From the /LCCN/
Written by Melanie Polutta
Dear readers,
As I mentioned at the end of our last mailing, today's subject is to
describe further the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate
of the Library of Congress. So let's just leap right into that.
*/About ABA/*
Many in the library world know that the cataloging and acquisitions
directorates of the Library Services area here at LC underwent a
reorganization that started in October 2008 (October is the start of the
government's fiscal year, so there is a reason it started then) and took
a while to fully implement. So you may be wondering how exactly we are
organized now that the reorganization is pretty much complete. I'll
start by giving you a few facts about ABA.
We are currently made up of 41 sections in nine divisions, which include
approximately 500 staff members. Six of those divisions are actively
acquiring materials, which are then cataloged, including shelflisting,
and sent to the stacks. One of these divisions, Overseas Operations,
consists of six overseas offices that acquire in countries that are more
challenging to buy from at a distance, as well as doing cataloging on
some of those resources themselves. In addition to the many physical
workflows, we also have a small group of people who focus on electronic
resources specifically, working with digital collections of all types.
The other three ABA units are: the Policy and Standards Division (PSD),
which is heavily involved in standards development for cataloging and
acquisitions; the Acquisitions Fiscal & Support Office, which keeps
money matters straight and manages intake of tangible materials; and the
Cooperative and Instructional (COIN) Division, which delivers
professional training and also serves as the Secretariat for the Program
for Cooperative Cataloging.
The other six divisions are: the US Anglo Division; US General Division;
US & Publisher Liaison Division; African, Latin American, and Western
European Division; Asian and Middle Eastern Division, and finally the
Germanic and Slavic Division. As you can see just from the names, we
really do cover the world in our purchasing and organizing, since every
country of the world with publications is included. Four of these
divisions build LC's collections by purchasing or otherwise actively
obtaining materials. The US Gen and US & Publisher Liaison Division
build the LC collections by administering the highly successful
Cataloging in Publication (CIP) program, the International Standard
Serial Number (ISSN) program, the Dewey Decimal program, and the
sections that select and catalog books that arrive at LC via the U.S.
Copyright Office. (The full explanation for that will be the topic of
another mailing.)
The Library obtains items in many ways, which include copyright
registration, copyright claim, purchase, exchange, gifts, submissions of
books in compliance with the Cataloging in Publication program, and
transfer from other government agencies. Once we've received the item,
physical or electronic, we catalog it--including descriptive and subject
cataloging, classification and shelflisting, labeling and -- well,
binding is another area of the Library, not ABA. In a later article,
we'll describe in more detail the numerous tasks that are done here at
the Library by acquisitions specialists, cataloging specialists, and the
many technicians who get the job done. Considering how much LC acquires,
it can be a real challenge for us to keep up. Just to give you an
example, in fiscal year 2011 alone, the Library acquired 4.17 million
items for the collections, including 1,904,478 items purchased for a
total of $28,393,920 and 2,263,367 items acquired by non-purchase
techniques. (So, let's do some quick math. If we take 1,904,478 items
divided by 365 days of the year, that comes out to 5,217 items that we
receive per day. No, wait, I should say 1,904,478 divided by 260 working
days, which is 7,324 items per working day. And that is just the items
we /purchase/. I get overwhelmed just thinking about it.)
I'm not going to give you an organizational chart, but instead, if you
are interested in the way we are organized and the names of our
divisions, I would recommend that you check out the ABA homepage on the
LC website: http://www.loc.gov/aba/about/. The goal of this organization
format is to make it possible for one section to do all the work for a
resource, from buying it, to cataloging it, to sending it to the shelf,
for as many of the resources as possible, thus making the workflow as
direct as possible.
So, I hope that explains a little bit more about how we are organized to
get the work done. Over time, we'll introduce you to more about the work
we do, as well as the projects in which we are involved. I'm quite sure
you'll find it as interesting as I do.
