[DCRB-L] WG4, Pt. I - whys and wherefores

[Deborah J. Leslie]

Dear colleagues,

Jain Fletcher, who is now in Austin Texas attending a meeting of the Music Librarians' Association, asked me to replace part I of her outline with text. The remaining parts will be replaced with text as they become available. Please see http://www.folger.edu/bsc/dcrb/wg4outline.doc

The new text is also appended below. 

___________________________
Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S. 
Head of Cataloging
Folger Shakespeare Library
201 East Capitol St., S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20003
202.675-0369 (p)
202.675-0328 (f)
djleslie at folger.edu
www.folger.edu

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DCRM Appendix (WG4)
Collection Level Cataloging

Rational for collection level guidelines

 Collection level guidelines are offered here as a way of addressing an 
increasing trend towards treating large collections of similar material 
with one overall record (or a sequence, or a hierarchy, of records).  
These guidelines are intended to cover groups of materials that consist 
entirely or mostly of individual pieces that, taken separately, are 
readily "catalog-able", but are being considered for collection level 
treatment for one of a variety of specific reasons.  Although some of 
these specific reasons will be outlined below, the following scenario 
gives an indication of how useful such a treatment can be.  An 
institution has procured the library of an 18th century philosopher and 
one of the specifications is that the library be kept together as a 
physical unit.  The philosopher's library is expected to be a huge boon 
for research and the institution wants to provide immediate access to 
the collection, even while starting the process of cataloging each item 
in it.  This measure is undertaken because delay is anticipated during 
the initial stages, while the institution applies for grant funding.  
Further delay is expected occur beyond that point, because of the time 
needed to hire and train staff, as well as to catalog the individual 
pieces.  In this case, a collection level record can be a positive 
interim solution for providing access.

 Inherent in the above scenario are some of the reasons these 
guidelines are being addressed to a special materials-oriented 
audience, even though these guidelines would be equally applicable to 
similar collections held in any kind of library.  One of the reasons 
for this focus is that a special collections library is more likely to 
be willing to treat collections with particular consideration than a 
"mainstream" library might.  Libraries directed towards the acquisition 
of more recent materials might well receive collections, but it is less 
common that they would have a willingness to consider, nor yet that 
they would have the apparatus in place, for treating such collections 
in a different way from their ordinary processing.  For that reason, 
such a library will often disperse materials originally gathered as a 
collection throughout their shelves, often with no acknowledgment of 
their prior cohesion.  

 Another reason that these guidelines are included as a part of DCRM 
and are addressed to a special materials constituency is that there is 
more likelihood that material having historical significance or rich in 
bibliographical detail will be deposited in, given to, or collected by 
special materials libraries.  The historical nature or bibliographical 
interest of such material would call for the type of special attention 
commended by DCRM, containing as it does accepted rules for descriptive 
treatment of rare and special materials.  While DCRM is not the primary 
focus of these collection level guidelines, its influence will be 
recognized at various points throughout.

Material covered by these guidelines

 As stated above, there are a variety of reasons why a collection level 
approach might be considered.  Some of the most prominent of these are 
listed below, as a way of representing the range of potential for these 
guidelines.

 	1)  Collection level treatment might be employed to address 
situations where the individual items tend to fall into lower 
cataloging priorities.  Two examples of this kind of situation are 
given below.

		a)  Collections which consist of large numbers of 
smaller or ephemeral publications.  Examples of these types of 
publication include printed matter with minimal textual content, such 
as pamphlets, brochures, catalogs, programs, broadsides and the like.  
These materials are held by the institution because they are considered 
worthy adjuncts to the institution's research emphasis or its 
collecting profile, but having large numbers of them in compact spaces 
often means that the individual items are seen as more time-consuming 
to catalog than they are worth.  Contributing to the lack of access for 
these materials is the fact that their size and shape might "doom" them 
to an existence in boxes, drawers or other out-of-the-way places.  In 
these locations, they may also suffer in a state of little or no 
organization.  These marginalized collections may be known only through 
word of mouth (if they are known at all) or might found only through 
serendipity, if they have at least brief entries in the catalog.  

		b)  Collections consisting mainly of formats that the 
institution does not normally catalog, because there are no specialists 
in those formats on staff.  These would include scores, maps, graphics, 
and even serials.  The library may need to wait for grant funding or 
have a cooperative agreement with another unit or institution to 
catalog these other formats, but there can often be a significant delay 
before the materials are fully cataloged, during which time access is 
still desirable.

	In either of the types of categories given above, the intention 
is that each piece will eventually be cataloged.  In these cases, the 
collection level record will be deleted when the individual parts have 
been completed.  However, in the short term, collection level 
cataloging might be seen as a constructive alternative to the idea of 
allowing such collections to languish.  This measure would be 
undertaken with a commitment to a plan of returning to the collection 
at a future time--possibly with grant money firmly in hand--to provide 
individual cataloging for each piece.  

	This solution also fits the scenario of the philosopher's 
library given above, as it would any collection facing potential delays 
before full cataloging treatment can be rendered.  

 2)  Collection level treatment can be considered for collections whose 
elements have similarity of title, authorship, subject, or 
genre/format, might be so extensive that the addition of each piece 
into a database would generate a multiplicity of similar entries and 
actually serve to hide rather than aid access to it.  This would be a 
situation where "the forest" cannot be seen for all "the trees".  This 
situation is well described in Nichols' paper [footnote here].  In such 
a case, collection level treatment may be seen as the best means of 
access and as the most viable end product for the collection.

 3)  Collection-level cataloging might also be used for the opposite 
reason from the first reason listed above.  In this case, it would be 
used for collections that are considered to be of particular importance 
in the library and already have all their component items either fully 
or partially cataloged.  This measure would be taken as a way of 
providing better information about the nature of a collection as an 
entity.  Even with a cataloging record for each piece, a collection 
level record can serve to provide a broad representation of the whole 
collection, affording yet another way for users to gain a comprehensive 
understanding of it.  In this case, the individually-cataloged items 
would act much like analyzed entries for the collection level record.

	There is also a potential variation of the above-described 
condition, where an institution decides to highlight some of its most 
prominent collections by selecting images from them for mounting on the 
Web.  In providing a metadata description for each of the images, the 
institution may be more interested in highlighting the collection 
itself, rather than, or in addition to, the specific items from which 
the images came.  In this case, a single collection-level record may be 
created as a representation of the entire collection, for purposes of 
the metadata record.

 4)  The guidelines found here may also be used in cases where an 
institution wants to redress the insufficiencies of an existing record 
with non-standard collection level treatment.  In many institutions, 
this treatment may have been given in the past for either of the first 
two reasons above.  Staff may be surprised to run across collections 
described in their catalog records (possibly while performing 
retrospective conversion projects) where a past cataloger had treated 
groups of materials in an overarching, yet non-standard kind of way.  
Since a decision to redress inadequate treatment would require added 
work, this solution would be appropriate only for those collections 
deemed worthy of the extra preparation time.

Material not covered by these guidelines

 The situations described above involve collections comprised mostly of 
previously published material, pulled together either by an individual 
prior to the institution's receiving it or by institutional staff at 
some point after receipt.  The collection may have been brought 
together for one of a variety of reasons, but the underlying 
characteristic of this kind of collection is that its particular 
amalgamation of items makes the collection entirely unique.  It is 
important to be very clear about this distinction, because these 
guidelines are not intended to address collections of material that are 
not unique, such as compilations assembled by publishers (or similar 
entities) and re-issued as a unit, often as a commercial strategy for 
reducing stock.  Indeed, before approaching the cataloging of a 
collection, one of the first steps the cataloger should take is to 
determine whether it was uniquely gathered or there were multiple 
iterations of the collection intended for distribution for a wider 
audience.  Those collections determined to have been issued as a whole 
and intended for wider distribution should be considered as published.  
The cataloging guidelines found in DCRM or AACR2 cover this type of 
publication and its particular features, such as how to provide a title 
for those found without a unifying title, or how to enter its contents. 


 Even more importantly, the present guidelines are not intended to 
cover more "traditional" archival, or manuscript, collections.  
Archival/manuscript collections are generally comprised of a mixture of 
materials mostly generated through personal or corporate activity.  The 
majority of this material would be manuscript (letters, diaries, notes, 
memos, etc.) or printed material not intended for general or commercial 
distribution (reports, etc.).  Guidelines for handling 
archival/manuscript collections are addressed in Archives, Personal 
Papers and Manuscripts and in a number of SAA MARC-related handbooks.  
Therefore, if such a collection belongs to an institution or unit which 
does not normally catalog archives/manuscripts, it would be advisable 
to consider using APPM--or SAA's current archival/manuscript "best 
practices" guidelines--and either consult with, or turn the work over 
to, an experienced archival cataloger.

Expected background/experience of people using these guidelines

 Various assumptions are steering the style and information found in 
these guidelines.  One of them is that libraries and institutions 
considering collection level treatment of the type specified here may 
or may not have manuscript or archival collection catalogers in their 
institution, let alone within the same department.  Therefore, it is 
assumed that special materials catalogers with only a modicum of 
archival cataloging experience would be carrying out this collection 
level treatment.  The guidelines will aim at those with a lower level 
of experience in archives/manuscripts cataloging and preparation, in 
order to be able to encompass the most important aspects of the work. 


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Jain Fletcher 
Head, Technical Services Division
Dept. of Special Collections 
A1713 YRL
Research Library - UCLA
Box 951575
Los Angeles, CA   90095-1575

v: (310) 794-4096
f:  (310) 206-1864