PCC Participants Meeting (Sunday evening)

There are three new NACO funnels and one SACO funnel, all geographically based. The Program is looking at new directions, with the emphasis moving from new members to a focus on areas not now strongly supported, e.g. e-resources, non-North American participation, e-resources, and standards. Quotas are being reinstated for NACO participation though they are not called quotas. Smaller libraries will be expected to contribute at least 100 records a year, and larger libraries 200. Funnels are excluded and institutions which cannot meet the new guidelines will be encouraged to join a funnel.

Ed Glazier reported on developments at RLG (see my report on the RLG technical services client which also discusses the new database structure). Glenn Patton reported on developments at OCLC which is also moving to a new database structure. In the first quarter of 2003, they are moving to Unicode and Connexion with improved links between bib and authority records. In the second quarter, WebDewey will move to Oracle and the Windows client will see its first release. The 3rd quarter will bring NACO functionality, including a cross-institutional save file. WorldCat will begin the migration to Oracle in the 4th quarter (FirstSearch first). Also, Passport will disappear of the Windows client. Other developments will be move of Connexion to Oracle including vernacular support. Both utilities have pages on the web about these developments.

The Standing Committee on Training is working on materials that can be used by both PCC and non-PCC institutions, and more internationally. The Standing Committee on Standards will be forming a new group to look at records for aggregator sets. The Standing Committee on Automation is forming a task group on opac displays of serial linking entries. The Publication Pattern Initiative has been discussing how catalogers might be notified of changes; it was mentioned that a similar notification service might be helpful for integrating resources.

... return to ALA reports ...