"What do I think? I think I'd be in the office of the Head of Technical Services quicker than you can say MARC delimited. Since when do catalogers get to call the shots about the parts of the collection that deserve priority access (or that get sent to bibliographic Siberia)? Since when is bibliographic difficulty a measure of what gets cataloged? Besides: I'd wager a very large portion of your acquisitions have copy in one form or another...what's the big deal. Even the FMG digital stuff probably has at least passable OCLC copy. You need to kick ass, girl!"
To borrow a line from Big Audio Dynamite, "God I love it when you're domineering!" I'm afraid that there are several institutions in which the catalogers get a say in, if not exactly calling the shots for, what gets cataloged and in what order. And bibliographic difficulty, at least where video materials are concerned is a valid concern if not exactly an example of the service ethic expected of professionals. Time equals money and a lot of cataloging operations are constantly under the gun for spending too much time/money on selected items. Cataloging video material materials can be, depending on the library's technical requirements for fullness of records, very time-consuming, generally much moreso than books. However, if the Tech Services Dept. will (or is allowed to) countenance less-than-comprehensive records for some materials in the catalog, doing brief records can save time while still creating access in the catalog. As to OCLC copy, in my experience records for video materials need a lot more checking and tweaking if your cataloging standards are set as high as a lot of academic libraries like to set them. Verifying name authority, for instance, for films can take a lot longer than doing so for books just because of the number of contributors likely to be traced. If comprehensive name authority is not a necessity, however (and it's not in OCLC), tracings may become a simple matter of typing. Maureen, I'd enjoy hearing how you come out on this. And Gary, I'm glad I'm not the Head of Technical Services at Berkeley. Mike Tribby Senior Cataloger Quality Books Inc. The Best of America's Independent Presses mailto:mike.tri...@quality-books.com VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and distributors.
