Showing papers on "Resource Description and Access published in 1982"

Standards for College Libraries

Abstract: THESEARCH FOR STANDARDS for American college libraries can boast a venerable and distinguished history spanning almost four-score years and challenging the intellects of some of the premier worthies both within and outside of the profession Marked concurrently by considerable zeal on the one hand and by chronic frustration on the other, it has been likened to the Quest for the Holy Grail, although its partial success probably renders that simile inapt Much of the persistent frustration at the academic library community’s inability to fashion tenable standards for itself can probably be attributed to the fact that i t looks so deceptively easy Like defining “pornography,” the unwary falls easily into the trap of assuming that, given a little time and motivation, any modestly informed person could do it Many knowledgeable librarians have tried unsuccessfully tomake standards, however, and the very high failure rate among these efforts bespeaks clearly the formidable character of the task Although a definitive history of academic library standardsmaking remains to be written (indeed deserues to be written, probably as a dissertation), several helpful rksumks have been prepared of the experience’ Although i t is not a chore to be undertaken as a part of this paper,2 a brief enumeration here of the early landmark efforts is useful in placing more recent labors and concerns into a time perspective

Two-Year College Learning Resources Standards.

Abstract: STANDARDS APPLICABLE TO two-year colleges are at the same time the oldest and the most recent of the current academic library standards. This seeming paradox is possible because the current standards were approved in 1972 (prior to either the present college or the university library standards), and because they were supplemented by quantitative standards in 1979 and underwent a review process for the basic document in 1981. The 1972 date is significant for two-year institutions, because the statement which was then adopted represented cooperation in development and endorsement by the three national associations most concerned. The American Association of Community and Junior Colleges and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) started the process which resulted in the basic standards statement in 1967. Their representatives were joined several years later by members of a task force appointed by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), who made significant contributions to the final document. Public hearings were conducted at the national meetings of all three associations before the final acceptance. It was not until 1972 that each association completed the approval process for the “Guidelines for Two-Year College Learning Resources Programs,” as the statement was designated.’ The name reflects the difference in philosophy and organizational structure between the two-year institution and other academic library standards.

University Library Standards

Abstract: THEFIRST STATEMENT on “Standards for University Libraries” in the United States was adopted in 1978 by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and in 1979 by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association. The impetus to prepare the university library standards began in 1967 and came from university librarians who were impressed with the overall effect the 1959 “Standards for College Libraries” had in upgrading college libraries. In 1959 only a few libraries in the 1500or socolleges in the United States could meet the minimums set forth in the standards. By 1970 these libraries had improved substantially in the very ways the standards proposed. Although there was agreement on the apparent need for university library standards, there were difficulties in developing the standards. The difficulties stemmed from lack of agreement on the definition of “university” and disagreement over whether standards should be quantitative or qualitative. The statement finally adopted is qualitative in nature. It excludes quantitative standards, although it does recommend statistical methods useful for comparing one library with others.

Toward Integration of Catalog Records on Social Science Machine-Readable Data Files into Existing Bibliographic Utilities: A Commentary

Abstract: FORMAL RECOGNITION OF THE NEED for bibliographic control over computerized information has slowly been evolving within the library and information science profession over the past several years. A major landmark that helped to focus increased interest in the cataloging of social science data files was the inclusion of chapter nine on “MachineReadable Data Files (MRDF)” in the second edition of the AngloAmerican Cataloging Rules (AACR2).’ Publication of these rules in 1978, coupled with a number of other events, including thecompilation of a machine-readable catalog (MARC) format for machine-readable data files, provided the important links that would facilitate the integration of bibiographic records into local automated systems and eventually into national information systems. The most recent cataloging code (AACRZ) and the MARC format for MRDF provide the standards required for describing and creating automated records, which in turn can be applied to many different purposes, such as shared cataloging, acquisition systems, and the building of a union list on all available MRDF. The primary purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on the significant steps that have contributed to this current level of bibliographic control and to outline some of the remaining problems still to be considered before MRDF bibiographic records can successfully be integrated into existing bibliographic utilities. (A bibliographic utility as referenced in this paper is an organization that maintains a large bibliographic data base in an online mode via communications lines enabling it to offer computer