NLA at work
Serials visible index disappears
The Australian serials visible index that occupied many metres of floor space does not exist any more following a serial conversion project that began in September 1996 when a small team of four was established. All records contained in this manual serial check-in file for Australian serials have now been catalogued onto Kinetica.
Altogether 45 060 serial records were converted, resulting in another 40 567 Australian serial titles on the NBD. An additional 9913 automated serial check-in records were created for the Librarys local system.
All serials needed to be physically located in the Library to have the holdings checked. A number of the manual records were found to be for monographs that were subsequently catalogued as found. A number of serials were not located, despite duplicate searches.
An interesting phenomenon was the drop in the hit rate on the NBD once cataloguing reached the letter m, particularly for company and school publications. Perhaps similar conversions in other libraries faltered at this point?
Many of the serials converted were unique. Some were interesting or useful Australian literary serials such as the Ern Malley Journal. There were a good many ethnic publications from the 1950s and 1960s especially connected with the Snowy River project, and there were also a large number of historical newsletters and company reports. Most of the latter had no previous record on the NBD but they now provide an interesting overview of the history of Australian business from the 1940s to the 1980s, when many of them ceased.
This task completed, the conversion team (now down to two) is working its way through a file of Australian serial titles that have closed holdings.
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: lkirwan@nla.gov.au