May 26, 1999
June 16, 1999
June 23, 1999
June 30, 1999
(FIRST TEAM MEETING FOLLOWING TRAINING BY OCLC STAFF VIA SPEAKER PHONE ON MAY 21)
Hi everybody,
Here are some action notes from our meeting today. Please feel free to add
or comment. --Karen
1. We agreed on some possible times to have Diane Hillmann come in and
train us on Dublin Core. We chose Weds. June 2 at either 10:30 or 8:00
a.m. Karen said she would contact her to propose those times (done).
2. We agreed that Don, Martha, Bill and Jill would add a "Description"
field to the CORC record, something like "chosen by [name]" with any other
notes they want to convey to the cataloger (Pam or Yumin). This will help
Pam and Yumin know who to ask if they have questions.
3. If the record for a chosen resource already exists in CORC, the person
should use the instructions on page 57 of the CORC reference guide to
submit the record to the in-process file (with the note described in #2
above).
4. We should begin using the real CORC database, not practice. Pam and
Yumin will make a printout of every completed record and save it (for
statistical purposes--we will want to know how many and what titles we did
at the end of the research project).
5. Between now and June 2, each person should submit 4 or 5 records and
put them in the in-process file. The catalogers will review them and test
exporting a couple into NOTIS as MARC records (to make sure that works).
Everyone should bring printouts of the records they submitted to the
meeting on June 2.
6. We'll meet for 1 1/2 hours on June 2. The first hour will be working
with Diane. We agreed that during the last half hour, we will begin
discussing each title and teasing out any issues associated with completing
work on it. (Jill will need to leave early so maybe we should deal with
her titles first?)
7. We thought it would be good to meet every week for a while to get our
project off to a good start. Everybody has lots of questions now, and
there's much to work out. Later, when our processes are more stable, we
can back off to every other week or less. We chose Monday or Weds. morning
for a regular meeting time. Karen said she'd send an email to the group
with some possibilities from which to choose an hour slot.
Notes from the CUL CORC Meeting, 6/16/99. Present: Bill Walters, Yumin
Jiang, Pam Stansbury, Karen Calhoun, Martha Hsu, Don Schnedeker
1. Discussion of selection criteria for a catalog of Web resources. Bill
distributed some excerpts from two articles, which we agreed to read before
the CUL CORC meeting 6/23. Bill will lead a discussion of the topic at
that meeting. Pending results of the discussion, Karen may report our
conclusions to ERC for that group's consideration.
2. Nitty-gritty. a. Diacritics, delimiters. Martha asked about input
and display of umlauts in one of the records she submitted. There were
also some questions about input of MARC subfield delimiters. Yumin and/or
Pam agreed to check to make sure Martha's diacritics are displaying
properly and let her know. b. Export to NOTIS. The CORC ID number is
exported to the 035 field preceded by (OCoLC). This is misleading. Karen
will report to OCLC with the suggestion to use a different OCLC NUC symbol
for CORC records. c. More DC questions. Bill reported some specific
problems with inputting DC data that then disappears. Bill agreed to
document these problems in an e-mail message, which Karen will send to
OCLC. (Done and answers posted to team) d. Duplicates. We think the
number of duplicates in the CORC database is an issue OCLC will need to
deal with (Karen already sent a complaint and some suggestions to OCLC,
early in our project). For now, we agreed not to obsess too much when we
find duplicates--the selector will pick the record he or she likes best,
making a quick decision in most cases. Selectors agreed with Don's
suggestion to flip briefly from the DC to the MARC view, to take into
account the fullness of that record, before making a final choice of which
record to use.
3. Explanation of CORC implementation of Dublin Core elements and
qualifiers. Our team needs this, preferably in the CORC reference guide.
Karen will query OCLC (Done--OCLC hopes to release documentation soon).
Karen also agreed to post the URL of the guidelines developed by the
University of Chicago to the team.
4. Reporting problems; queries. Karen said if team members feel more
comfortable sending her their questions, that is fine, or they may send
questions about CORC system functionality or record displays, weirdness,
etc., directly to OCLC at CORC-system@oclc.org. Whichever method is chosen,
we agreed it would help everyone if answers were shared with the group.
5. First record. Our first completed record is Jill's selection,
"Aviation Enthusiast Corner." (applause!) Yumin agreed to finalize her
work on the NOTIS and Gateway records, so we can use it as an example in
conversations with others (Karen plans a demo and progress report to Ross
and Janet soon).
6. Pathfinders. Don reported he's created a BII-related pathfinder, which
we can look at in the CORC pathfinder database. (To see it, search the
database for "Cornell's Business Internet Index" or select Show, then
"in-process" from the pathfinder list.) Don kindly agreed to walk us
through the pathfinder record creation process and talk about the potential
utility of pathfinders for CUL at our 6/30 meeting.
If you think I've missed or misinterpreted anything, please reply to all.
Thanks again to everyone--as of today, we now have 21 in-process records
and 1 in-process pathfinder.
--Karen
PS--Yumin and Pam--a reminder to remove the "Selected by ..." note from the
record before moving it from "in-process" to "complete" status in the CORC
database and before exporting it to NOTIS.
All present except Jill, who's away. Karen noted she'll be away June 24-29.
Problems with CORC may be reported to CORC-system@oclc.org while she's away.
1. Bill led a discussion of selection guidelines for Web resouces. He has
the basis of an excellent research project in mind. He plans to post a
message to CORC-L asking for input on guidelines being used at other CORC
libraries to collect aggregations.
2. Nitty-gritty. a. Monographic sites, similar to looseleafs, needing
open dates--there is no way to reflect an open date in DC, but this can be
done in the MARC view. b. Dates are generally problematic in CORC--Yumin
will post a message on CORC-L reporting problems related to dates. c. Is
there an 007 in CORC? Karen suggested a means for inputting 007 data--if
that doesn't work, we will ask CORC-system@oclc.org.
3. Please NOTE: new procedure for submitting records. Selectors, when
you begin working on a record, please put it in the "in-review" file (not
"in-process" as we have been doing). When a selector is ready for a
cataloger to work on the record, he or she should submit it again, this
time to the "in-process" file. In this way catalogers will know when
you're done changing the record. Catalogers will check in the "in-process"
file, and while Yumin and Pam are working on a record, they will store it
in the "in-review" file (so Yumin will not wonder if Pam is going to take
that record and vice versa). When the cataloger is finished, they will
change the status from "in-review" to "complete." We'll try this for
awhile and see if it works better than what we're doing now.
4. Yumin noted if you want to see what we've completed in CORC, do a
keyword search on the Gateway with the word "CORC." This should bring up
all of our completed project records. Thanks to Yumin for the
suggestion--this will help us keep track of stats too.
--Karen
Hi everybody,
Notes from our 6/30 team meeting. All present except Jill, who's away. Don, Martha and Bill will be away next week., so we decided on a "catalogers" meeting on July 7--room 303 Olin.
News since last meeting: Yumin initiated and carried through a thread on CORC-L having to do with the way the mapping of date information happens (or doesn't) between MARC and DC views of the record. Pam ran down the answers to some questions about the 035, 040, and 899. Yumin figured out how to enter the 007 field. Karen and Yumin came to a consensus about the level of MARC cataloging we want to do in CORC (full); we may decide to experiment with a record based on DC elements only at a later stage of the project. Yumin followed up by preparing a checklist of data elements for her and Pam's use when preparing the MARC version of the record. OCLC installed a new version of CORC with some improvements and fixes. Of most interest to us, potentially: MARC 'textarea' editing and WordSmith phrase extraction (an aid to the assignment of subject keywords--look for "generate possible subject terms" on the Create in Catalog screen)--try 'em out!
1. Karen reported on CORC-related items at ALA. She attended two CORC sessions--a well-attended panel discussion (she was a panelist along with Dan Foley of USGS and Duncan Irvine of the U. of Strathclyde in Scotland) and a CORC user meeting. She provided the team with a brief overview of the plans OCLC announced at the user meeting. They plan to bring the CORC database into synchronization with OCLC larger database, WorldCat. They announced plans for a new pathfinder editor, better support for diacritics, and support for simplified subject heading assignment (something called FAST). Documentation of how DC is implemented in CORC is also promised.
2. Don demonstrated his work with pathfinders. We all ended up with an improved understanding of the process and how to use the system, but we also generated a long list of questions. To make sure we capture them for future reference, I've listed them below.
How can we display a CORC pathfinder from a unit library Web site? Do we have to have a static copy of it or can we simply point to the one that resides in the CORC database?
Is it possible to have "live" summaries in pathfinders--in other words, if someone fixed a typo in the CORC record containing the summary, will the correction show up in the pathfinder? If no, how might we be notified when a CORC record (or URL) included in one of our pathfinders is changed?
Could we get someone with more experience with pathfinders to come here and help us?
How about licensed resources? How to include them in a pathfinder? What are the issues associated with doing so?
How might we harvest pathfinders that CUL staff have already done? Don demonstrated this functionality in CORC, but we're not sure what the system is doing when it harvests one of our sites.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing pathfinders in CORC vs locally?
***************************
Please feel free to add to or comment on these notes!
--Karen
Last modified 1999-09-12
ksc10@cornell.edu