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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 42 | December 1999
Charting the information universe
NLA delegates to the 1999 National Cataloguing Conference. Left to right: Anne Daniels, Margaret Kennedy and Pam Dunlop
Sixteen staff members from the Library were among the 250 conference delegates at the 13th National Cataloguing Conference held in Brisbane on 1315 October. The keynote speaker was Tom Delsey of the National Library of Canada who spoke on facilitating access to online information resources. Two National Library staff members, Pam Dunlop and Margaret Kennedy presented papers, and Andrew Wells and Julia Trainor conducted an interactive session on future issues for Kinetica.
Pam Dunlop, manager of the cataloguing operations in the National Library has been involved in an international process recommending changes to the provisions for serials in the current Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. These changes have become necessary to better accommodate new forms of material, and to improve the description of serials and other resources that appear in successive parts.
In her paper Serials: a climate for change, Pam explains the need for the changes. AACR2 rules have remained book-oriented, they are hard to apply to new forms of media, they present difficulties in todays online catalogues and there are a number of varying standards applying to serials. Pam describes a move to incorporate the concept of an ongoing publication into the cataloguing code, and the various options or models that have been proposed to the Joint Steering Committee for AACR. She outlines the discussion process adopted and summarises recommendations to the steering committee, noting how these would affect serial cataloguing.
Margaret Kennedy is the manager of the Librarys automated library management system. In her paper Future systems she focuses on the changes which technology has produced in the ways libraries acquire, provide access to, and preserve carriers of information.
The development of library cataloguing standards has been a significant achievement of the past 30 years, but Margaret asks whether they will they be adequate to cope with the challenges of the electronic age.
Exploring the role of technology further, Margaret suggests that solutions to some of the problems being faced may have to come from outside the library sector. Nevertheless, she sees a strong role for librarians in influencing technology so that timely solutions are available for current and perceived needs, and her paper includes some advice on how this might be achieved.
Anecdotal evidence and data collected by libraries indicate that many users are unsure of the most appropriate place to searchthe catalogue or the web site? Margaret argues the need for simple and seamless solutions as the desirable way of the future. She envisages future library systems as being built to accommodate multiple standards and being able to cope with complex relationships between records and documents.
Finally, the paper addresses the very challenging future for technical service librarians in the twenty-first century.
The full text of these papers, together with many other papers presented by members of the National Librarys staff, is available on the National Librarys web site at: http://www.nla.gov.au/nla/staffpaper/
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: lkirwan@nla.gov.au