The British Library and SUNCAT

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The British Library and SUNCAT

• Brenda Young
• The British Library
• Bibliographic Development

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The British Library a (very) short history

• The British Library Act 1972
• Combined
• British Museum library departments
• National Central Library
• National Lending Library for Science and
  Technology
• NCL NLLST became the British Library Lending
  Division

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The British Library a (very) short history

• The following were added in 1974
• British National Bibliography
• Office for Scientific and Technical Information
• Added later
• India Office Library and Records (1982)
• British Institute of Recorded Sound (1984)
• See http//www.bl.uk/about/history.html

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MARC records

• Blaise (British Library Automated Information
  Service) established in 1977
• UKMARC i.e. British National Bibliography
• LCMARC i.e. Library of Congress Books All
• BL catalogues added later
• HSS ( Humanities and Social Sciences - 1984)
• SRIS (Science Reference and Information Service -
  1987)
• BLC (British Library Catalogue - 1988-1991)
• DSC Serials ( Document Supply Centre - 1995)
• Other databases which include serial records
• BNB
• ISSN (International Standared Serial Number)

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Integrated Library System

• Aleph implemented 2004
• All the BLs records in a single catalogue for
  the first time
• One bibliographic record per title
• Integration of non-bibliographic records also
  required
• Long period of preparation preceded implementation

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Problems with the data

• Duplication of records
• Varying quality
• DSC serials
• Converted to MARC from an in-house format
• Very little data in the records
• Included SRIS holdings
• BLC
• Keyboarded from printed catalogue
• Lack of information and subfield coding
• SRIS
• BNB numbers, DDC and LCSH removed
• All made the matching and merging a very complex
  process

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Migration to Aleph

• Main tasks
• Standardise the bibliographic data
• Convert the data to MARC 21
• Convert the data to UNICODE
• Enhance the records by adding
• ISSN
• Key titles
• Library of Congress Subject Headings
• Dewey numbers
• Over 500,000 records enhanced in this way

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SUNCAT

• A challenge!
• An opportunity!

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BL contribution to SUNCAT

• Original dataset of 698,137 records supplied
• Supply monthly update files of records flagged as
  new, changed or deleted
• Records are cleaned before submitting them i.e.
  all local and Aleph fields removed
• Updates have now been loaded to SUNCAT

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BL contribution to SUNCAT

• Dedicated SUNCAT team working on enhancing
  records
• 4 full-time equivalent staff 2 full-time, 4
  part-time
• Based in Data Quality Team
• Priority work on Inside titles
• Work from list of titles on spreadsheet
• On Aleph, merge duplicate records, copy records
  to be deleted to deletions library
• Use external sources COPAC, OCLC, ISSN Portal,
  SUNCAT
• Retrieve items from collections when necessary
• Have processed 23,000 records representing 5,000
  titles
• New and changed records also contributed by
  mainstream serials cataloguers

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ISSN requests

• We can only fulfill requests for ISSN for UK
  titles
• We expect requesting library to make every effort
  to find out if an ISSN already exists
• We need evidence of the publication photocopies
  are acceptable
• We need as much information as possible
• Requests from SUNCAT contributors will be dealt
  with by the SUNCAT Team
• Guidelines are to be posted on the SUNCAT web
  pages

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Any questions?