languages has become possible in the latest versions
of many modern library systems. Systems supporting Unicode characters
are now available but character set identification and conversion is
still a major challenge for tools and utilities that work with MARC record
data.
A look at MARC records from several sources and how these records
can be analyzed and incorporated into a local system using efficient
tools for catalogers, reference librarians and personal researchers. |
