The Revised Local Cataloging in IUCAT Proposal was reviewed at the Cataloging Congress meeting of November 18, 1996. Final corrections were made and the document was approved by the congress.
November 18, 1996
Local Cataloging in IUCAT Policy
Nationally, many libraries control certain kinds of materials at the local
level, rather than contributing cataloging records to a shared utility such
as OCLC. There have been many discussions about the ethics of this
practice, as well as practical considerations about the impact of such
practices on the shared databases. Nevertheless, many libraries consider
such an approach both ethically viable and practical in certain cases. Some
of the types of materials that are commonly cataloged only at the local
level are:
1) materials not intended for use beyond a local site, even though they
might be of wider interest.
An example of this might be collections of photographs
roughly grouped by subject into file folders or other containers
2) materials of interest primarily to local users.
Examples of this might be senior honors papers, locally-
produced videos, or local manuals
3) materials that will only be part of a collection temporarily or
whose contents may change.
Examples of this might be current events vertical file
materials or textbooks that are frequently updated and
replaced
4) materials of such bibliographic complexity and with limited
anticipated use that the effort of contributing a record to a shared
database is deemed to be too great for the anticipated return.
An example of this might be a series of pamphlets that
were bound together because of their general subject and
for which very brief cataloging with a supplied title was
done in the manual environment
5) materials which are incomplete and/or cannot be properly identified
bibliographically.
Examples of this might be journal articles which have been
detached from the journal (not to be confused with standard
reprints) or books lacking covers and title pages
6) materials which are highly specialized and deemed too expensive
to contribute nationally but which receive heavy local use.
Examples of this might be collections of comic books
or political posters
7) materials which are used as instructional aids.
Examples of this might be course syllabi, bibliographies, or
pathfinders
GENERAL GUIDELINES
1) Individual cataloging agencies, in consultation with fund managers,
branch managers, and others, will make the decision on whether they
will catalog some, none, or all of the above categories of materials
locally.
2) Only materials that fit into one of the above categories would be
considered for such local control.
3) Creating, maintaining, and deleting any locally-created cataloging
records will ultimately be the responsibility of a cataloging agency.
Training and supervision of any staff involved in creating such local
records would be carried out by a cataloging agency.
4) Any name, series, or subject headings would be established according
to existing policies for the IUCAT database.
5) All records will be identified with the partial or minimal-level
encoding level available in the local system (in NOTIS, this would be
encoding level 5 or 7) and will use current MARC tags and indicators.
6) Optionally, cataloging agencies may add the phrase "local record" to
the Notes field in the Copy Holdings Record.
Note: this policy was approved by the Cataloging Congress, at its meeting
of November 18, 1996 in Indianapolis.