ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


271

To Our Readers …
This is our last issue as editors of the News.

To all of you that have taken the time
to send us personal letters, news releases, no­
tices of new publications, and everything else
(yes, even the occasional correction), we say
thank you. W e couldn’t have done it without
you.

W e would particularly like to compliment
Eileen Mahoney and her staff at the A LA Cen­
tral P roducion Unit in Chicago for the excel­
lent job they have done for us. Not enough peo­
ple know of and appreciate this staff; they pro­
duce almost all of A LA ’s publications, and are
some of the world’s kindest and most patient

 
 

 
 
 

 

 

Christopher Wright 
Assistant Director 

A LA  Washington Office

There was genuine excitement in his voice 
when Joseph Howard, chief of the Library of 
Congress’ Serials Cataloging Division, suggest­
ed to a room full of librarians in October that 
a new U.S.–Canadian cataloging project might 
someday mean “ a serial can be cataloged once 
in the U.S.— once in the world— and never be 
cataloged again.”  The amount o f work saved 
would be staggering.

Howard was talking about CONSER, the Co­
operative Conversion of Serials project, which 
is designed to build a 300,000-title computer 
catalog describing the serials held by eight ma­
jor North American libraries. The file will be 
stored on the Ohio College Library Center com­
puter and will be made available to the public 
at the cost o f reproducing the computer tapes. 
The project is scheduled to begin operation 
early next year. Initial funds have been pro­
vided by the Ford Foundation through the 
Council on Library Resources.

CONSER is an important development for 
the whole world. The way it has come about 
says something about the energy and resource­
fulness o f librarians and raises some questions 
about the way library cooperation is evolving 
in the United States.

The project began, at least formally, in the 
summer o f 1973 when about two dozen people 
formed another of the library world’s myriad 
ad hoc discussion groups at the ALA Confer­
ence in Las Vegas. Encouraged by staff from 
CLR and led by a small steering committee, 
the group produced a plan. After some discus-

people. They do a brilliant job in turning 
“ amateur editor”  requests into a professional 
product.

Most of our effort in the past two years has 
been to make the News easier to read— more 
boxes, headlines, boldfaces, and so on. W e 
think it will work out well that Ms. Collins 
hopes to expand the content of the News. W e 
wish her the best, and hope all of you will as­
sist her as much as you did us.

Sincerely, 
A l l a n  J . D y s o n  

and S u s a n a  H i n o j o s a  
Editors, C&RL News

Inside Washington
ion with the library community, not all of it 
riendly, CLR and the principal participating 
ibraries began negotiating with OCLC, and 
he project is hoped to be underway by the 
eginning of 1975.

There are three important elements to this 
tory.

First is the fact that CONSER developed 
ore or less spontaneously. Participants at the 
as Vegas meeting have said there appeared 

o be a general feeling among a number of li­
rarians that the time had come to try apply­
ng modern technology to the intractable and 
xpensive problems of serials cataloging. The 
dea was the product of a committee and not 
he brainchild of one person or one institution.

Second, the project has remained throughout 
 nongovernment operation. Even though it 
ill use a version o f LC ’s MARC format and 

he resulting computer tapes will be distributed 
hrough the Library of Congress and the Na­
ional Library of Canada, the ultimate control 
f the project remains in the hands of CLR and 
he participating libraries (four government 
nd four private).
Third, the operation is, for the moment at 

east, critically dependent on a private founda­
ion for support. Also, the Ford Foundation has 
nnounced that because of its own economic 
roblems it will not be able to provide long­
erm operating funds for projects such as this, 
nd once the seed money runs out the libraries 
ust seek help elsewhere. Unofficially, the par­

icipants hope that the Library of Congress will 
ind room in its appropriations for the modest 
ost of maintaining the CONSER network and 
ata base. But for the moment CONSER re­
ains privately funded.

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