









































115

CONVERSATION GROUP

Top Concerns of Technical 
Services Staff
Notes taken by Heather Hicks, Technical Services Librarian, Southwestern Baptist 
Theological Seminary

About twenty interested individuals met on Tuesday evening, June 
11, 2019, for the regular preconference technical services conversa-
tion group. In their normal manner of freewheeling conversations, the 
attendees mentioned and discussed a variety of topics. The following 
is a summary of some of the topics and thoughts expressed.

Topic: Summaries in MARC field 520:
• Leslie - Hyperbolic summaries for books, not representative of 

content but for selling; summaries that are ethically compromis-
ing. Do we keep, do we delete? Some keep if fairly representative, 
some delete.

Topic: Ebook records (The problem of bad cataloging records and how 
to handle these challenges best):
• Catalog/cataloging ebooks - poor records. Catalogers do not have 

enough time to update the master records, which defeats the 
purpose of WMS and moves the problem to the next cataloger, 
defeating cooperative cataloging.

• Records come with generic, unhelpful subject headings like “Reli-
gion” for all religious books. Need to fix before import. Update 
master record? What to do? Any best practices? Most update for 
local use unless the batch is too large.



116  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

• Can we keep up with OCLC adding content? Cooperative catalog-
ing? Speed is an issue (perhaps number of catalogers as well?)

• Contents notes in ebooks - Are they even needed, since the 
resource is so easily accessed to find content; or can we hyper-
link them directly, combining the two?

• Is there a good forum or a proper forum for discussing ebook 
issues with OCLC? Public lists are more responsive than private 
channels.

• Leslie recommends OCLC AskQC office hours - a good place to 
present dissatisfaction with OCLC on broader metadata issues. 
Sessions have an appointed topic with option to introduce other 
topics.

• Redundant title results in machine-generated table of contents 
505 notes - how does this affect our search algorithms? Does it 
hinder, does it help?

• Phil - put in keywords for discovery or leave them out for clean 
search (access vs. precision). At what point is retrieval compro-
mised? Which is better for the user? Access or clean system? 
Perhaps a good balance.

Topic: OCLC:
• No credit for OCLC work.
• Lots of money, and quality is not worth it.
• OCLC competition? State cooperation: will state consortia provide 

what OCLC is failing to do? Again, this breaks up the global unit 
of knowledge, defeating the purpose of cooperative cataloging.

Topic: New RDA Toolkit/LRM - too far in advance to discuss much now:
• Moving to the New RDA/LRM with only digital access. Other librar-

ies don’t have the option to access the current rules. No print 
version. Not equally accessible to all libraries and librarians, not 
in keeping with the general rules of the library cooperative envi-
ronment. 

• New LRM - makes sense of relationships in a linked-data environ-
ment. Combines FRBR/FRAD/FRSAD.



Conversation Group 117

Topic: Training of catalogers:
• What is being taught to catalogers? Uneducated catalogers are 

entering the field. Library Science programs are not requiring 
cataloging classes. Doing information organization. Training - 
what should it be that we do?

• Cataloging as apprenticeship. Documentation is key. Lifelong 
learning. Do our best to be aware of issues and learn as much as 
possible.

Topic: “Multiple” subdivisions in authority records:
• Example: Bashfulness $x Religious aspects $x Buddhism. These 

are being put into one string for the linked database.
• Can still use old headings until the new specific subject heading 

is available and authorized.
• LC/OCLC will update these automatically so wait for them to be 

updated.

Small pitch for TCB testimonies by Leslie.

Meeting adjourned.


