Links Monitoring and Maintenance Committee
Minutes
Sept. 23, 1999
The following committee members and liaisons were in attendance:
Daniel Cromwell (Member) Science Cataloging Unit & Copy Cataloging Unit,
Priscilla Williams (Member) Social Science Cataloging Unit & Documents Reference,
Robert Brown (Member) Serials Cataloging,
Lawan Orser (Member) Database Maintenance Unit
MaryGay Anderson (Member) Documents (Reference and Selection)
Denise Bennett (Liaison) MSL Reference, Selector & MSL Serials Unit
Rich Bennett (Liaison Systems, PSC & WebLUIS Task Force
Jimmie Lundgren (Chair) Science Cataloging Unit, MSL & CAGER's
Absent were Michelle Crump (Liaison), Dot Hope (Appointing Chair) and
Nelda Schwartz (Member). Jimmie announced that Nelda had been withdrawn
from the committee due to conflicting work responsibilities.
The meeting began with introductions and sharing of comments and concerns from each participant. Some topics that arose were:
Locations, sublocations for electronic resources: how is it decided which one to use for a particular title? Generally it seems that currently "elec,jour" is used only for electronic journals, "elec" is used for indexes and monographic resources and "docs,elec" is used for Federal documents whether serial or monographic. We have not been entirely consistent in this so far, however, and it may not yet be fully recorded in written procedures. It would be good to obtain or develop definitions of the types of materials and corresponding location codes.
Would it be helpful to designate a new sublocation for documents electronic journals as distinct from other documents? Instituting a new sublocation could result in an increased workload for Documents staff, but the use of the new sublocation could be a tool for implementing more powerful bibliographic services for users of electronic serials. How much burden would it actually be? How many documents journals are in the catalog with location "docs,elec"? Are there potential methods of implementing such a change that would lessen the staff burden? Would it also help to discriminate among other subgroups of electronic resources such as free versus paid in sublocation?
Would it be helpful to involve representation from HC and Law in the committee? Yes, that could be very beneficial. Jerry Molina does distribute the list of broken links to these libraries every month already. Jimmie will suggest requesting their representation on the committee to Dot.
Could FCLA staff members attend a future meeting to share information about creation of the url list? We will look into this possibility.
Who is adding links other than RS, docs, spec coll & MSL serials staff? Staff in branches? It will be important when training is planned to include everyone who needs training.
The question of whether or not to include links to journals when only abstracts, etc. and not full text is available is still a matter to be weighed and discussed. The ability to include information in the display warning the user that the link leads only to summaries, etc. may be of significance in the decision. The current 856 guidelines permit inclusion of links to abstracts, summaries, etc. but place the responsibility for deciding this with the selector of the particular item. It is not known if guidelines have been developed in collection management to assist selectors in making these choices.
The committee is very happy with the success of the current workflow for identifying, reporting and correcting broken links. The Linkbot software is run monthly by Jerry Molina of the Database Maintenance Unit against the FCLA-provided list of url's. Then the identified broken links are put into a report in the form of a spreadsheet displaying LUIS number, catalog partition, short title, url, and type of error. Copies of the report are sent by email and on paper to each of the processing units, including Law and Health Center as well as Documents and the various RS units.
The question was raised as to whether or
not there would be a benefit to having all of the Internet sites reviewed
manually on an infrequent basis, such as annually. While it would not
significantly help with identification of bad links, it might in some
cases help the library identify changes in title or content of sites that
have been cataloged. It was suggested that this might best be implemented
by subject selectors for the particular resources because they may need
to decide cases that are no longer worth inclusion or discover new related
materials that are associated with that site. If subgroups of Internet
resources were identified and reported, they could be systematically examined
during slow times at the reference desk by those selectors who chose to
do so. The greatest number of sites would be documents, and for these
other methods might suffice depending on GPO services.
Strategies and Plans:
In relation to the first issue to be addressed: Review existing and recommended documentation. Each participant will collect relevant documentation from their area and share it with the group. This will enable us to obtain an overview of what is expected to happen regarding selection, recording and maintenance of Internet resources in the online catalog in different parts of the library and how things fit together. Everyone will examine the 856 guidelines and suggest any needed changes.
We will each keep in mind the points and questions raised above, and take initiative in following up through gathering more information and sending it to the group, and through sharing ideas by email whenever decisions and actions by the group are needed or desirable or little light bulbs go off in our heads. Please feel free to even suggest ideas that you know won't work because in looking together at why they won't work we may stumble on something better.
Rich asked if the group would like to have an email list created for us by Suzy Shaw. Since we expect to rely heavily on email to communicate and accomplish our goals, we felt this would be very helpful and Rich is going to do this for us.
It was suggested that the group next meet
in person after the Midwinter ALA meeting when there will have been a
report from GPO on government Internet publishing. The group seemed in
favor of this timing.
Prepared by: Jimmie Lundgren , November 9, 1999
