Trends in Source of Catalog Records for European Monographs 1996–2000

Abstract

Minimal-level catalog records created by European booksellers for non-English language books are being loaded into OCLC. These vendor records lack Library of Congress (LC) call numbers and subject headings, and their names and series do not necessarily conform to the U.S. authority file, therefore they require upgrading by original catalogers. A preliminary study of Italian language monographs was done at a large research university library to discover the prevalence of these vendor records compared with records created by LC and OCLC member libraries. It was found that over the period 1996–2000 there has been a drastic decline in the number of original member records for Italian books and a corresponding increase in vendor records, which then must be upgraded by member libraries. The implications of this finding include changes in cataloging-department workflow and a decrease in national-level cooperative cataloging, depending on the extent to which libraries export unmodified vendor records and edit them in-house.