









































Listen and Learn sessions  269

NACO/CONSER/SACO
Richard A. Lammert, Technical Services and Systems Librarian,  
Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne

ABSTRACT Annually, the Operations Committee (OpCo) of the Program for 
Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) presents a two-day meeting in Washington, 
DC, to advise participants in the PCC programs of what they need to know 
to work cooperatively with all the other catalogers in the program. This 
year, as last year, an online meeting replaced the in-person meeting, but the 
purpose was the same. This Listen and Learn session will update Atla par-
ticipants in the NACO, CONSER, or SACO funnels with the information that 
was presented at OpCo so that their work in the Atla funnels will adhere to 
the current practices in the PCC programs. The session also presents news 
of changes coming in programs and tools that funnel participants use.

This NACO/CONSER/SACO Listen and Learn session has two purposes. 
First, it provides an opportunity to review the state of the Atla PCC 
(Program for Cooperative Cataloging) funnels. Second—and chiefly—
it serves to update Atla catalogers on current best practices for PCC 
cataloging, as well as a view to what to expect in the future.

During the last fiscal year of Atla (September 2020–August 2021), 
Atla catalogers contributed almost 1,100 new or changed name au-
thority records in the NACO (name authority) funnel. For the period 
from September 2021 to date (approximately 75 percent of the fiscal 
year), contributions number slightly more than 600. The slight (an-
nualized) decrease is not a concern. The number of active institu-
tions in the funnel, however, does present a concern. For 2019–2020, 
there were nine active institutions. For 2020–2021, there were eight 
active institutions. Currently, there are seven active institutions. We 
can expect that number to continue to drop as experienced NACO 
catalogers retire, threatening the viability of the funnel.

The demise of the CONSER (serials) funnel has already happened. 
During the last fiscal year, one Atla cataloger contributed over 800 
new or changed serials records. For the current fiscal year, the 
number is five records—with the one contributing member having 
moved to a new position. This part of the funnel will remain dor-



270  atLa 2022 ProCeedinGs

mant unless or until a new serials cataloger can contribute records 
through the CONSER funnel. The SACO (subject authority) funnel is 
much smaller, with nine new subject headings or LC classification 
numbers contributed last fiscal year, with thirteen to date in this 
fiscal year. This funnel will also suffer from cataloger retirements 
in the coming years.

The main purpose of the NACO/CONSER/SACO session is to provide 
a summary of the Operations Committee of the Program for Coop-
erative Cataloging held in May of each year. Much that affects the 
work of PCC catalogers is presented at this meeting; the remainder 
of this report is primarily a summary of what affects Atla catalogers 
the most. This year, the two-day meeting was completely virtual. The 
agenda for the meeting is available online (https://www.loc.gov/aba/
pcc/documents/OpCo-2022/Agenda-OpCo-2022.pdf); catalogers are 
encouraged to review the agenda to find out if there was anything 
significant to them that was not reported at this session, and to view 
the attached documents and recordings.

The Standing Committee on Applications reported that they have 
completed a project of creating an ISNI-to-Wikidata mapping. Cur-
rently, they are preparing to survey the potential implications of 
abolishing the practice of coding 008/29 (“Ref status” in OCLC) as “b” 
and including a 667 note in non-Latin script NARs.

The Standing Committee on Standards reported that they are 
considering possible exceptions to the Provider-Neutral Guidelines 
(by adding 506 fields for an open-access version). The committee has 
drafted some suggestions for place relationships in 370 subfields $i 
and $4. The presenter at the conference also provided an update on 
the BABEL project, the project for adding ISO 639-3 codes to MARC 
records for increased granularity in recording languages.

The activities of the Standing Committee on Training are prob-
ably the most important of all the PCC activities for Atla funnel cat-
alogers. The committee is developing training material for using 
the Official RDA Toolkit, LC-PCC Policy Statements, and Metadata 
Guidance Documents in cataloging monographs. The introductory 
training has a target release date of fall 2022—coming before the Of-
ficial RDA Toolkit becomes valid for actual work, which will not be 
before October 2022. The standing committee will release the com-
plete training in winter 2022–2023. Other activities of the Standing 
Committee on Training include the completion of videos for train-
ing in the use of OCLC FAST; and the creation of FAQs on authority 

https://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/documents/OpCo-2022/Agenda-OpCo-2022.pdf
https://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/documents/OpCo-2022/Agenda-OpCo-2022.pdf


Listen and Learn sessions  271

control for authors and creators, as well as FAQs for catalogers on 
the process of contacting creators/contributors during creation of 
name authorities.

OCLC always provides an update on its activities at the Opera-
tions Committee meeting. The main report from OCLC this year 
was on their project of converting the OCLC-defined encoding level 
codes, and eventually eliminating those codes from the WorldCat 
database. OCLC has already completed some of the conversions, but 
the bulk of the project, converting and eliminating M-level records, 
is yet to come.

Identity management was a focus of the meeting this year. The 
Program for Cooperative Cataloging has several groups working on 
advising and providing leadership to the cataloging community as 
authority control shifts from an approach primarily based on creat-
ing text strings to an approach focused on managing identities and 
entities. Of particular interest was the follow-up to the Wikidata Pilot 
conducted last year. A survey of pilot participants showed that most 
supported the possibility of Wikidata becoming an official registry 
for PCC contributions. If this happens, there will be an additional op-
portunity for Atla catalogers to become involved in authority work, 
one that would probably not require as much training as the current 
NACO program.

RDA (or, more specifically, the Official RDA Toolkit) was a focus 
at the beginning of the two-day Operations Committee meeting, 
as well as a focus at the end of the two days. Here are a few high-
lights from those presentations: The implementation of the new 
RDA Toolkit will not be before October 2022 (although it appears 
likely that a proposed timeline for implementation will not even 
be presented to the PCC community before November 2022). Meta-
data Guidance Documents, which include examples and detailed 
guidance for the use of RDA, have been created and linked to the 
toolkit. Finally, although the revision to RDA does not permit the 
use of fictitious and real non-human entities as creators of works, 
the PCC will continue the policy of the original RDA that does al-
low such practice.

Atla NACO catalogers are encouraged to subscribe to the PCC dis-
cussion list (PCClist), which provides important updates throughout 
the year. For example, several months ago the PCC gave notice of a 
“Revised Report on Recording Gender in Personal Name Authority 
Records,” which all PCC participants should follow in their own work.



272  atLa 2022 ProCeedinGs


