LCCN June 14, 2016 ISSN 2324-6464
THE LEGACY OF SHARED CATALOGING By Audrey Fischer A half-century ago, President Johnson signed a law promoting access to education and shared cataloging. Fifty years ago, on Nov. 8, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Higher Education Act of 1965 into law [P.L. 89-329]. This landmark legislation was part of his "Great Society" set of domestic programs that included the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the creation of Medicare, Medicaid and the Teacher Corps. The HEA increased federal money given to universities, established need-based grants and federal scholarships, created work-study opportunities and offered low-interest student loans. The legislation not only opened the doors to college for millions of low- and middle-income Americans, but also supported the strengthening of college and research libraries. Specifically, Title IIC of the Higher Education Act authorized the Office of Education to "transfer funds to the Library of Congress for the purpose of (1) acquiring all library materials currently published throughout the world that are of value to scholarship; (2) providing cataloging information for these materials promptly after receipt, distributing bibliographic information by printing cataloging cards and other means, and enabling the Library of Congress to use for exchange and other purposes such of these materials not needed for its own collections." In short, the legislation gave the Library of Congress a clear mandate to provide new and unparalleled services to the nation's academic libraries. It also recognized the importance of granting federal aid and assistance toward solving the challenge of shared cataloging. The Library's role in shared cataloging dates back to the printing, sale and distribution of its catalog cards in 1901. But the Library's establishment of a National Program for Acquisitions and Cataloging-authorized by the HEA-greatly expanded that role both nationally and internationally. The legislation also expanded the Library's overseas operations, which had begun in 1962 to acquire, catalog, preserve, and distribute library and research materials from countries where such materials are essentially unavailable through conventional acquisitions methods. Following passage of the HEA, shared cataloging offices were opened in London and Rio de Janeiro. The legislation also expanded the Library's overseas operations, which had begun in 1962 to acquire, catalog, preserve, and distribute library and research materials from countries where such materials are essentially unavailable through conventional acquisitions methods. Following passage of the HEA, shared cataloging offices were opened in London and Rio de Janeiro. On Jan. 13, 1966, officials from the national libraries and library professionals from six countries met at the British Museum to discuss the Library of Congress' proposed procedures for shared cataloging among nations. Agreement was reached and the procedures were adopted. A week later, the Library announced that it received a grant of $130,000 from the Council on Library Resources to launch a program to distribute cataloging information in machine-readable form. By year's end, a pilot project was begun to test the feasibility of distributing the Library's machine-readable cataloging data known as MARC to other libraries by sending weekly distributions of tapes to 16 participating libraries. The pilot was a success and MARC remained the standard for more than 40 years. On May 13, 1966, President Johnson signed a supplemental appropriations act, which provided the Library with $300,000 for acquisitions and cataloging of library materials. In June, the Library established the Shared Cataloging Division in its Processing Department to handle the descriptive cataloging of books received under Title IIC of the HEA. Over the past 50 years, immense benefits have been derived by the global library community through cataloging cooperatively. Today, administered by the Library of Congress, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging creates records for serials, manuscripts, monographs, and name or subject authorities, which help bring all knowledge-regardless of format-under consistent bibliographic control in order to make it accessible to the worldwide community. This article originally appeared in Library of Congress Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 1: January/February 2016, p. 8. _____ Disclaimer: This message does not represent official Library of Congress communications. 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