[DCRM-L] CERL as an alternative for OCLC?

Tue Apr 14 12:44:22 MDT 2015

It's my understanding, from E. C. Schroeder's presentation at the New York meeting mentioned by Erin, that contributing to HPB does not require additional cataloguing, but rather is a matter of uploading existing records for early printed books (I believe the cut-off date is 1830) from existing local catalogues, complete with copy-specific information.  Once the interface is set up, the process should be completely mechanical and transparent.

Special membership in CERL is not expensive (by the standards of such things); I believe it's €1,000.  Smaller institutions can band together to lower that cost.

But perhaps E. C. can weigh in with more specific (and accurate) details about the value of HPB, and involvement with it?

John Lancaster

P.S.  I've copied Cristina Dondi, CERL Secretary, not a member of this list.

On 2015 Apr 14, at 14:32, Allison Jai O'Dell <ajodell at gmail.com> wrote:

> On that note: many list members at hybrid institutions are used to accepting/using records/data from multiple sources -- most of them being not-OCLC.  I will suggest that we have workflows in place for using CERL data.  Food for thought:  It's 2015; we don't have to choose one 'utility' to do our work, anymore.  Jen's questions about shareability/interoperability are key.  
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> Allison
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> On Tuesday, April 14, 2015, Robert Maxwell <robert_maxwell at byu.edu> wrote:
> While I sympathize with everything Erin says below, I suspect most catalogers on this list are from libraries that are not exclusively rare materials collections, and therefore have to play in the same sandbox that contains all the rest of the library’s collection, that is, a catalog that includes rare materials, archival materials, and general stacks materials of all formats. We couldn’t just drop OCLC and migrate to something else like CERL’s databases. BYU might be interested in pursuing some relationship with CERL and its databases, but let’s face it, it would mean double work. Our rare materials catalogers cannot abandon the library catalog that contains everything else in the collection, so if we were to participate we would have to catalog both in OCLC and CERL (or whatever other database). Therefore, for libraries like us (which I believe is most everyone nowadays except a few very specialized libraries) the best route is probably to try to negotiate the best outcome possible with OCLC and not threaten to leave OCLC (which we couldn’t anyway).
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> Bob
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> Robert L. Maxwell
> Ancient Languages and Special Collections Cataloger
> 6728 Harold B. Lee Library
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> (801)422-5568 
> 
> "We should set an example for all the world, rather than confine ourselves to the course which has been heretofore pursued"--Eliza R. Snow, 1842.
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> From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Erin Blake
> Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2015 10:28 AM
> To: DCRM Users' Group
> Subject: [DCRM-L] CERL as an alternative for OCLC?
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> There already is an organization that has made great strides with rare materials bibliographic data and linked data: CERL (Consortium of European Research Libraries). Unfortunately, the Folger is not a member (yet!) so I can’t access the Heritage of the Printed Book Database (HPB) to find examples, but their other databases and thesauri are available online for free.
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> CERL hosted meetings in New York in January designed to persuade American research libraries to follow Yale’s example and join the consortium. Caroline Duroselle-Melish and I were there to represent the Folger, but I’m afraid I can’t remember exactly who all else was present.
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> RLIN libraries will remember being able to search the HPB when it was part of RLG (back then HPB stood for “Hand Press Book Database”). The difference between what has happened with the HPB data in the years since RLG disappeared, and what happened with RLIN data, is telling.
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> CERL’s Material Evidence in Incunabula database (MEI) is a particularly good example: it pulls bibliographic data from the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue and allows copy-specific provenance evidence to be attached in time-specific chunks with links to thesauri. For example: http://incunabula.cerl.org/cgi-bin/record.pl?rid=il00023000 brings up the record for a book with multiple copies. Click on “more” for the Bodleian copy and you’ll see that it has three time-specific chunks of provenance information based on physical evidence:
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> 1.       An inscription and price on an endleaf let us know that it was in Bologna, owned by Christoph Scheurl, when it was new (late 16th century)
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> 2.       The binding lets us know that it was in Frankfurt-am-Main, owned by Georg Franz Burkhard Kloss, in the 18th century
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> 3.       Oxford shelfmarks let us know it’s been in Oxford, owned by the University, from 1834 or 5 to the present
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> All those places and owners are picked from drop-down menus of data in linked thesauri, and the dates are encoded. Other fields indicate levels of certainty about the data. The former owner’s authority record points back to books he owned. The time and geographic information can be linked to a map with a time-slider and you can watch the book move from Bologna to Frankfurt to Oxford.  
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> Speaking on my own, and not for my institution (where we’re still in shock) I’m much more inclined to devote cataloging efforts to CERL’s infrastructure, where copy-specific details are valued and machine-actionable, than to OCLC’s infrastructure, where they’re not.
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> Erin.
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> ________
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> Erin C. Blake, Ph.D.  |  Head of Collection Information Services  |  Folger Shakespeare Library  |  201 E. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC, 20003  |  eblake at folger.edu  |  office tel. +1 202-675-0323  |  fax +1 202-675-0328  |  www.folger.edu
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