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NACO/CONSER/SACO 
Listen & Learn Session
By Richard A. Lammert, Concordia Theological Seminary

ABSTR ACT This Listen & Learn Session provides an opportunity to 
ATLA catalogers participating in one of the ATLA PCC Funnel projects 
(NACO, CONSER, or SACO) to learn about changes (including proposed 
changes) to those programs. The purpose is to give these catalogers the 
knowledge they need to continue to produce work for the national data-
bases at a level expected of all PCC participants.

The NACO/CONSER/SACO Listen & Learn Session provided an 
opportunity for ATLA catalogers who are participants in any of the 
ATLA PCC funnel programs (NACO, CONSER, or SACO) to hear about 
several recent (or expected) changes in practices for those programs—
particularly for NACO catalogers—based primarily on what had been 
presented at the meeting of the PCC (Program for Cooperative Cata-
loging) Operations Committee (OpCo) Meeting in May 2018. Since 
neither the ATLA PCC Funnels Director nor the CONSER Lead were 
able to attend the meeting, the news from this meeting was based on 
posted documents.

The PCC Standing Committee on Training has charged a task force 
with developing a training curriculum for PCC participants in the IFLA 
Library Reference Model (LRM) and the changes in the RDA Toolkit (3R 
project). This task force received its charge in March 2018. In addition, 
the committee has provided updates to the series training materials.

OCLC presented on work that it is doing. In late 2017, OCLC began 
partnering with a handful of libraries on a prototype to demonstrate 
the value of linked data for improving resource-description workflows 
in libraries. Working closely with colleagues in OCLC’s Global Prod-
uct Management and Global Technologies, the OCLC Research team 
launched a service built on the Wikibase platform (including Wikibase 
and WikiMedia). Harvard University will be a library partner in phase 



Listen and Learn Sessions  287

II of this project, so ATLA members may have an opportunity to learn 
more about it after that point.

Because MARC field 264 was defined and authorized several 
years after the release of RDA, OCLC is beginning a project to convert 
all (possible) MARC 260 fields to MARC 264 fields in the 1.5 million 
(12.5%) RDA records that have MARC 260 fields. OCLC will also be 
expanding the capability of Record Manager to work with member-
contributed authority records. When this functionality is added to 
Record Manager, OCLC will offer training webinars later in 2018.

A most interesting presentation at the OpCo meeting was about 
errors in LC–NACO name authority records. From a collection of data 
made from August through October 2017 (which, the presentation 
noted, was not a reflection of the full range and number of errors), 
the researchers found that 63% of errors were made by the Library of 
Congress. (In fiscal year 2017 [October 2016–September 2017], PCC 
contributions exeeded LC contributions by 185.8%. This indicates 
that PCC contributions have fewer errors than contributions from 
the Library of Congress—at least in this data sample.) Since one of 
the more common errors was in access points for compilations, it is 
recommended that the LC–PCC program clarify the policies on those 
access points and revise NACO training materials.

The PCC Identity Management Task Group presented a report 
on the evolving strategies for a changing name authorities land-
scape. Because of changing environmental factors, there is a need 
to reconsider membership criteria within NACO. There are 9,000 
OCLC members with cataloging authorizations, compared with 700 
NACO members. One of the PCC’s strategic directions is to “expand the 
community doing identity management within the framework of the 
PCC.” The results of this effort will evolve as the differing needs (and 
results) of authority control and identity management are considered.

In other changes that have been “almost here” for several years, 
one will actually be completed this year, while one remains yet in the 
future. The Authorities Phase 3B changes in the authority file are 
still being (re)considered. The large-scale “slam” has been modi-
fied, and a less radical approach is most likely, with the timeline to be 
determined. On the other hand, the PCC Directory, which has been 
in preparation for several years, will be operational by this fall. For 
ATLA NACO catalogers, this will mark an important change: instead 



288  ATL A 2018 PROCEEDINGS

of having the PCC program collect statistics for the number of author-
ity records that each member institution has added, each institution 
will be responsible for reporting its own statistics.

The ATLA CONSER Funnel can use additional catalogers. Any ATLA 
member interested in what this entails and how to become involved 
can contact Michael Bradford.

The ATLA SACO Funnel has been approved by the PCC program. 
Now it is necessary to provide some basic training for those ATLA 
catalogers wishing to contribute proposals for LC subject headings 
and LC classification numbers.


