Page 150 - Cataloging and Classification for Library Technicians, 2nd Edition

136 Cataloging and Classification for Library Technicians
in clude hun dreds of li brar ies. OCLC has 30,000 mem bers world wide,
and even the Library of Con gress is seek ing co operative en deav ors by
es tab lish ing pro jects such as Pro gram for Co op er a tive Cat a loging (PCC),
Name Au thor ity Co op er a tive (NACO), and Co op er a tive On line Se ri als Pro-
gram (CONSER). For more in formation, check the Li brary of Con gress Web
site <lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pcc>. A mile stone in co op er a tion in cat a log ing
was reached in 1996 when the rep resentatives of the Library of Con gress
and the Brit ish Li brary signed an agree ment called Mem orandum of
Agreement on Con vergence of Cat aloguing Pol icy, pav ing the way for
more seam less fu ture in ter ac tions.

THE DUBLIN CORE

A pres ent phe nom e non is the pro lif er a tion of in for ma tion avail able
on the Internet, where of ten in formation can not be re trieved easily. With
the cur rent in dexing sys tems, mostly Boolean and word search sys tems,
the search en gines can not pos sibly find all dis ciplines and cross-dis ci-
plin ary in for ma tion. Full cat a log ing for Internet ma te ri als is not fea si ble
because of the time, ef fort, and ex pertise in volved. Also, be cause the
Internet in formation is so ephem eral, a full cat aloging re cord is not
warranted, as in a reg ular li brary col lection. The Dub lin Core rep re-
sents the com promise for the situation. The goal is to de fine a core set
of metadata el ements (the coun terpart of cat alog data for printed ma te-
rials) that will al low au thors and in formation pro viders to de scribe
their work and facilitate interoperability among re source dis covery
tools. The re quired el ements in clude sub ject, title, au thor, pub lisher,
other agent, date, ob ject type, form, iden tifier, re lation, source, lan -
guage, and cov erage. A wide va riety of Internet in formation can be de-
scribed us ing such a cat aloging stan dard. As more in formation ap pears
on the Internet, the li brary tech nician may be re quired to do cataloging
according to the standard set by the Dub lin Core. For more information
on the Dub lin Core, check <purf.org/metadata/dub lin_core>.

TRENDS

What does the fu ture hold for cataloging? As the in dividual user is
able to re trieve more in formation by sub ject and by key word, it ap -