SUNCAT UK Serials Union Catalogue

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SUNCATUK Serials Union Catalogue

• Leah Halliday
• leah.halliday_at_ed.ac.uk

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Overview

• Introduction and background
• Functions
• How
• Schedule
• Progress

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Sponsors

• Joint Information Systems Committee of HE/FE
  Funding Councils (JISC)
• Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP)
• SUNCAT Steering Committee
• Chair Professor Derek Law (University of
  Strathclyde)
• Secretary Chris Awre (JISC)
• with representatives of the JISC, the RSLP, the
  British Library and the wider academic community

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Project partnership

• Project Partners
• University of Edinburgh (Lead Partner EDINA/EUL)
• Ex Libris
• Associate Partners
• National Library of Scotland
• University of Glasgow
• Libraries at Oxford University
• Libraries at Cambridge University
• Contributing (Phase 1) Partners
• The larger university research libraries in the
  UK (22)

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Project Team

• Project Director Peter Burnhill
• Project Manager Leah Halliday
• ALEPH/Systems Noam Kaminer Julia Goldshtein
  (Ex Libris)
• User Requirements Liz Stevenson (EUL) with Tony
  Kidd (GUL)
• Bibliographic (50) Nathalie Schulz
• Special Advisor Slawek Rozenfeld ?
• Secretary to Revision Committee for AACR
• ? Formerly Head of Computing at ISSN-IC

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Bibliographic Quality Advisory Group

• Alason Roberts (EUL Chair)
• Hugh Taylor (Cambridge)
• Susan Miles (Oxford)
• John Nicklen (NLS)
• Hugh Croll (EUL)
• Slawek Rozenfeld
• Nathalie Schulz (EDINA)

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Feasibility Study

• RSLP focus groups serials location and holdings
  info.
• Priorities comprehensive with user-friendly
  interfaces
• Record quality variable often poor
• Improve standards
• Facilitate m2m interaction

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CONSER

• An international cooperative serials cataloguing
  programme
• Began in early 70s to convert manual records to
  machine-readable format
• Now creates and maintain high-quality
  bibliographic records for serials
• MARC 21, AACR2
• 1M records
• Profile of membership reflects content
• http//www.loc.gov/acq/conser/about.html

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ISSN Register

• Database of all bibliographic records for which
  ISSN numbers have been assigned
• ISSN number, key title, publication frequency,
  language, other forms of title, place of
  publication, publisher
• Links to related titles (former titles, other
  languages, other media)
• 1000 records added/week
• 835, 474 records
• Current journal records with ISSN, 5090
  (Scoping Study)
• All (current and dead) serials records with ISSN,
  1835 (SS)
• www.issn.org

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Scoping Study Priorities

• Location of holdings
• Source of high-quality records for upgrading
  local catalogues
• Rapidly include the wide-range of titles held in
  UK
• Ensure geographical and subject-based coverage
• Supports open standards and interoperates with
  related services

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SUNCAT Development schedule

• Phase 1 (03/04) 22 large research libraries
• Phase 2 (05/06) extending to 200 Contributing
  Partners
• Phase 3 (07 --) Consolidation

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Development plan

• Information content, scope and functionality
• Critical mass in terms of serials coverage
• high quality bibliographic records, including the
  ISSN
• means for cost-effective upgrade of local
  records, inc ISSN
• a technology platform that will scale
• Prioritise data not software
• Use Aleph 500 to build SUNCAT
• Accept de facto definitions of serial

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The data

• ISSN as spine for unique identification
• CONSER as source of high-quality catalogue
  records in MARC21 format
• Records from Contributing Library Partners 22 in
  03/04
• Multiple schemas for import
• MARC21, UKMARC, UNIMARC,(other ISO 2709)
• Online/batch conversion/fix routines
• e.g. UK-MARC-gtMARC21

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The Melvyl Search Screen
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Displays Brief Records for Hits
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Display of Full Record
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Phase 1 Development

• CONSER and ISSN loaded and matched 06/03
• Records from 5 Associate partners loaded and
  matched by September 03
• Demonstrator at Online Information 12/03
• Second cluster of contributing libraries loaded
  by April 04
• Third cluster looks to Phase 2
• Upgrades available from Spring/summer 04
• Service launch September 04

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Scottish Dimension

• Three of five Associate Partners Scottish
• Value of NLS
• 110,000 records 65,000 are high quality
• Longstanding experience of MARC21
• Many Scottish publications not represented in
  academic collections

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Progress

• CONSER and ISSN loaded
• Specifying interface customisation wrt user
  requirements
• Working with Associate Partners to
• Describe their data and identify required
  conversion on load
• Specify nature and extent of work required from
  contributing libraries to maximise benefit to
  them and SUNCAT
• Streamline contribution process

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Contacts

• www.edina.ac.uk/projects
• www.suncat.ac.uk to be website URL
• EDINA HelpDesk
• Email edina_at_ed.ac.uk
• Tel [phone]
• Fax [phone]
• Nathalie Schulz (Project Officer - Bibliographic)
  
• Liz Stevenson (User Requirements)
• Leah Halliday (Project Manager)
• Peter Burnhill (Project Director)
• Chris Awre (JISC Contact)
• c.awre_at_kcl.ac.uk