Cataloging and Organizing Digital Resources:
A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians
By Anne M. Mitchell and Brian E. Surratt
A Review
With their dynamically changing nature, online information resources have presented many challenges to librarians who are involved in their management and organization. The management process encompasses many functions across different library units, including collection development, acquisitions, administration and bibliographic control. Each stage of the management process has its own set of challenges as well as needs for tools and standards. It is important that the players in each of those stages not only to stay on top of their own game, but also possess a good basic understanding of the overall "game plan" in order to help all the management activities flow as efficiently as possible.
This manual offers a good basic overview of the online resources management process, with a strong focus on bibliographic control issues--methods for organizing and providing access to online information resources. The work is organized into ten chapters. The introductory chapter addresses the overall workflow of managing online resources, emphasizing the first three stages of the management process: collection development, acquisition, and administration. It also includes a special section on developing and managing local digital libraries. Chapters 2 through 9 examine various issues and strategies surrounding bibliographic control and provide step-by-step guidance for analyzing and cataloging online resources. The last chapter looks at two trends: open access and Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records(FRBR).
With their background in electronic resources cataloging and metadata coordination, the authors present a comprehensive review of bibliographic control strategies and practices in chapters 2 through 9, accompanied by plenty of practical suggestions and examples. Chapter 2, "Establishing the Cataloging Work Flow", discusses how libraries can add records for online resources to the library catalog by performing original or copy cataloging for individual records and by batch loading record sets. It also includes strategies for reviewing and updating entries in the catalog. Chapter 3, "Exploring Alternatives to Cataloging", looks at three widely used alternatives to cataloging--Web lists, context-sensitive linking, and federated searching. It provides a succinct review of the strengths, weaknesses, and implementation of these alternatives. Chapter 4, "Determining Bibliographic Control in the Online Environment", outlines issues to be considered for formulating a library's bibliographic-control strategies, given the options discussed in chapters 2and 3, to meet its unique access needs.
Chapters 5 through 9 are exclusively devoted to the cataloging of online resources. Chapter 5, "Understanding Cataloging Rules and Guidelines", briefly introduces the key sources for cataloging rules and standards involved in organizing digital resources. Chapter 6, "Analyzing the Bibliographic Structure of Online Resources", offers a methodology for analyzing online resources prior to cataloging and serves as a guide for the succeeding three chapters that provide step-by-step instructions for cataloging monographs, serials, and integrated resources in the online format. Plenty of examples are provided on cataloging the three different classes of online resources, including fully worked out coding for MARC21 records and detailed explanations. The scope of the examples covers major variations in each class of online resources.
This "How-To-Do-It Manual" provides an overview of the role and strategic options of bibliographic control in the context of online resources management process along with step-by-step guidance for cataloging online resources. As such, it offers a good balance of information appropriate for practitioners of online resources cataloging. Moreover, the non-cataloging chapters may also be of general interest to those involved in collection development, acquisition, and administration of online resources.
Published in 2005 by: Neal- Schuman Publishers, Inc., New York, New York. ( xv, 219 p.) ISBN: 1-55570-521-9 ( pbk.- $75.00) How-To-Do-It Manuals for Librarians: no. 139.
Reviewed by: Paoshan Yue
Electronic Resources Access Librarian
University of Nevada, Reno
Last updated: December 8, 2005
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