http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/tsll/tsll.htm
ISSN: 0195-4857
From the Officers:
OBS-SIS Chair............................3
TS-SIS Chair................................3
Article:
Survey on Cataloging
Documentation..................5
Columns:
Miss Manager...............................1
Acquisitions.............................8
Classification............................10
Collection Development...........11
Description & Entry.................13
Internet.......................................15
OBS OCLC Committee............16
Research & Publications........18
Serials.......................................20
Subject Headings.....................22
Parting Thoughts:
OBS Survey Summary.........24
Conference Schedule.............28
Conference Announcements.....29
Volume 24 No. 4
June, 1999
Newsletter of the Technical Services Special Interest Section and the
On-Line Bibliographic Services Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries
INSIDE:
Technical Services
Law Librarian
Are you plagued by management conundrums? Do you need a gentle
nudge to explore new management directions? If so, then write your woes
to our newest columnist, Miss Manager. Her advice is
timely, yet well-seasoned, firm, but surprisingly gentle.
She is prepared (and qualified) to respond to your deep-
est management fears and dreams. Please feel free to
write to her in care of the TSLL editors and join us in
welcoming her to the TSLL staff. Modesty prevents Miss
Manager from revealing her true identity; she feels main-
taining her anonymity will preserve a more decorous
atmosphere between advisor and advisee.
-- The Editors
Dear Miss Manager:
For years I’ve been hearing about “workflow”. I know that things move through
my Technical Services Department in a particular pattern, and I know that I can
map all that out. But after 15 years, I’m not sure if I am doing things as efficiently
as possible. We’ve been through innumerable changes in personnel, equipment,
and technology, but we’re still set up in pretty much the same pattern we were in
when I first started. How do I figure out if my workflow is efficient and how I
should change it if it’s not?
Sincerely,
Ill-prepared in Illinois
Dear Ill,
Miss Manager is very sympathetic toward your plight and is sure that you are not
alone. How often have we heard others or even caught ourselves saying that we
can get rid of that backlog or move those books through more quickly if we just
change our workflow? After spending a few years watching staff member Able
pass all of the free-standing supplements to Baker and the pocket parts to Char-
ley, we think there is no reason to split these duties up; but we also can’t change
that particular pair of tasks without changing the steps before and the steps after.
That then requires changing steps outward in both directions until pretty soon we
are looking at every task in the department. So, we decide it is time to look at the
Introducing Miss Manager
(continued on page 26)

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 2
OBS-SIS
Chair:
Jack Bissett
Washington & Lee University
Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect:
Brian Striman
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Secretary/Treasurer:
Ismael Gullon
Mercer University
Members-at-Large:
Ellen McGrath
SUNY Buffalo
Marla Schwartz
American University
Education Committee:
Brian Striman
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Local System Committee:
Phyllis C. Post
Capital University
Nominations Committee:
Susan Roach
Navy Judge Advocate General
OCLC Committee:
Susan Chinoransky
George Washington University
RLIN Committee:
Mary Chapman
New York University
Web Advisory Committee:
Sarah Andeen
Superior Court of Arizona
1998-1999 Officers and Committee Chairs
TS-SIS
Chair:
Joseph Thomas
Notre Dame University
Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect:
Janet McKinney
University of Missouri- Kansas City
Secretary/Treasurer:
Linda Tesar
Vanderbilt University
Members-at-Large:
Mary Burgos
Columbia University
JoAnn Hounshell
Northwestern University
Acquisitions Committee:
Carmen Brigandi
California Western School of Law
Awards Committee:
Jean Pajerek
Cornell University
Cataloging & Classification Committee:
Melody Lembke
Los Angeles County Law Library
Education Committee:
Janet McKinney
University of Missouri- Kansas City
Exchange of Duplicates Committee:
Melinda Davis
University of Tennessee
Joint Research Grant Committee
Corinne Jacox
University of Orlando
Nominations Committee:
Nona Watt
Indiana University - Bloomington
Preservation Committee:
Pat Turpening
University of Cincinnati
College of Law
Serials Committee:
Joseph P. Hinger
Detroit College of Law
TSLL Staff
Editors:
Linda Tesar and
Anna Belle Leiserson
Vanderbilt University Law School
l.tesar@law.vanderbilt.edu
a.leiserson@law.vanderbilt.edu
Business Manager:
Cindy May
University of Wisconsin
clmay@facstaff.wisc.edu
Webmaster:
Martin E. Wisneski
Washburn University
Contributing Editors:
Acquisitions:
JoAnn Hounshell
Northwestern University
Marla Schwartz
American University
Classification:
Regina Wallen
Stanford University
Marie Whited
Yale Law School
Collection Development:
Sandra Sadow
Widener University
Description and Entry:
Melody Lembke
Los Angeles County Law Library
The Internet
Kevin Butterfield
Southern Illinois University
MARC Remarks:
Rhonda Lawrence
UCLA School of Law
Research and Publications:
G. LeGrande Fletcher
Brigham Young University
Ellen McGrath
SUNY Buffalo
Serials:
Margaret McDonald
University of San Diego
Christina Tarr
University of California Berkeley
Subject Headings:
Alva T. Stone
Florida State University
Editorial Board:
OBS-SIS:
Susan Goldner (1998-99)
Univ. of Arkansas - Little Rock
Mary Stanco (1998-2000)
Cleveland Marshall
TS-SIS:
Richard Vaughan (1997-99)
Indiana University-Bloomington
Kevin Butterfield (1998-2000)
Southern Illinois University
TSLL EDITORIAL POLICY
Technical Services Law Librarian (ISSN 0195-4857) is an official publication of the
Technical Services Special Interest Section and the Online Bibliographic Services
Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries. It carries
reports or summaries of the convention meetings and other programs of OBS-SIS
and TS-SIS, acts as the vehicle of communication for the SIS committee activities,
and carries current awareness and short implementation reports. Prospective authors
should contact the editors for style information.
Statements and opinions of the authors are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect
those of AALL, TS-SIS, OBS-SIS, or the TSLL Editorial Board.
Subscriptions: Provided as a benefit of membership to Sections members. Non-
member subscriptions: Domestic: $10.00; Foreign: $12.00. Contact the TSLL
Business Manager or the American Association of Law Libraries.
Publication Schedule
Issues are published quarterly in
March, June, September, and
December.
Deadlines:
V.25:no.1(Sept. 1999)......15 Aug. 1999
V.25:no.2(Dec. 1999)........30 Oct. 1999
V.25:no.3(Mar. 2000).......31 Jan. 2000
V.25:no.4(June 1999).......30 Apr. 2000

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 3
nline Bibliographic Services
Special Interest Section
From the Chair
O
The Beaten Path
It’s time to say so long. Most years,
and this is no exception, a little progress
is made toward better informing, better
organizing, better involving our
members. I hope this year we have also
taken a step or two toward better
understanding and responding to them.
In the wake of the Association’s efforts
to plan its future, rather than have the
future wholly thrust upon it, the OBS
Board is attempting to learn some
fundamental things about the Section’s
membership. We hope this will enable
us to ensure that our educational and
organizational efforts will be aimed
where they are needed, to serve those
who, in turn, support them.
This is a good opportunity to express
admiration for the thoughts,
explorations, and toil of our colleagues
who turn out periodic columns and
articles. Unlike Chairs, they speak of
substantial stuff, ranging from policy
to practice, through all the areas in
which this rather broadly focused
membership work, and they feed us
with the ideas and information that help
us do our jobs well. They make the
going a little easier through some of the
thick stuff we encounter now and then.
The Technical Services Law Librarian
and its professional sisters are probably
the most valuable benefits of
membership. OBS and TS together
happen to support one of the finer
examples.
Also very high in my esteem are the
chairs of OBS committees (listed, like
the columnists, on page 2). They and
their fellows accomplish most of the
Section’s work, answering their charges
to study and report, and to represent our
concerns to the appropriate bodies.
How else could we keep up?
Finally, AALL and OBS depend upon
the involvement of their members, to
learn as we participate, to grow and
develop our skills, not only as
professionals but also in the
organizational work that supports
educational programming and
development of the profession. These
skills can be picked up simply by
offering a little time on some project,
committee or working group. If you
are not in the habit of volunteering
within AALL, I urge you to take on one
task this year - do some of the legwork,
learn in depth about a problem by
working on it as a group member, and
then next year perhaps, take a little more
responsibility. You will find oppor-
tunities to learn, contacts for future
assistance, satisfaction in serving a
grateful lot; and a little exposure
couldn’t hurt your career, let’s face it.
No special talents? Like the grain in a
nice piece of wood when you rub it,
your abilities will expose themselves.
Take a small job, a little challenge, and
do it as well as you can. The world (and
AALL) will beat a path to your door.
Thanks for the opportunity to learn and
broaden myself, by serving OBS. See
you in D.C.
Jack
Jack Bissett
Washington & Less University
Bissettj@madison.acad.wlu.edu
T
echnical Services
Special Interest Section
From the Chair
Chair Column, June 1999
“Term, holidays, term, holidays, til we
leave school, then work, work, work,
til we die” – C.S. Lewis.
C.S. Lewis’s schoolboy outlook on life
from his autobiography Surprised by
Joy is funny if you are not trapped in
its definition and awful in its accuracy
if you are. Most of us in the library
profession are in it by choice, and so
we don’t have the need to be so cynical
about our work lives. I think it is safe
to say that people who are smart enough
to be librarians are smart enough to
engage in more lucrative pursuits, but
that there is something about the nature
of our occupation that keeps us in it.
Perhaps it is a more humane way to get
through life than pure money-getting.
Perhaps it is the satisfaction that comes
from serving the intellectual needs of
our patrons. Those of us in Technical
Services are attracted by these and other
pleasures: the privilege of putting
knowledge to use by ordering it, the
ability to master a complex universe of

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 4
rules and systems, and the chance to
master new technologies. It’s when we
turn to the less enjoyable elements in
our work – a recalcitrant employee, the
lack of appreciation for our
accomplishments, mega-vendors with
no customer service – that C.S. Lewis
seems to be onto something. It’s at
those times especially that the Technical
Services Special Interest Section is there
to help. Our bylaws state that the
“object of the Technical Services
Special Interest Section shall be:”
1. To promote the communication of
ideas, interests, and research which
concern acquisitions, cataloging
and classification, preservation of
library materials, serials control,
exchange of duplicates and other
traditional areas of technical
services;
2. And, which lead to the develop-
ment and coordination of the
country’s law library resources, in
all types and sizes of libraries.
“Promote the communication” is the
phrase that more than any other defines
the purpose of the SIS and gives an
indication of how the SIS best serves
its members. When you attend a good
program at the annual meeting, find
some great piece of advice on the TS
listserv, or read a particularly helpful
column in TSLL, most of the good that
you receive has come from an
individual making the effort to be
helpful. That’s what the SIS is – those
individual people who provide those
services. The SIS is the umbrella under
which all of those helpful Technical
Services people can gather. We
promote the communication of all those
ideas, interests, and research by
somehow gathering a critical mass of
people who are interested in the issues
of our work; but it is those individuals
who provide the real meat, the thing you
can actually use in your job. The SIS is
there to connect helper and helpee.
So now you should be asking yourself
whether you are part of the SIS in that
sense. Are you a member who benefits
from the help provided in the SIS but
who doesn’t give anything back? It is
a cliche to say that an organization is
only as good as its members, but with a
wholly voluntary group like this, it
cannot be denied. All of us are
“consumers” of the help provided by
our membership in TS-SIS; all of us
should also be “manufacturers” as well.
I think one of our great challenges is to
think of new ways to contribute help.
While we will always need people to
volunteer for committee work or to be
on the board, we also need to be creative
in thinking of new ways to help out our
fellow Technical Services librarians in
the legal field. That is, we need to
“promote the communication” of any
useful ideas to the membership of our
SIS. For example, when you scour your
favorite specialized listserv archives to
decipher some problem you are having
with your home operation, and you
piece together the solution after sorting
out the information dispersed through
8 months of postings, summarize your
problem and the solution and post it to
the TS listserv – you will be surprised
how appreciative at least a handful of
people in the same position will be. We
must also remember that something as
“consumer” oriented as asking a
question can be a great contribution. It
is often the best way to get a
conversation rolling. And, as our
survey results indicated, most people
who attend the annual meetings prefer
the roundtable discussions above any
other format. Perhaps we should be
better about mimicking roundtables in
our online conversations.
Speaking of those who are
“manufacturers” of help within the SIS,
I would like to thank all of the members
who helped us on the board by filling
out and sending in your surveys this
year. Everyone enjoys finding out what
you think, and we certainly take the
results seriously. To those returning to
their work on the board – incoming
Chair Janet McKinney, Treasurer Linda
Tesar, and Member-at-Large JoAnn
Hounshell – I thank you for your
continuing service. To our new
Member-at-Large, Cindy May, and our
new Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, Alva
Stone, I wish the best of luck and feel
confident that the SIS is being left in
very good hands. To Mary Burgos,
finishing up her term as Member-at-
Large, I am grateful for all her help and
support. To the Committee Chairs I am
very grateful for your work and for
much helpful advice. I would like
especially to thank Linda Tesar and
Anna Belle Leiserson, editors of
Technical Services Law Librarian, for
making our association so pleasant, and
for bringing the work of the two SISes
together so attractively and
professionally.
Whether your attitude toward your job
is “work, work, work, til you die” or
something more positive depends at
least partly on your attitude toward your
profession. It is one of the purposes of
the Technical Services Special Interest
Section to keep your professional life
positive. Please help us to accomplish
that.
Joe Thomas
University of Notre Dame
thomas.2@nd.edu

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 5
In June 1997, the Working Group on Classification
Documentation, an offshoot of the TS/SIS Cataloging and
Classification Committee, conducted a survey on cataloging
documentation. Our aim was to find out who had
documentation, what kinds of documentation they had, in
both form and content, how useful it was to them, and if
they’d be willing to share. The possible uses of the survey
data that we envisioned were many. On a most basic level,
we thought the information might be interesting, and could
possibly support a claim for libraries wishing to create more
documentation themselves. On the most hopeful level, we
were interested in creating a clearinghouse for useful
cataloging documentation. This goal has so far eluded us,
but remains an interesting idea.
Number of respondents: 235
1. Type of library:
Total .................................. 235
Academic ............................ 75
Private ................................. 88
State, county, federal .......... 68
2. Approximate size of collection (books and bound
serials):
Under 10,000....................... 31
10,000-50,000..................... 77
50,000-100,000................... 21
100,000-250,000................. 41
250,000-500,000................. 39
500,000-1,000,000.............. 11
Over 1,000,000...................... 1
3. What is the size of your cataloging staff? (Includes
professional, clerical and student FTE)
Fewer than 1 ....................... 29
Between 1 and 1.75 ............ 87
Between 2 and 2.75 ............ 36
Between 3 and 3.5 .............. 16
Between 4 and 4.75 .............. 8
5 ............................................ 5
Between 6 and 6.25 .............. 5
Between 7 and 7.75 .............. 2
9 ............................................ 1
12 .......................................... 2
4. If you use a cataloging utility (such as RLIN, OCLC,
WLN) which one do you use?
OCLC ................................ 115
RLIN ................................... 30
WLN ................................... 11
WWW ................................... 7
Marcive ................................. 3
ISM ....................................... 2
Librarians Helper .................. 2
None ................................... 69
Each of the following systems had one user library:
Bibliofile, GRC Laserquest, ABN, Supercat, CARL
5. If you use a local automated system (NOTIS, III, etc.),
which do you use?
III .........................................45
DataTrek (all) ..................... 20
DataTrek Pro EOSI ............. 16
Inmagic ............................... 13
Notis ................................... 13
Horizon ................................. 7
Personal ................................ 7
SIRSI .................................... 6
DRA ...................................... 5
Dynix .................................... 4
Sydney Plus .......................... 4
CARL ................................... 2
DataTrek GLAS .................... 2
Navigator .............................. 2
Pals ........................................ 2
SIMA .................................... 2
None .................................... 82
The following systems each had one library user:
DBText, Marcive, Bestseller, MSAcces, Bibliofile,
LDMS, Paradox, FolioViews, UTLS, Techlib+,
AskSam
6. What types of cataloging documentation have you
developed in your library?
Job descriptions ....................... 105
Procedure manuals ................... 101
Memos or short documents
gathered informally ................ 97
Policy documents ....................... 80
Organizational charts ................. 38
Other (please specify) ............... 10
None .......................................... 79
Survey on Cataloging Documentation in Law Libraries : The Results
Christina Tarr, Law Library
University of California, Berkeley
ctarr@library.berkeley.edu

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 6
Some of the “other” documentation listed included:
models and examples; a log of OCLC problems; minutes
of informal meetings relating to policies and other
matters; annual reports; forms, templates; subject
heading list; collection inventory; local classification
system; LC materials; index cards organized by students
in a box; English-Spanish subject heading translation;
running list to send to Marcive; list of cards pending
7. In what ways do you use your cataloging documenta-
tion?
Memory aid ........................................ 127
Record of decisions made ................... 113
Training tool for new employees ......... 92
Other (please specify) ............................. 9
Other uses include: training for new procedures and for
interns; historical information; guides for administra-
tors; long range planning documents; communications
tools between areas; cost analyses; basis for successor
should someone leave.
8. How do you imagine cataloging documentation from
other libraries would be useful to you?
As an example of other libraries’
policies and procedures ................ 125
As a model to use when writing
your own documentation ............... 104
Other (please elaborate) ....................... 15
Other perceived uses include: to see how someone else
had dealt with a problem; idea of decisions made in
various library types; find better, cheaper ways; general
interest; will help us to follow established procedures,
since we currently make up some of our own rules; as a
source of new work flows and procedures; professional
reference tool; not useful.
9. How would you rate the usefulness of your cataloging
documentation to your own staff?
Very useful .......................... 38
Useful ................................ 146
Occasionally useful ............. 51
Never useful ......................... 3
10. Approximately how often do you review and update
cataloging documentation in your library?
Twice per year ...................... 5
Once per year ..................... 27
Once every two years ......... 19
As needed ........................... 59
11. Who, by position, is responsible for the writing and
updating of your cataloging documentation?
NOT COMPILED
12. Please complete the chart below detailing how your
cataloging documentation is made available:
Type of documentation Total Print LAN Web Other
Responses (e-mail)
Job descriptions 105 104 9 0 0
Organizational charts 38 37 3 1 0
Policy documents 80 67 10 3 1
Procedure manuals 101 99 14 1 1
Memos or short
documents gathered
informally 97 93 12 2 1
Other (please specify)* 10 10 1 1 0
Total documentation 431 410 40 8 3
*See question 6 for a list of “other” documentation types.
13. Please list the URLs for any documentation available
through the Internet.
In 1997, eight respondents cited web sites. Five of these
still seem useful:
<http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/policies.html>
<http://www.library.cornell.edu/tsmanual>
<http://www.usfca.edu/law_library/ts/cat/tp.html>
<http://hul.harvard.edu/cmtes/haac/bsp.html>
<http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/law/services/
cataloging/newmanual.html>
14. Would you be willing to share your cataloging
documentation through some mechanism set up by the
Working Group on Cataloging Documentation?
Yes ....................................... 79
If yes, which documentation do you recommend as being
especially useful to other libraries?
Responses vary greatly. By far the most frequently re-
garded as worth sharing are procedures manuals (18)
and cataloging manuals (12). The degree of overlap
between these two categories is not clear. The next most
frequently cited document is job descriptions (8). Other
documents are often very specific to an institution or to
a particular system.
15. Would you be willing to share tables of contents of
any longer documentation you may have through some
mechanism set up by the Working Group?
Yes ....................................... 19
16. If you do not have any documentation, why not?
Time constraints ................. 67
Not needed .......................... 29
Other ................................... 29

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 7
Conclusions
Of the 235 responses, roughly one third came from each
category of library, academic, private and federal, state and
county. Most, 168, have fewer than 4 employees. 21 have 4
or more. 115 libraries use OCLC, the most popular system
by far. The next most popular, “none,” is used by 69 libraries,
and RLIN by 30. For local systems, “none” is the most
popular with 82 libraries. III comes in second with 45, then
DataTrek with 20, and Notis and Inmagic with 13. Most
libraries have some form of documentation, and only 79 of
235 libraries state that they have none. The most popular
type of documentation is the job description (105), followed
by procedure manual (101) and memos (97). Policy
documents (80) are also well represented. Of the 156 libraries
that have documentation, 146, or almost all, find their
documentation useful. 51 find it occasionally useful, and 38
find it very useful. Print, in 1997, was definitely the favorite
medium for documentation, with libraries listing 410 print
documents, 40 documents on Local Access Networks, and 8
documents available on the World Wide Web. 3 documents
were available via another media, most likely e-mail. Of the
235 libraries surveyed, 79 had documentation they were
willing to share. Of the 79 libraries that had no
documentation, 67 responded that this was due to time
constraints, and 29 that it was not needed. (In this, as in other
cases above, some libraries clearly answered twice, or
libraries that actually have documentation may have been
responding here as to why they don’t have more or better
documentation.)
Because the results were compiled in a database, it was
possible then to manipulate the data to come up with other,
more revealing data. Looking at type of documentation
produced by type of library, we see that academic libraries
are the biggest producers of documentation.
Type of documentation Total Academic Private Federal,
State,County
Job descriptions 105 58 22 25
Procedure manuals 102 51 22 28
Memos or short
documents gathered
informally 95 49 23 23
Organizational charts 38 21 2 14
Policy documents 13 10 1 2
Other (please specify) 19 7 9 3
Total documentation 372 196 79 95
None 79 6 47 2
While library respondents were almost evenly divided among
academic, private and federal, state and county libraries, the
total documentation produced by academic librarians is more
than twice the amount produced by private or federal, state
and county librarians. The chart also shows that the bulk of
the libraries with no documentation are private libraries.
These results may be a function of library size. Charting type
of library by size, we came up with the following table
revealing that while most academic library respondents fall
into the larger end if the scale (100,000 volumes and up)
most private libraries are 50,000 volumes and under, and
most federal, state and county libraries tend to cluster in the
middle.
Size Total Academic Private Federal,
State, County
All 235 75 88 68
Under 10,000 31 0 29 2
10,000-50,000 77 3 46 28
50,000-100,000 21 3 5 13
100,000-250,000 41 25 2 14
250,000-500,000 39 31 0 8
500,000-1,000,000 11 10 1 0
Over 1,000,000 1 1
It is also interesting to note that of the 79 libraries with no
documentation, 54 are libraries of under 50,000 volumes,
and 74 are staffed by fewer than 2 people. Thus it is clear
that small libraries and libraries with small staffs are less
likely to have documentation than other libraries, and these
small libraries are also more likely to be private libraries
than either academic or federal, state and county libraries.
Of the 235 libraries responding to our survey, 79 of them
responded that they would be willing to share documentation
with other libraries. Examining these libraries by the
characteristics of type and size of library reveals the
following:
Size Total Academic Private Federal,
State ,County
All 79 44 15 19
Under 10,000 3 0 3 0
10,000-50,000 13 0 8 5
50,000-100,000 5 2 1 3
100,000-250,000 25 16 1 8
250,000-500,000 19 16 0 3
500,000-1,000,000 9 8 1 0
Over 1,000,000 1 1 0 0

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 8
Acquisitions
Marla Schwartz
American University Law Library
mschwar@wcl.american.edu
ELECTRONIC ORDERING OF MONOGRAPHS
PART II:
Yankee Book Peddler’s GOBI
In Part I of “Electronic Ordering of Monographs” (TSLL vol.
24, no. 3, March 1999, page 11), JoAnn Hounshell wrote
about Blackwell’s Collection Manager. Other major book
vendors also offer access to their online databases via the
Web, and these databases have been used for some time by
acquisitions and collection development librarians as
bibliographic searching tools. Increasingly, they are being
used interactively for ordering and as a source of records for
integrated library systems. Publishers and vendors of legal
materials have lagged behind in development of their Web
sites for these purposes; they should be encouraged to
upgrade their databases to make them more useful for
acquisitions and collection development, and more
compatible with library systems. In this article I will discuss
Yankee Book Peddler’s GOBI database and how it interacts
with the INNOPAC system.
American University’s Washington College of Law Library
established an approval plan for monographs with Yankee
Book Peddler (YBP) in January 1995. Each week we receive
approximately 25 books on approval and many new-title
notification slips in a broad range of LC call numbers, which
are distributed to librarians for selection. From these slips,
we place orders for about 200 additional monographs per
month. As a YBP customer, we have access to GOBI, their
Web-based Global Online Bibliographic Information system
which allows online searching, selecting, and ordering.
GOBI has gone through many upgrades and enhancements
in the four years that we have been using it. For the most up
to date descriptions of what GOBI offers, I refer you to the
their Web site: <http://www.ybp.com/gobi.htm>.
We have been INNOPAC users for over 10 years. As many
of you know, this system has also had a number of
Not surprisingly, we see that the academic libraries, which
have twice as much documentation, are twice as likely to
share their documentation. Also, we see that the
documentation to share pattern follows the general pattern
of survey respondents. Since there are more large academic
libraries, they have more documentation to share in the “large
library” end of the spectrum. Private libraries have more
documentation suitable to small libraries, and federal, state
and county libraries fill in the middle range.
Looking at some of the characteristics the documentation
libraries are willing to share, we see the following:
Usefulness of documentation
Very useful .......................... 24
Useful .................................. 32
Occasionally useful ............. 22
Never useful .......................... 1
Frequency of updating
Twice per year ....................... 3
Once per year ........................ 6
Once per two years ................ 6
As needed ............................ 19
Comparing the usefulness figures of the libraries willing to
share with the general survey respondents, we see that those
willing to share are more likely to find their documentation
very useful or useful than those in the general pool. In the
general pool, more libraries found their documentation
occasionally useful than very useful (51 to 38). Here, those
results are reversed. In both the general and the sharing pools,
very few libraries (3 and 1) found their documentation never
useful. Comparing the frequency figures, it is clear that all
respondents prefer to update their documentation as needed
rather than on a fixed schedule, with the as needed figure
equivalent to the sum of the other possibilities combined.
Our data yield interesting general conclusions, but can
perhaps be even more helpful as a resource for libraries
seeking examples of particular kinds of documentation. It is
very easy to retrieve information regarding particular kinds
of cataloging documentation for particular types of libraries,
for example documentation for a library using SIRSI, or
cataloging procedures for a medium-sized academic library
with a 4 person staff. Ideally, we would like to make our
database publicly available, but until we do I am very happy
to serve as an intermediary. Anyone desiring information on
cataloging documentation available for use by other libraries
should contact me at: <ctarr@library.berkeley.edu>. G
Survey conducted by Christina Tarr and Melinda Davis, Law
Library, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and compiled
by Christina Tarr. Working Group On Cataloging
Documentation: Melinda Davis, Christina Tarr (co-chairs),
Pam Deemer, Katherine Hedin, Elizabeth Geesey Holmes,
Ellen McGrath.

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 9
enhancements
and upgrades
over the years and
has taken full advantage
of the Internet. For
example, libraries can use file
transfer to obtain invoices for
serials from most of the major
periodicals vendors, eliminating the
need to manually post individual
payments. File transfer can also be used
to obtain bibliographic and order
records for books sent on approval. In
order to extend this use for firm orders,
YBP and Innovative Interfaces worked
together to develop GobiLink, which
eliminates the need to double key
bibliographic and order records for
monographs in both GOBI and
INNOPAC. GobiLink is now available
for other integrated library systems, and
INNOPAC will also link with other
book vendors.
I will briefly describe how the process
works, but again I refer you to both
vendors for more detailed information.
YBP offers this description of
GobiLink:
With GobiLink, librarians can im-
port files of order records into their
own system, customized with lo-
cal data such as purchase order,
fund, location, and notes. GobiLink
also facilitates overlay of order
records with cataloging records,
obtained either through OCLC
PromptCat or directly from YBP.
G o b i L i n k
can also deliver
electronic invoicing, and
can trigger encumbrance, or-
der, receipt, and payment transac-
tions into the library’s system.
We have two passwords for GOBI, one
for searching and selecting, and one for
searching, selecting, and ordering.
Librarians have the ability to search by
author, title, subject, ISBN, LC class,
series, or publisher, or to look at
bibliographic information for all of the
notification slips in each week’s
shipment. In addition to the
bibliographic data that is found on the
notification slips, GOBI records include
local history for each title, e.g. whether
it has been ordered, shipped and
invoiced or, for approval books,
returned, as well as the date the book
was “handled on approval,” or profiled
for our library and/or other libraries. As
with Blackwell’s Collection Manager,
each record includes a place to mark it
for selection, add notes for acquisitions
staff, or, in the ordering mode, to add
information such as fund code and
transmit the order.
After selectors have marked the records
for future ordering, acquisitions staff
can bring up the selection list in GOBI
and place the orders. After the initial
search of INNOPAC, all keying is done
in GOBI. Even though most of our
librarians who do collection develop-
ment still prefer working with paper
notification slips, these slips can be
used for pulling up records in GOBI by
ISBN and then placing the orders by
filling in any local notes and hitting the
appropriate key to generate the order.
If the library has implemented
GobiLink, these orders can be put in a
file to transfer
standard MARC
formatted order
confirmations
to the INNO-
PAC using
FTP, gen-
erating biblio-
graphic and
order records in the
system. Once the
INNOPAC records are created, the
library creates a file of the new orders
containing the YBP order confirmation
number for each order and transfers it
back to GOBI with actual purchase
order (i.e. order record) numbers
attached. These purchase order
numbers are then added to the YBP
record of the order transaction and are
used to link orders with cataloging
records sent when the book is shipped,
if the library receives cataloging from
the book vendor. If a library is using
OCLC PromptCat for cataloging, this
file would be sent by YBP to OCLC
for catalog records. Records are
returned to the INNOPAC via GOBI
with or without invoice data attached
for automatic posting. In order to use
the automatic posting feature, the
library must have Innovative’s
“extended approval plan interface.”
This interface was designed to transmit
bibliographic, order, and invoice data
from book vendors to INNOPAC for
books received on approval. GobiLink
and similar links between INNOPAC
and other book vendors were developed
to allow such transfers for firm orders
as well as approvals. I believe they
allow libraries to take full advantage of
the capabilities of both systems and help
to save time and increase accuracy in
acquisitions procedures.
I will be talking about this and other
uses of the Internet in law library serials,
acquisitions, and collection
development as part of “The Internet
in Technical Services: Crossroads of
Opportunity,” program K-7, at AALL
this summer in Washington, DC. I hope
to see many of you there. G

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 10
Classification
Marie E. Whited
Yale Law School
marie.whited@yale.edu
now available from CDS. K is the first
law schedule that will use the new K
form tables described below.
Paul Weiss from LC’s CPSO reports
that K Tables: Form Division Tables for
Law has been published and is available
from CDS. LC expects to start using
the new tables May 17. The new tables
do not apply to KD, KE and KF. There
is a conversion table showing the old
table numbers and the corresponding
new K table numbers. Future editions
of the K schedules will include the
proper table references. More
information about this can be found on
the CPSO homepage <http//
lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/>.
Jolande Goldberg from LC’s CPSO will
be distributing KBR (History of Canon
Law) and the KB partially developed
draft outline to her reviewers in Italy
for evaluation in early May.
We hope to pass along information
from Jolande and others at LC
regarding the application of KZ/JZ from
time to time. KZ and JZ are works in
progress. We have to be alert as to when
we can use an existing number and
when we should establish a new
number. Recently there was a
discussion initiated by Barbara
Szalkowski concerning where to class
a parliamentary law treatise covering
several United Nations bodies. There
are numbers for rules and procedures
for individual bodies but none for
several bodies. There are numbers for
U.N. bodies (KZ5005.2), for language
rules (KZ4999.5), for election law
(KZ5004). How do we determine
where the work on parliamentary law
for several bodies should class? We
look for patterns – in the JZ United
Nations section, in KJE organizational
law, in the K country schedules
constitutional law sections. There are
similarities in these sections even
though they are not exactly the same.
KJE has language rules and legislative
power under institutions and organs
(KJE5305-5307). KZ has language
rules under intra-organizational
relations not under bodies ((KZ5005.2).
KF has rules and procedures numbers
under legislative branch. The
parliamentary law title should class in
a new number in either the KZ5005.2
general works area or after KZ4999.5,
the language rules area.. We may end
up being like the cataloger and the light
bulb and have to wait for LC to tell us
what to do. We could propose one
solution or the other and see if it is
accepted or rejected by LC.
Congratulations to Jolande Goldberg
She has been selected to receive the
Marta Lange/CQ Award. This award
is given annually by the Law and
Political Science Section of the
Association of College and Research
Libraries, a division of the American
Library Association (ALA). The award
recognizes an academic or law librarian
who, through research, other creative
activity, or service to the profession,
makes distinguished contributions to
bibliography and information service in
law or political science.
Jolande is being recognized for her
development or revision of schedules
for law and international relations in the
Library of Congress classification
system, understanding and
consideration of the requirements of
many law-related disciplines, especially
political science, tireless work within
the scholarly and library communities
to build support for her work, outreach
activities in the United States and
abroad, and intelligence, wit, and
political skills with which her work has
been accomplished.
Most of Jolande’s career at LC has been
devoted to development of the law
schedules. She wrote the K schedules
for Germany, for continental Europe
and rewrote France. She went on to
write the schedules for Africa, Asia and
the Pacific. She recently finished
international law and international
relations. She is currently working on
schedules for religious law,
concentrating initially on canon law and
Islamic law. G
Regina T. Wallen
Stanford Law Library
rwallen@leland.stanford.edu
1999 edition of KE
(Canada) and the 1998
edition of K(General) are

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 11
Collection Development
Guest Columnist : Rob Richards
University of Colorado Law Library
rrichard@stripe.colorado.edu
What’s On Our Minds?
Collections have always been at the
core of library services. Yet librarians
are devoting extraordinary attention to
collection development these days, and
for good reason. In fact, TS/SIS and
ALL/SIS are co-sponsoring a round-
table discussion on collection
development at the AALL Annual
Meeting, Monday, July 19, 1999, from
4:45 - 6 p.m.; Rachel Pergament of
University of Southern California Law
Library, and Frank Lee of Latham &
Watkins, will introduce key collection
development topics, and set the stage
for an exciting conversation among
attendees.
We are witnessing today a startling
transformation in the nature of our
library collections and in the ways in
which we build and maintain them. A
number of factors inform this
transformation: the rise of the digital
legal information market, a surge in the
number of information products on the
market, the internationalization of legal
practice, the trend toward monopoli-
zation in the publishing industry,
unprecedented price inflation, far-
reaching organizational change in law
firms and law libraries, and the
unyielding pace of technological
development. A survey of recent
library science literature and recent
conversations with colleagues suggest
that librarians have a discernible set of
collection development issues on their
minds — and their desktops.
1
Integrating Electronic Resources into
Our Collections
First, librarians have worked
remarkably hard to prepare themselves
for selecting electronic resources. They
have devoted time and resources to
training themselves about electronic
technology. They have had to learn the
criteria for evaluating electronic
resources, which include usability and
functionality, compatibility with
existing local technology, impacts on
library services, permitted users and
uses, security and authentication, long-
term access, and the need for technical
staff support. Librarians then have had
to integrate these criteria into their
existing collection policies. Yet
electronic resources also require a
reorganization of selection processes,
since most digital products call for
collective decision-making: subject
specialists, public services staff,
catalogers, serials/acquisitions staff,
attorneys, and technology personnel all
need to contribute in order for an
electronic selection choice to be
successful. Clearly, the preparation for
and implementation of electronic
selection harbor great personnel and
time costs. Moreover, once a selection
decision has been made, libraries have
to decide how to provide bibliographic
access to the resource. This entails
developing special bibliographic
control policies and procedures.
Intellectual control over electronic
resources frequently involves new tasks
— and labor costs — for cataloging
departments, such as verifying URLs.
Choosing the Appropriate Format for
an Information Resource
Given a range of media and format
choices for many legal information
products, librarians need to be able
choose the right medium and format for
their library context. Librarians must
train themselves in the selection criteria
for several information formats. Multi-
format choices often involve a
collective decision-making process,
which entails high personnel costs. In
addition, such choices can require
librarians very carefully to consider
economic factors — such as cost-per-
use — that played a less significant role
in the predominantly print environment.
Meeting the Needs of Remote Patrons
As more and more library patrons
require access to information resources
from outside the physical walls of the
library, librarians need to build
collections that meet these patrons’
needs. Licensing electronic resources
is often an important part of the answer,
but licensing entails many challenges,
including pricing, security, technology,
and access. Negotiating access to
remote physical library collections is
often part of the solution, as well.
The Transformation of Librarians’ and
Vendors’ Tools
Not only the composition of the
collection, but the tools librarians and
vendors use to build and maintain the
collection, are being altered by
technology and other factors. Most
publishers offer electronic catalogs or
publications lists on their Web sites.
Listservs, electronic news sources, and
e-mail notification services such as that
provided by Amazon.com facilitate title
discovery. Via the Internet, libraries can
access massive bibliographic databases
such as OCLC, RLIN, Books in Print,
or Amazon.com, or search other
libraries’ online catalogs. New tools
such as IndexMaster offer desktop
access to specialized bibliographic
information. Vendors, too, offer
electronic versions of catalogs, as well
as approval slip services. Internet-
based approval services broaden the
collection development conversation in
intriguing ways: for example, they
permit library patrons to take a more
active role in collection development,
by allowing them to flag and annotate
desired titles. E-mail communication
also helps more stakeholders participate
in collection building.
Coping with Price Inflation and Cost
Consciousness
Law firms, courts, and law schools are
all more business-like than ever before.
Librarians must justify all of their
expenditure decisions, especially those

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 12
regarding collections. Yet traditional
ways of evaluating library collection
quality — such as the number of
tangible volumes — have less meaning
as our electronic “holdings” grow in
number and significance. A great
challenge for librarians is, as Gloriana
St. Clair contends, to create “new
assessment measures that reflect
concerns and outcomes, rather than
inputs.”
2
Severe price inflation also
poses difficulties for librarians. The
movements toward monopolization and
digitization in the legal information
market result in unprecedented cost
increases for many resources. Such
inflation presents librarians with very
difficult choices, especially as the
number of print versions — which are
in certain cases more cost effective than
electronic formats — dwindles.
Cooperative Collection Building and
Consortial Subscriptions
Two ways that librarians cope with
price pressures are by pursuing
cooperative development of collections
in all formats, and by collectively
subscribing to electronic products.
Regional catalogs and interlibrary loan
systems support cooperation between
institutions to achieve many cost
savings in collection development, for
example through contracts with jobbers
and approval vendors, and the
division of subject-based
collection responsibilities among
institutions. In addition,
consortial licensing can make
electronic resources affordable to
many libraries that could not
support individual subscriptions.
Yet access through a consortium
frequently means a loss of control
over the selection process, and the
necessity of accepting features
that do not accommodate the
needs of one’s local clientele.
Licensing Issues
Along with the loss of physical
control over information
products, libraries are increas-
ingly relinquishing the legal
control that copyright afforded to
purchasers of tangible in-
formation resources. Nearly all
commercial electronic resources
are licensed and not sold. Librarians
know well that the rights of subscribers
provided by the terms of a licensing
agreement can be much narrower than
their rights under copyright law.
Librarians are training themselves to
scrutinize licenses, and to negotiate the
most favorable licensing terms with
vendors.
Preservation and Archiving Concerns
Long-term access to electronic
resources is a signal concern of
librarians. CD-ROM technology will
likely be superceded in a few years, and
electronic resources in proprietary
formats have limited lifespans. Given
the lack of revenue potential and the
high costs of reliable electronic
preservation, few commercial
publishers or vendors will commit to
providing long-term access to their
digital products. Library organizations
are working diligently to develop
standards, policies and procedures for
electronic preservation, but they face
great obstacles, including intellectual
property restrictions and a lack of
cooperation from publishers.
The Growing Importance of Foreign &
International Resources
In addition to technological innovation,
the internationali-zation of legal
practice is contributing mightily to the
transformation of law library
collections. Attorneys, public patrons,
and law school faculty and students
increasingly find that their work
requires access to legal materials of
non-U.S. jurisdictions. Law library
collections therefore embrace more
foreign and international materials. The
price of non-U.S. information resources
frequently surpasses that of domestic
resources, however. The vast store of
free or low-cost non-U.S. legal
information available on the Internet
represents an invaluable complement to
local legal collections, though it also
evokes concerns about current and
long-term access and intellectual
control.
The Interdisciplinarity of Legal
Practice
Just as legal collections are growing
multi-jurisdictional, so too are they
becoming more interdisciplinary. An
evermore integrated economy forces
attorneys and legal scholars to refer
continually to information in subjects
such as business, the natural sciences,
engineering, and medicine. Librarians
must consequently devote scarce funds
to adding non-legal resources to their
collections. Again, free and low-cost
Internet resources expand the
boundaries of the legal collection, but
also possess the drawbacks mentioned
above.
Physical Space Constraints
Expanding print and microform
holdings and the downsizing of law
firms compel law librarians frequently
to consider space in selection and
collection planning decisions. In some
cases, format selection may be driven
primarily by the space constraints of the
physical library.
These challenges seem daunting indeed.
Yet the law library community has
employed cooperation and information
sharing to meet these challenges
astonishingly well in these early days
of technological transition. We must
continue to share our efforts and our
knowledge in order to safeguard our
collections, and our role in building and
maintaining them, into the new
millennium.

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 13
Notes
1. Some recent works on collection development that treat
the issues discussed in this article include: Thomas E.
Nisonger, “Playing the Game While Writing the Rules: The
Impact of Electronic Technology on Collection Development
Planning”, 23 Libr. Collections, Acquisitions & Technical
Services 116 (1999); Rob Richards, “Licensing Agreements:
Contracts, the Eclipse of Copyright, and the Promise of
Cooperation”, The Acquisitions Librarian, forthcoming in
1999; Towards a New Vision of Reference: Kaleidoscopic
Collections and Real Librarians. American Library
Association, Reference & User Services Association
Occasional Papers no. 23 (Rob Richards and Kathleen M.
Kluegel eds., 1998); Law Library Collection Development
Policies: Policy Documents and Resources (Rob Richards
comp., last modified Oct. 9, 1998) < http://
www.colorado.edu/Law/lawlib/ts/aall/policies.htm >;
Robert P. Holley, Cooperative Collection Development:
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, Collection Mgmt, 23:4,
1998, at 19; Milton T. Wolf & Marjorie E. Bloss, Without
Walls Means Collaboration, 17 Info. Tech. & Libr. 212
(1998); Milton T. Wolf, Cooperative Collection
Management: Online Discussion, Collection Mgmt., 23:4,
1998, at 59; John Webb, Managing Licensed Networked
Electronic Resources in a University Library, 17 Info. Tech.
& Libr. 198 (1998); Peggy Johnson, A Primer on Collection
Management, Technicalities, Oct. 1998, at 1; Monica Fusich,
Collectiondevelopment.com: Using Amazon.com and Other
Online Bookstores for Collection Development, 59 College
& Research Libr. News 659; Gloria Miccioli, Using the
Internet as a Selection Tool - Amazon.com and Beyond, L.
Libr. Resource Xchange (last modified Nov. 19, 1998) <
http://www.llrx.com/features/selection.htm >; Barbara
Buckner Higginbotham, Who’s Responsible for the
Preservation of Electronic Information?, Technicalities, June
1998, at 1; Peter S. Graham, Long-Term Intellectual
Preservation, Collection Mgmt, 22:3/4, 1998, at 81; Peggy
Johnson, Collection Policies for Electronic Resources,
Technicalities, June 1998, at 10; Maureen Pastine, What
Library Directors Want Collection Development Librarians
to Know, Against the Grain, Apr. 1998, at 20; Curt Holleman,
From Field of Dreams to The Godfather: Collection
Development Today, Against the Grain, Apr. 1998, at 1; Rob
Richards, A Feast of Formats: Challenges to Choosing the
Right Medium for Legal Information, Against the Grain, Sept.
1997, at 52. I must also acknowledge Margie Axtmann’s
vital insights on collection development, which are
incorporated in our presentation, The Internet and Its Impact
on Technical Services: Marvelous Prospects, Mixed Results,
at the South Western Association of Law Libraries’ Annual
Meeting, Denver, Colorado (Apr. 8, 1999) < http://www.
Colorado.EDU/Law/lawlib/ts/tsnet/>.
2. Gloriana St. Clair, Editorial: Assessment in an Era of
Accountability, J. of Academic Librarianship, 24:3, 1998, at
197; quoted in Wolf & Bloss, supra note 1, at 213. G
Description & Entry
Melody Lembke
Los Angeles County Law Library
melody@lalaw.lib.ca.us
Sometimes months or even years pass by without any
cataloging questions coming my way. Then all of a sudden
there will be a rash of queries. Several came from a fellow
California cataloger. Bill Nazarro at the Whittier Law School
Library had to catalog a very early California compilation
that brought up a question as to the appropriate date of
qualifier to use in the uniform title. Naturally it would be a
record that had no LC bibliographic or authority records for
it, only a record in RLIN with identifier CLCL (hey that’s
LACLL!)
Soon after California became a state, a publisher issued a
collection of laws from the first years of legislative activity.
Following the instructions in LCRI at 25.15A1 for qualifiers
to the uniform titles for codes for the U.S. States, a uniform
titles for Laws, etc. (Compiled Statutes : date) should be
added to the bibliographic record. The title identified the
legislatures involved as 1850, 1851, 1852, and 1853 with a
publication date of 1854. The rule says to use the
“codification, reenactment, revision, etc.” date as the
qualifier. So which is the appropriate date? 1850 or 1850-
1853 or 1854? When we had retrospectively cataloged the
item we had just selected 1850, but Bill thought this was not
that helpful to the user. Did your staff examine every work
retrospectively converted? I made the time now. When
examined, the prefatory material clearly explains that the
work was codified in 1853 so the “codification” date is the
best choice of date qualifier for this work.
As if that question weren’t tough enough, then he had to get
into a really murky area: reprints with different titles! While
this is not specifically a legal descriptive issue, law publishers

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 14
Committee on Taxation isn’t Shakespeare. It is unlikely that
we are going to have numerous manifestations of the same
work. Although when Bender, RIA, and CCH all issue their
versions of new tax laws it sometimes seems like we get
hundreds of manifestations! If one used a uniform title, the
record would then look something like this.
130 0 General explanation of tax legislation enacted in...
245 00 Joint Committee on Taxation’s general
explanation of tax legislation enacted in ...
246 1 $iReprint of: $aGeneral explanation of tax
legislation enacted in ...
246 1 $iReprint commonly known as: $aBlue book
260 Chicago : $bCCH Inc.,
300 v. ; $c23 cm.
310 Annual
580 Originally published: Washington, DC : U.S.
G.P.O.,
710 1 United States.$bCongress.$bJoint Committee on
Taxation.
710 2 CCH Incorporated.
Given that collocation is a desirable goal even in online
catalogs, I believe I’d keep the 130.
I welcome questions like these from Bill for a couple of
reasons. Not only are they intellectually challenging, they
provide an opportunity to discuss with LACLL copy
catalogers the topic of “appropriate” change to derivative
cataloging records. The correct identification of the title
proper is an importance one and would for our library
constitute a record that should be changed, not merely
accepted unedited as copy cataloging. G
love to reprint GPO material and send them to libraries (often
for a separate charge, of course). Bill had a CCH reprint of
a GPO title cross his desk; it made for an interesting choice
of title question:
CCH’s reprint of General explanation of tax legislation
passed in ... is cataloged under that “official title”
(MARC tag 245 00) while the CCH title is tagged: 246
1 Joint Committee on Taxation’s General explanation
... per DCLCSN9834807S. Why wasn’t the official title
tagged as a uniform title 130 with CCH’s title tagged
245?
010 sn9834807
245 00 General explanation of tax legislation enacted in
... / $cprepared by the staff of the Joint
Committee on Taxation.
246 1 $iReprint has title: $aJoint Committee on
Taxation’s general explanation of tax
legislation enacted in ...
246 1 $iReprint commonly known as: $aBlue book
260 Chicago : $bCCH Inc.,
300 v. ; $c23 cm.
310 Annual
580 Originally published: Washington, DC : U.S.
G.P.O.,
710 1 United States.$bCongress.$bJoint Committee on
Taxation.
710 2 CCH Incorporated.
More details about the publication first. The CCH work has
a title page that precedes the GPO title page.
CCH title page:
Joint Committee on Taxation’s
General Explanation
of Tax Legislation
Enacted in the
104th Congress
Blue Book
The GPO title page a few pages further inside reads:
GENERAL EXPLANATION OF
TAX LEGISLATION
ENACTED IN THE 104TH CONGRESS
The basic question is which is the chief source? 1.11A and
1.11B give us the answer. The title of the reprint should be
transcribed as the title proper and the title of the original in
the note area (now 246). I am not a CONSER cataloger,
but there is an example in CONSER Cataloging Manual
Module 17, p. 32 that may be misleading. The example
there seems to make a note about the reprint title, not the
original title.
The next question is whether this record needs a uniform
title. 25.3B, 2) which would permit the omission of
statements of responsibility that precede the title might be
applied. Notice that I say “might.” Uniform title use is I
believe an option, not a mandate in this case. The Joint

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 15
The Internet
Kevin Butterfield
Southern Illinois University
kbutterf@siu.edu
Defining Metadata
Several years ago I participated in a
research group for a NSF funded digital
library project. We were tasked with
creating an “ontology containing formal
definitions of digital library content,
services, and licenses along with a
registry including metadata to describe
collections and agents based on the
ontology”. The group, made up of
engineering, computer science, and
information science faculty and
librarians, spent several weeks
discussing structures and content from
a wide array of perspectives. Our
conclusion? Before we could define
metadata for our digital library, we
needed to define it for ourselves.
Unfortunately, defining metadata has
not come easily. Definitions vary
depending upon perspective (cataloging
vs. computer science) or discipline
(humanities text vs. hard sciences). The
CC: DA’s Task Force on Metadata has
as one of its charges to devise a
definition of “metadata” and investigate
the interoperability of newly emerging
metadata schemes with the cataloging
rules (AACR2R) and the USMARC
format. They have identified close to
twenty separate definitions to date.
These range from the simple, “Data
about data”, to that given by Arlene
Taylor who devotes five chapters in her
new book, The Organization of
Information, to this topic. Her definition
is as follows.
Metadata. An encoded description
of an information package (e.g., an
AACR2 record encoded with
MARC, a Dublin Core record, a
GILS record, Etc.); the purpose of
metadata is to provide an
intermediate level at which choices
can be made as to which
information packages one wishes
to view or search, without having
to search massive amounts of
irrelevant full text. (p. 246)
Taylor extends her definition to include,
as it should, not only descriptive
information such as that found in
traditional retrieval tools, but also
information necessary for the
management and preservation of the
information package being described
(p. 77). This can include such things as
the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)
Header’s Revision Description
(<REVDESC>) or Dublin Core tags
such as FORM or RIGHTS which can
be used to give basic details about the
technical or legal context of a
document. Information vital to digital
preservation may be added so that
future systems would know exactly how
to interpret the document itself or
migrate the data to a non-obsolete
format. The data could also be
encapsulated together with all
application and system software
Web Based Ontologies
Netscape is currently building a
world ontology to classify web
sources. The taxonomy they are
building is similar to YAHOO,
however:
1. The taxonomy and its instance
are public.
2. They are specified in RDF.
3. Netscape is asking for volunteers
as editors for entries in the
taxonomy and for building the
taxonomy.
More information on the Open
Directory Project can be found at:
<http://directory.netscape.com>
Technical information (including
specs in RDF) can be found at: <http:/
/dmoz.org/rdf/>
Dublin Core
A first draft of Encoding Dublin Core
Metadata in HTML is available for
comments. It was written in response
to the need to document current
practice while discussion moves
forward on data models and XML/
RDF encoding. It has been the subject
of several rounds of review in the
Dublin Core Technical Advisory
Committee. This document explains
how Dublin Core elements are
expressed using the META and
LINK tags of HTML. You may find
it at: <http://www.ietf.org/internet-
drafts/draft-kunze-dchtml-00.txt>
Comments are welcome.
Universal Preservation Format
An important new standard in the
preservation of digital media is
nearing the completion of its first
iteration. Those for whom this could
be an important component of their
work are urged to download and
comment on the papers referred to,
notably the “User and Technical
Requirements.” There is also a
separate bibliography.
You can find these papers at:<http:/
/info.wgbh.org/upf/index.html>
Resource Description Framework
The World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) has released the Resource
Description Framework (RDF)
Model and Syntax specification as a
W3C recommendation, representing
cross-industry and expert
community agreement on a wide
range of features for using and
providing metadata on the Web. The
full press release and links to
resources are available at: <http://
www.w3.org/Press/1999/RDF-
REC>
Calls for Comments/Participation

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 16
OBS OCLC Committee
Susan Chinoransky
George Washington University
schinoransky@burns.nlc.gwu.edu
Assimilation of WLN Records into
WorldCat
The following is reprinted from a
posting on AUTOCAT, sent by Rick
Newell of OCLC on April 28. This
should help clarify the method of
assimilation of WLN records into
WorldCat. For more information, see
the OCLC/WLN Merger Web Site at
http://www.oclc.org/wln
I. Record Matching and Holdings
Addition
1. When a record in the WLN
database is a national library
record and is identified as such
by a matching machine
algorithm, holdings of WLN
libraries will be added to the
same national library record in
WorldCat.
2. When a WLN Member-
contributed record matches an
OCLC Member-contributed
record in WorldCat and is
identified as such by a matching
machine algorithm, holdings of
WLN libraries will be attached to
the matching record in
WorldCat.
3. In cases where a WLN
Member-contr ibuted
record is identified as
unique to WorldCat by a
machine algorithm, WLN
records are being
collected for more
detailed analyses. After
those analyses are
completed, records that
are not duplicates will be
added along with
holdings to WorldCat.
Where duplicate records
are identified, holdings from the
WLN Member-contributed
records will be added to the
appropriate matching record in
WorldCat.
required to access it and a description
of the original hardware environment.
The Dublin Core is one such method.
The Dublin Core is being developed as
a generic metadata standard for use by
libraries, archives, government, and
other publishers of information. The
standard was intended to be descriptive,
rather than evaluative, and deliberately
limited to a small set of elements that
would have applicability over a range
of types of information resources.
Those who are trying to implement the
Dublin Core standard have raised a
number of issues concerning both the
semantics of the metadata (rules for the
content of the fields) and the syntax
(rules for structuring and expressing the
fields themselves). For a progress report
on the Dublin Core, read Stuart
Weibel’s article “The State of the
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative: April
1999” <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/
april99/> in the April issue of D-Lib
Magazine. You can also attend program
B6: Crosswalks to Information
Management: Metadata, at the 1999
annual meeting. Erik Jul will discuss
metadata in general and the Dublin
Core. Eliot Christian of the USGS will
join him and speak on the Government
Information Locator Service (GILS).
The issues raised by Dublin Core
implementers offer an opportunity for
technical services librarians to become
involved in the creation of these
schemes. A number of communities
have begun expanding upon the core
set by adding elements or attributes
specific to their disciplines and local
practice. Why not law? OBS/TS
members need to consider how to get
involved in formulating a common set
of tags and a common format for those
tags for people and institutions that are
providing access to legal information
over the Internet.
Many of the concepts behind metadata
should sound familiar to Technical
Services librarians. While the
implementations differ, the principles
behind the creation of these systems
greatly resemble those of cataloging,
acquisitions and preservation. As the
methods available for describing
information grow beyond MARC, it
becomes increasingly apparent that we
have a role to play as mediators and
creators of an increasingly diverse
landscape of descriptive methods. G

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 17
II. WLN RID
The WLN RID in the 001 field and the
WLN system control number (035) will
not be retained in WorldCat records. A
separate file containing the OCLC
Control Number and matching WLN
system control number is being created
and maintained as processing proceeds.
Therefore, when a bibliographic record
is exported from WorldCat, it will not
contain the WLN RID or the WLN
system control number. However,
when libraries order bibliographic
records through the OCLC-MARC
Subscription Service, the WLN system
control number (035) can be added to
the bibliographic records via the OCLC
control number/WLN system control
number matching file.
Submitted by: Sharon M. West,
Director of Library Services,
OCLC/WLN Pacific Northwest
Service Center.
Marquette University Law Library
Selected as an OCLC Featured
Member Library
I was delighted to see that one of own
law libraries had been selected by
OCLC in February as a Featured
Member Library: Marquette University
Law Library. The site includes several
photographs of the library, as well as
the library director. I would have liked
to have seen a photo of Angelina
Joseph, the cataloging librarian! You
can get to the Featured Member Web
site from the following URL: <http://
www.oclc.org/oclc/membership/>
New FirstSearch
FirstSearch is in the process of being
redesigned; the new FirstSearch is due
to be introduced in August 1999. It will
have an improved interface that will be
completely different and separate from
the existing FirstSearch Web, DOS-
based or Electronic Collections Online
interfaces. Electronic Collections
Online (ECO), a full-text electronic
database, will be integrated into the new
FirstSearch to provide the flexibility to
use the components on the system in a
more seamless manner. In addition,
administrative control over the access
of these components will be more
sophisticated. Account administrators
will be able to control account
characteristics such as: types of access
provided to databases; full text, and
interlibrary loan; default holdings
displays; some settings within the
search interface; and many aspects of
the FirstSearch interlibrary loan form.
For more information on the New
FirstSearch, go to the following URL:
<http://www.oclc.org/oclc/menu/
fs_new.htm>
Bigger (and Better?) Institution
Symbols
Because the number of OCLC
participating libraries is over 33,000, all
possible combinations of three-
character institution identification
symbols will soon be exhausted. As a
result, OCLC will expand its
identification symbols to between five
and eight characters. Don’t fret,
however, only new member and
participating libraries will receive a
code from the expanded system.
Existing codes will be retained. The
new codes will be formulated according
to a revised scheme. The first two
characters will be taken from the
USMARC Code List for Countries; the
next two characters will come from the
name of the institution; the last
character will be randomly assigned and
will be either alphabetic or numeric.
Like to Teach?
With its success of the past two years,
the OCLC Institute is ready to expand
in order to reach a more geographically
diverse audience. Therefore, OCLC is
looking for qualified individuals to
teach in its institutes. These individuals
should “possess subject or technical
expertise in an area of interest to the
OCLC Institute and its users, have
demonstrated presentation skills and
experience, feel a strong dedication to
ongoing education and knowledge
exchange, share a future vision for
knowledge management and want to
contribute actively to its realization, and
desire opportunities for personal and
professional growth.” For more
information, go to the following URL:
<http://purl.org/oclc/institute/>
If you have an interest in pursuing this
opportunity, please contact Erik Jul,
associate director, OCLC Institute, at
<jul@oclc.org> or 1-800-848-5878. G
TSLL is Turning 25
Next issue will start volume 25. In honor of the
occasion, we plan to devote a section of this issue to
the history of TSLL. Please contact the editors if
you would like to contribute.

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 18
Research & Publications
Ellen McGrath
SUNY Buffalo
emcgrath@acsu.buffalo.edu
By the time you read this, the annual
meeting in Washington will be
imminent. So mark your calendar right
now for the OBS/TS Research
Roundtable meeting! It is on Sunday
morning this year, from 7:30-9:00 AM.
The Roundtable meeting time has been
moved around every year, but I hope
that won’t discourage our regular
attendees, as well as all new attendees,
from coming. We are a very informal
group and we have an interesting
discussion each year.
And this year, we have an added
attraction! Frank Houdek, editor of
Law Library Journal, has graciously
agreed to come and speak with us. This
column and the Roundtable meeting
have often been used to advocate for
the submission of more technical
services articles to LLJ. Frank agrees
and he will be able to discuss this with
us in person. This topic came up when
I was discussing my own idea for an
LLJ article with Frank. So I can
personally attest to his high level of
interest and excellent suggestions for
developing an article. In addition,
Corinne Jacox, chair of the OBS/TS
Joint Research Grant Committee, will
be in attendance to report on the activity
of the past year, grant-wise, and to
answer any questions about how to
apply.
SO COME TO THE ROUND-
TABLE MEETING:
• if you want to learn more about and
possibly submit something to LLJ;
• if you think you might want to
publish (someday, even if not
now);
• if you have published and want to
share your experiences;
• if you want to find a co-author or
refine an idea;
or whatever—you get the point—just
come for the great company and
delicious refreshments! Check your
program for the location and watch for
reminder posts to the various e-lists.
Just a few more details about the joint
research grant … don’t forget that the
Joint Research Grant Committee is
accepting applications until June 15,
1999! I hope you read the reports of
the grants awarded last year in this
column in the March 1999 issue of
TSLL for inspiration. If not, do that
right now! And contact Corinne Jacox
<cjacox@uo.edu> if you have any
questions. But don’t worry if you miss
this year’s deadline, there’s always next
year!
I have an audiotape from the American
Library Association (ALA) annual
meeting in June 1998. It is called
Publish? Perish the Thought:
Kickstarting Your Writing With LITA
(LITA is Library & Information
Technology Association, a division of
ALA). The speakers cover some good
points regarding where to publish and
how to get started writing, among other
things. Let me know if you would like
to borrow the tape.
Yes, another plug for the AALL/
Matthew Bender Call for Papers
competition! As a member of that
Committee, I am thrilled to see some
papers with technical services topics
were submitted this year. It’s not too
early to start planning for next year, so
keep this avenue for publishing in mind.
The deadline will likely be March 1
st
or
thereabouts. And papers that are not
selected as winning ones may be sent
to Law Library Journal for consid-
eration. Check AALLNET for more
information.
As I write this in April, I am taking a
course called “Communicating
Effectively,” which is offered to IT
workers here at the University at
Buffalo. It is a 5-part course, of which
I have only attended the first one so far.
The focus is upon listening, speaking,
reading, and writing skills. I assume
the parts about writing will be of most
interest to the readers of this column,
but as our instructor emphasized,
writing actually involves all the other
skills. Our instructor is Roger
Stevenson, an English professor at
Canisius College here in Buffalo.
Professor Stevenson has some
interesting introductory things to say
about writing. The stated focus is on
business writing, as the intent of this
course is to help our University staff
communicate better as they perform in
their jobs. But the tips already seem to
be universal in terms of writing
anything well. The presentation of
writing as a process, rather than a
product, makes a lot of sense to me.
Professor Stevenson’s steps in the
process include composing, revising,
and editing. He advises us to get
everything in our heads down on paper,
in great detail. In his words, “stop
stopping”—just keep writing whatever
occurs to you, even if it’s not really
related. It’s better to have a lot to pare
down, than the reverse. Revising as a
separate step from editing is rather a
revelation to me, as I find myself editing
constantly (probably the cataloger in
me). I’ll try to write a report of the
entire course after it concludes in late
May.

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 19
OUR COLLEAGUES HAVE BEEN
BUSY:
Anna Belle Leiserson, Linda Tesar, and
Mary Miles Prince, contributed to The
Internet Guide for Tennessee Lawyers,
May 1998 edition.
Mary Dzurinko led a workshop on
library management systems on March
12, 1999, which was sponsored by
LLAGNY. Joni Cassidy was a guest
commentator.
Margie Axtmann and Melody Lembke
contributed to the special feature “Meet
My Mentor” section of the Winter 1999
issue of Law Library Journal.
Kevin Butterfield is the new “The
Internet” contributing editor for TSLL.
LeGrande Fletcher co-moderated the
discussion on “The Future of the Book”
on the CRISTAL-ED list (Coalition on
Reinventing Information Science,
Technology, and Library Education),
April 11-24, 1999 with Paul Wiener.
See: <http://www.uct.ac.za/org/cristal-
ed/>
CURRENT PUBLISHING
OPPORTUNITIES:
In the February 1999 issue of The CRIV
Sheet, Richard Humphrey, CRIV editor,
calls for additional writers. Contact him
at: <rhumphre@iupui.edu>.
Peter Beck, editor of AALL Spectrum,
asked in the March and April 1999
issues that those interested in editing the
“Chapter News” or “Committee News”
column contact him at <pbeck@
aall.org>.
The AALL Professional Development
Committee is looking for ideas for
electronic list discussions, publications,
and distance learning. Contact Carol
Avery Nicholson <Carol_Nicholson@
unc.edu> for more information.
Linda Defendeifer is new columnist for
Against the Grain, which addresses
publishing mergers and acquisitions.
Contact her with contributions at:
<defendei@law.uiuc.edu> and include
the subject line: ATG M&A [mm/yy]
(month/year of your message).
A special issue of the Journal of the
American Society for Information
Science, entitled “Information Science
at the Millenium,” is scheduled to
appear at the end of 2000. Contact guest
editor, Terrence Brooks, at:
<tabrooks@u.washington.edu> if you
are interested in contributing.
Cataloging & Classification Quarterly
is seeking “informed reviewers” .
Contact Michael Carpenter, CCQ’s
book review editor, <lscarp@lsu.edu>.
Papers are being sought for a special
issue of Archives and Museum
Informatics. The topic of the special
issue is “Imaging, Visualization and
Humanities Research” and the deadline
for submission is June 30, 1999. See:
< h t t p : / / w w w . a r c h i m u s e . c o m /
publishing/armu.guide.html> or
contact: J. Trant, editor-in-chief,
<jtrant@archimuse.com>.
For all those planning to attend the
North American Serials Interest Group
(NASIG) annual conference at
Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, June 10-
13, 1999, volunteer reporters for the
NASIG Newsletter have been requested.
Reports must be submitted by July 15,
1999. Contact: Maggie Horn
<mehorn@cnsvax.albany.edu> (As an
aside, I attended the NASIG meeting
last year in Boulder, CO, and enjoyed
it very much. It’s inexpensive
(especially if you stay in the dorms)
casual, friendly, and extremely
informative.)
News items are always needed for the
“News From the Field” column of the
Journal of Internet Cataloging.
Contact: Gerry McKiernan <gerrymck
@iastate.edu>.
A call for contributors was issued by
the editors of MC Journal: The Journal
of Academic Media Librarianship. See:
<http://wings.buffalo.edu/publications/
mcjrnl/> or contact: Lori Widzinski,
editor, at <widz@acsu.buffalo.edu>. (I
believe I have mentioned previously
that I am on the editorial board of this
journal. Submissions have been down
recently and I would strongly
encourage anyone thinking of
publishing to consider this journal.)
Deadline for the next issue: August 30,
1999.
VINE, a journal covering IT
applications in libraries and information
services, is seeking contributions for a
special issue on “Library Management
Systems”, with a deadline of June 15,
1999. See: <http://agent.sbu.ac.uk/
publications/vineaut.html> or contact:
Andrew Cox at <coxam@sbu.ac.uk>.
For those of you who are ALCTS
members (Association for Library
Collections & Technical Services, a
division of the American Library
Association), you may want to consider
the open invitation issued by ALCTS
Online Newsletter editor, Dale
Swensen. A new column, “View-
points,” is being created and it will
include “thoughtful essays” on various
topics. See: <http://www.ala.org/alcts_
news/editor.html> for more
information. (I would highly
recommend reading this newsletter
even if you are not a member of ALCTS
or ALA. It’s full of reports of what
activities general technical services
librarians are concerned about and
dealing with every day.)
A call for papers for the special
millenium issue of Information
Resources Management Journal has
been issued. The deadline of May 1,
1999 for the special issue will have
passed by the time you read this, but
there is also a need for book reviews
and case studies for this journal. See:
<http://www.brint.com/irmj.htm> or
contact: Yogesh Malhotra at:
<ymalhotra@fau.edu>.
And just a general reminder: SIS and
chapter newsletters almost always want/
need contributions, so contact those
editors, either with a specific idea in
mind or a willingness to run with an idea
they may already have in mind.
I’ll close the way I opened, with a
reminder to attend the Research
Roundtable meeting in Washington on
Sunday, July 18, 1999. LeGrande
Fletcher and I are its co-coordinators
and we hope to see you there! As
always, thank you for reading this
column. Please contact me if you have
comments or questions. G

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 20
Serials
Christina Tarr
University of California, Berkeley
ctarr@library.berkeley.edu
Margaret McDonald
University of San Diego
maggiemc@acusd.edu
The following serial title changes were
recently identified by the University of
San Diego Legal Research Center
serials staff and the University of
California, Berkeley Law Library
cataloging staff:
AsiaLaw
-v. 10, issue 8 (Oct. 1998)
(OCoLC 28689996)
With Nov. 1998 issue, absorbed by:
International financial law review
(OCoLC 8442665)
Asian Pacific American law journal
Vol. 2, no. 1 (fall 1994)
(OCoLC 32506284)
Changed to:
UCLA Asian Pacific American law
journal
Vol. 3, no. 1 (fall 1995)-
(OCoLC 36687123)
Brandeis journal of family law
Vol. 36, no. 1 (winter issue 1997-98)-
v. 36, no. 4 (fall issue 1997-98)
(OCoLC 38983641)
Changed to:
Brandeis law journal
Vol. 37, no. 1 (fall issue 1998-99)-
(OCoLC 40966999)
California.
Civil Code.
West’s California codes, civil code. -
Compact ed.
1979-1998
(OCoLC 4748587)
Changed to:
California.
Civil Code.
California civil code. - Desktop ed.
1999-
(OCoLC 40562740)
California.
Code of Civil Procedure.
West’s California codes, civil
procedure. - Compact ed.
1978-1998
(OCoLC 3702186)
Changed to:
California.
Code of Civil Procedure.
California code of civil procedure. -
Desktop ed.
1999-
(OCoLC 40562986)
California.
Corporations Code.
West’s California codes, corporations
code. - Compact ed.
1981-1998
(OCoLC 7215562)
Changed to:
California.
Corporations Code.
California corporations code. -
Desktop ed.
1999-
(OCoLC 40562745)
California.
Evidence Code.
West’s California codes. Evidence
code. - Compact ed.
-1998
(OCoLC 6006315)
Changed to:
California.
Evidence Code.
California evidence code. - Desktop
ed.
1999-
(OCoLC 40562725)
California.
Penal Code of California.
West’s California codes, penal code. -
Compact ed.
1978-1998
(OCoLC 3702167)
Changed to:
California.
Penal Code of California.
California penal code. - Desktop ed.
1999-
(OCoLC 40562748)
California.
Probate Code.
West’s California codes, probate
code. - Compact ed.
1980-1998
(OCoLC 6006661)
Changed to:
California.
Probate Code.
California probate code. - Desktop
ed.
1999-
(OCoLC 40562728)
California.
Uniform Commercial Code.
West’s California codes, commercial
code. - Compact ed.
1990-1998
(OCoLC 21176880)
Changed to:
California.
Uniform Commercial Code.
California commercial code anno-
tated. - Desktop ed.
1999-
(OCoLC 40562764)
California.
West’s California juvenile laws and
court rules
1990-1998
(OCoLC 22713421)
Changed to:
California.
California juvenile laws and rules
1999-
(OCoLC 40810624)

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 21
Clark Boardman Callaghan’s
directory of law office man-
agement software
1992-1997
(OCoLC 26116616)
Changed to:
West Group’s ... directory of
law office management
software
1998
(OCoLC 39697024)
Changed to:
Directory of law office
management software
19
th
annual (Jan. 1999)-
(OCoLC 40843333)
Detroit College of Law at
Michigan State University
entertainment & sports law journal
Vol. 2, no. 1 (fall 1995)-v. 3,
no. 1 (spring 1998)
(OCoLC 35104886)
Changed to:
Entertainment and sports lawyer
(East Lansing, Mich.)
Vol. 4, no. 1 (fall 1998)-
(OCoLC 40817957)
Journal of limited liability companies
(Vol. 1, no. 1 (summer 1994)-v. 5, no.
3 (winter 1998)
(OCoLC 30385661)
Merged with:
Journal of partnership taxation
Vol. 1, no. 1 (spring 1984)-v. 15, no.
4 (winter 1999)
(OCoLC 10586016), and:
Journal of S corporation taxation
Vol. 1, no. 1 (summer 1989)-v. 10,
no. 3 (winter 1999)
(OCoLC 20025562)
To form:
Business entities
Jan./Feb. 1999-
(OCoLC 40808909)
Law office economics and manage-
ment
Vol. 1 (May 1960)-v. 39, no. 3 (1998)
(OCoLC 1755604)
Changed to:
The lawyers competitive edge : the
journal of law office economics and
management
Vol. 1, no. 1 (Jan. 1999)-
(OCoLC 40247981)
Loyola consumer law reporter
Vol. 1, no. 1 (fall 1988)-v. 9,
no. 4 (1997)
(OCoLC 18790210)
Changed to:
Loyola consumer law review
Vol. 10, no. 1 (1998)-
(OCoLC 38987691)
RLIN focus
Issue 1 (Apr. 1993)-issue 34 (Oct.
1998)
(OCoLC 27463509)
Changed to:
RLG focus
Issue 35 (Dec. 1998)-
(OCoLC 40625928)
State leadership directory. Directory
I, State elective officials
1996-1997
(OCoLC 34276347)
Changed to:
CSG state directory. Directory I,
Elective officials
1998-
(OCoLC 38543050)
State leadership directory. Directory
II, State legislative leadership,
committees & staff
1996-1997
(OCoLC 34672304)
Changed to:
CSG state directory. Directory II,
Legislative leadership,committees &
staff
1998-
(OCoLC 39207786)
State leadership directory. Directory
III, State administrative officials
classified by function
1996-1997
(OCoLC 35031978)
Changed to:
CSG state directory. Directory III,
Administrative officials
1998-
(OCoLC 39281387)
Taxation for lawyers
Vol. 1 (July/Aug. 1972)-v. 27, no. 2
(Sept./Oct. 1998)
(OCoLC 1784881)
Merged with:
Taxation for accountants
Vol. 1 (Mar. 1966)-v. 61, no. 4 (Oct.
1998)
(OCoLC 1767177)
To form:
Practical tax strategies
Vol. 61, no. 5 (Nov. 1998)-
(OCoLC 40358195)
The following serial cessations were
identified by the University of San Di-
ego Legal Research Center serials staff
and the University of California, Ber-
keley Law Library acquisitions staff:
CIS federal register index
Ceased with: no. 1998-53 (Nov. 16-
Dec. 31, 1998)
(OCoLC 10139759)
The corporation journal
Ceased with: v. 32, no. 14 (fall 1996)
(OCoLC 1565169)
The federal labor-management and
employee relations consultant
Ceased with: 98-5 (June 15, 1998)
(OCoLC 11061386)
Inter-American legal materials
Ceased with: v. 8, no. 1-2 (1997)
(OCoLC 9264568)
Quarterly (Christian Legal Society)
Ceased with: v. 18, no. 2 (spring
1997)
(OCoLC 9012690) G

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 22
Subject Headings
Alva T. Stone
Florida State University
atstone@law.fsu.edu
In February 1999 the Library of Congress began coding form
subdivisions with the USMARC code $v, a subfield code
for subject headings approved some years ago by MARBI.
Marie Whited, as AALL’s official representative to the ALA
ALCTS/CCS Subject Analysis Committee (SAC), reported
on this as an upcoming development in the last issue of TSLL.
Now it is a reality, and judging from recent comments posted
to AUTOCAT, libraries everywhere that use LC cataloging
copy have decided to also implement the $v subfield code.
Let’s take a little time to examine how the new code should
be used, and answer some questions that have come up. First,
it might be useful to read a definition of form data, as
described by a SAC Subcommittee, and presented at the
“Educational Forum on LCSH and Subfield v,” held last
January during the ALA Midwinter meeting:
“Form data are those terms and phrases that designate specific
kinds or genres of materials. Materials designated with these
terms or phrases may be determined by an examination of:
• their physical character (e.g., videocassettes,
photographs, maps, broadsides);
• the particular type of data that they contain (e.g.,
bibliographies, questionnaires, statistics);
• the arrangement of information within them (e.g., diaries,
outlines, indexes);
• the style, technique, purpose, or intended audience (e.g.,
drama, romances, cartoons, commercials, popular
works);
• or a combination of the above (e.g., scores).
A single term may be modified by other terms, in which
case the whole phrase is considered to be form data (e.g.,
aerial photographs, French dictionaries, conversation and
phrase books, wind ensemble suites, telephone directories,
vellum bound books, science fiction).”
This is a generalized definition, not restricted to LCSH terms,
and in fact, it is applicable to form headings as well as form
subdivisions. Which brings us to our first question: Is LC
going to be using the USMARC 655 tag, instead of 650, for
form headings now? (An example of a form heading is “Law
reports, digests, etc.”) No, not at this point. Only subject
subdivisions are affected by new coding right now.
Apart from using the criteria shown above, are there other
ways in which we can determine if a subdivision should be
coded as form? Yes, you can use two of the same tools
you’ve always used for verifying subject headings. One way
is to check in your online version of the LC Subject
Authorities. Here you will find new records for subject
subdivisions, in 18X fields, with a 680-tagged field
explaining how the subdivision is used. If it is a form
subdivision, the tag and code will be 185 $v; but if it is
considered a topical subdivision, it will be coded as 180 $x.
Here is an example of one of the new records, for a form
subdivision:
010 sh 99001405
040 IEN $b eng $c DLC
005 19990225091848.7
073 H 1140 $z lcsh
185 $v Commercial treaties
480 $x Commerce $v Treaties
585 $v Treaties $w g
680 $i Use as a form subdivision under names of
countries, etc., for collections of
commercial treaties of those places.
Another way to determine if your subdivision is form or
topical is to look it up in the Subject Cataloging Manual:
Subject Headings (SCM:SH). The Library of Congress has
updated the instruction sheets for free-floating subdivisions
and for subdivisions controlled by pattern headings. In this
manual, subdivisions that once were coded $x (topical) which
now should be coded $v (form) have been indicated by a
diamond-mark, ♦, to the left of the subdivision. However,
by the time you read this, the SCM:SH 1999 Update no. 1
(spring 1999) should have arrived. The diamond-mark
designation will no longer be used; instead, you will see the
actual subfield code for all listed subdivisions. Here is an
example, from SCM:SH 1154.5, for subdivisions used under
Legal Topics headings:
$v Cases
$x Codification
$x Compliance costs (May Subd Geog)
$x Criminal provisions
$v Digests
$v Forms
$x Interpretation and construction
$x Language
$x Legal research
$x Legislative history
$v Popular works
$x Research (May Subd Geog)
$x Trial practice

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 23
(The 11th ed. of Free Floating
Subdivisions: An Alphabetical Index is
also being printed with the subfield
codes added.) A simple analysis of the
above subdivisions should convince us
that the form ($v-coded) subdivisions
represent what the work is, while the
topical ones are used to show what the
work is about. But wait, you might say,
doesn’t “—Legislative history”
represent a particular kind or genre of
material (i.e., compilations of texts of
acts, public hearings, committee
reports, etc.)? Most of the time, yes,
the subdivision is used that way.
However, LC has announced that, since
the subdivision contains the word
“history,” they wish to be consistent
with the practice being used for “—
History” and for “—History and
criticism,” which are both being coded
as $x topical subdivisions. The
SCM:SH 1999 Update no. 1
subsequently shows the “—Legislative
history” subdivision with a $x subfield
code.
Form subdivisions always come at the
end of the LCSH string, right? Not
necessarily. There are some reasonable
constructions where a topical
subdivision must follow the form
subdivision, to make the heading
unambiguous. A common example is
a dictionary (form) which is in a
language other than that of the
cataloging agency, e.g.:
Law $v Dictionaries $x
German.
Both SAC and MARBI
addressed this and other special
situations when a separate
coding for form data was
initially proposed. Another
question often asked was: what
about those times when a term
most often used as a form is
actually the topic of the work
being cataloged? (An example
might be: “Law schools—
Statistics” for a discussion of
statistics about law schools, not
a compilation of the actual
statistics.) The guideline we are
to use is: code the subdivision
for its function, not for its
wording or its position in the
string. LC will be creating two separate
authority records for subdivisions that
can often be used either way, one coded
180 $x and the other coded 185 $v.
There are other instances where the
“coding follows function.” In the next
example, the second heading clearly
deals with treaties as a topic, while the
work represented by the first heading
actually contains the texts of the
treaties:
Indians of North America $v
Treaties
Indians of North America $x
Treaties $x History
Hmm ... very interesting, but ... does
this mean that “—Law and legislation”
under topics, and “—Legal status, laws,
etc.” under classes of persons or ethnic
groups will be coded $x when the work
is about the law, but $v when the work
contains the text(s) of the law? No. At
the moment, LC has decided that these
two subdivisions should be coded as $x
(topical), which is thought to be the
predominant characteristic of works for
which the subdivisions have been used.
It is possible that LC will consider
adding an additional subdivision for
form (perhaps “—Sources,” or “—
Texts,” or ???) to such headings, when
the work consists of or has substantial
texts of laws, but LC would like to hear
what the AALL suggests on this matter.
(Please consult your reference
librarians, and be prepared to discuss
this at the TS-SIS cataloging committee
and roundtable meetings this summer
in Washington. Or, ask the chair of the
Cataloging & Classification Committee
if there will be a Working Group to
study these issues, and volunteer to be
a member!)
Why bother? Some catalogers have
complained that this creates extra work,
but results in no obvious improvements
for subject access. This is a short-
sighted view. The idea is that, if we
provide the means — the $v coding —
for the systems designers, then our
OPAC’s can be programmed to show
the distinction of form/genre data, and
new search templates can be developed
to make it easier for end-users to access
this data. Reference librarians,
particularly at public and music
libraries, feel that our current state of
subject access too often fails for the
many patrons who request materials
based on form or genre. There is an
expectation that academic and other
types of special libraries will also
benefit from this innovation. And, as
one panelist said at the aforementioned
Educational Forum, “You are already
doing the intellectual work of assigning
form; now you have the tool (subfield
$v) to designate it.” G

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 24
SUMMARY OF THIS YEAR’S OBS SURVEY
Brian Striman
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Bstriman1@unl.edu
General Background
Seventeen percent response. Chocolates
as incentive. 314 surveys mailed out—
54 returned: 5 firms; 3 county; 1
government military; 1 state; 2 law
society libraries; and the rest of the
surveys from academics. Job duties of
those who responded were: 23
administrators/heads of tech services;
20 catalogers/serials/authority control;
2 collection development; 2 reference;
1 webmaster; and, 5 were a mix of
everything. Length of years of
librarianship for those responding was:
4 (1-3yrs); 6 (4-6yrs); 3 (7-9yrs); 7 (10-
13yrs); 24 (13-19yrs); and 13 (20-
50yrs)—the rest didn’t fill in that
category. Utility: 38 OCLC/WLN; 7
RLIN; 2 A-G Canada. Database/Local
system: 25 Innovative Interfaces; 5
Notis; 4 SIRSI/Unicorn; 2 Endeavor/
Voyager; 2 EOS International-
Professional; 2 Best Seller; 1 Dynix/
Ameritech; 1 DRA; 1 Sydney Plus; 1
Horizon; 1 InMagic; 1 Total Library
Computerization.
Investigate Merging With TS SIS
33 Yes, investigate; 14 Don’t
investigate; 7 unsure. Summary of
comments representing OBS members
who want to investigate OBS merger
with TS:
Advantages of Merging
⊕ So many OBS topics and members
overlap with TS, the distinction and
need for a separate SIS to cover
online bibliographic services is no
longer necessary. We could cover
the needs of OBS via adding
committees to TS/SIS if TS
members approved all the by-laws
changes, etc. We could also explore
OBS-type topics and needs going to
other SISs, such as sub-committees
in Computer Services SIS, or
Reference Services SIS.
⊕ Merging would avoid scheduling
conflicts during AALL annual
meetings. Not just conflicts, but also
the time pinch problems for
members wanting to attend various
tech services multiple meetings
(committee and business meetings).
⊕ It would save dues money for
AALL members who feel the need
to have representation in both TS
and OBS.
⊕ We would have a stronger, more
consistent “track” for educational
programs and services, since now
it’s difficult to differentiate between
OBS and TS topics and services.
⊕ Wouldn’t spread ourselves so thin
trying to manage the two similar
SIS’s.
⊕ Meeting participants wouldn’t have
to give or listen to identical
committee reports during the
business meetings.
⊕ The “systems aspects” of tech
services is so pervasive that we can
no longer view it as unique enough
to be treated as a separate issue.
Disadvantages of Merging
⊗ We’ve dealt with this two times
before and each time membership
has voted not to merge with TS.
How many times do we have to go
down this road?
⊗ It would reduce the resources
currently available to members who
are not technical services “types”
but who are interested in local
systems, and other technologies
which interface with law libraries.
⊗ It would reduce the number of
potential AALL educational
programs in technical services areas
by forcing OBS topics into the
larger (more cumbersome?) TS/SIS.
⊗ It would reduce another tech services
related “voice” at the SIS Council
and for other leadership roles in AALL.
⊗ It would reduce the number of
opportunities for tech services and
others who may not be tech services
librarians (but share online library
database activities and interests) to
hold an office.
⊗ It would add several more layers to
TS/SIS, making meetings even
more crowded and business
meetings even more pressed for
time—it’s already become too full.
TS already has too many sub-
groups.
⊗ It would reduce the total amount of
revenue that could be spent on
technical services related projects
and disbursements for what used to
be OBS meetings, special mailings,
and educational programs. As a
whole, law tech services librarians
would lose a certain amount of
potential spending money on
themselves for professional
development if OBS is dissolved—
e.g. the shared grant monies for the
OBS/TS Joint Research Grant
Committee.
⊗ OBS has enough uniqueness to keep
it separate from TS.
Idea!! — provide an open forum
meeting time for OBS and TS
membership at AALL in DC
or Philadelphia, for face-to-
face discussion the pros and
cons of merging. Also, before
any merging with TS, we need
a pre-determined goal first.
General OBS Comments
♦ OBS should push for more complete
system coverage, where circ and
reference and administrators can
turn to for programs and services
that help them keep abreast with
system developments.
♦ OBS should be more proactive:
things like getting OCLC to FULLY
support and implement the rules and
guidelines for LC’s Rules for the
Description of Loose-Leaf Pub-
lications.
OBS AALL Educational Programs
I know you’ve read Janet McKinney’s
TS survey results in the March TSLL.
There are some program ideas in her
list that could fall into the OBS arena.
This is not new, in fact each year OBS
and TS sponsored programs have had
some overlapping topic areas.

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 25
Below is a bulleted listing of program
ideas in the OBS survey. Each of these
ideas will be reviewed and discussed as
soon as Brian sends them to Ellen
McGrath (the OBS Education Chair).
Then we can further make decisions at
the OBS Education Committee meeting
in DC. If you proposed a possible
program, you may be contacted to fine-
tune the proposal either before July 17th
or sometime during or after the DC
annual meeting.
Before listing the actual OBS programs,
below are some OBS program
“concept” statements that were found.
These can be addressed by the OBS
Education Committee for some kind of
report to the OBS Chair for further
discussion by the OBS Executive
Board.
Program “Concept” Statements —
Big Picture Stuff
♦ Do we want issue oriented
programming that generates debate
and proposes solutions, or
vocational programming which
imparts specific skills to the
membership, or both? If we want to
focus on vocational programs, then
we need more hands-on/laboratory
settings rather than podiums and
talking heads at annual meetings.
♦ We should address updating
librarians’ MLS degrees. We could
look at SLA and ASIS offerings. It
would be nice to see a rebirth of
research in technical services as one
focus as well as balancing the digital
and print emphasis.
♦ OBS needs to have continuing
programs on comparisons of local
systems. This should be a yearly
program with librarians discussing
why they chose their new local
system or chose to remain with their
present system as it moves forward
with enhancements. Perhaps a
contributor for a TSLL column to
keep us up to date on this OBS-
related topic. [Striman note: the
March/April 1999 issue of Library
Systems is devoted to an “Annual
Survey of Automated Library
System Vendors...” published by
Library Technology Reports, ALA —
and would be the type of spring-board
for a comparison kind of OBS program].
♦ OBS should consider developing
and producing OBS programs
which could be used as “packets”
for members to use in regional
meetings: using videotapes,
audiotapes, print outlines, over-head
materials, etc. for program road
shows. This would be valuable for
law librarians who aren’t able to
come to the annual AALL meetings.
The 5 program topics listed in the
OBS survey are ranked below with the
most desirable as #1 and least as #5:
#1 Integrating the electronic library;
dept. coordination, workflow issues,
collection development, choosing
electronic resources to catalog,
maintenance of URL links, review
of contents.
#2 Maintenance and quality control of
the local database while facing
constant change, cutbacks, shortages
of staff and growing demands of our
time away from our duties.
#3 Multiple versions in the online
catalog.
#4 Adding call numbers from the most
recent LCC to OCLC/RLIN
bibliographic records.
#5 Cataloging tools interfacing
bibliographic utilities, such as the
Cataloger’s Desktop, and FTP to-
and-from the local system.
Other OBS Program Ideas— not in
any order.
♦ Core competencies (Phyllis Post is
already working on this).
♦ Integrating the electronic library. —
“OBS should put a lot of energy into
this.”
♦ Information Architecture: Phase
two—how are libraries doing it?
This would be good for AALL in
2000. A follow-up on the Information
Architecture program in DC.
♦ Reclassification of JX: panel of
librarians who’ve “done it good.”
♦ Systems and procedures for small
to mid-size law firms.
♦ Collection development and
electronic format: maintenance,
cataloging, procedures and policies,
and other issues.
♦ Using the Web to help with
collection development.
♦ OPAC and patron use interface:
getting a handle on what’s
confusing to patrons who use our
OPACs: from reading
bibliographic, checkin, course
reserve and item records, to using
full-text databases and launching to
Web sites via the Internet.
♦ OPAC versus the Homepage.
♦ Second generation migration
problems.
♦ MFHL MARC format for holdings
and data: what is it? who’s using it?
♦ Migration from one local system to
a new one: planning and imple-
mentation and evaluation.
♦ Client-server issues: Z39.50 (this
could be addressed by holding a
teleconference-type workshop).
♦ Interlibrary Loan and bib utilities
and local systems.
♦ Database maintenance issues as a
result of changes in AACR2rev.
♦ Automating and developing the
OPAC: for small libraries.
♦ Cataloging issues for non-OCLC
libraries.
♦ Multiple versions: what it means for
our patrons and for our online
bibliographic system/s.
♦ Digitalization: developing a digital
library collection.
♦ Systems fulfillment of aims of
cataloging rules and OPAC
displays.
♦ Metadata: law library applications:
update and other issues such as
staffing and standards. Good AALL
2000 follow-up program from the
more introductory program that was
in DC.
♦ Electronic library issues: panel of
librarians who have developed
policies and procedures that work.
♦ Refresher introductory cataloging
for new law catalogers.
Previously Proposed OBS AALL
Programs
9 OBS members reported that they
proposed programs in the past 5 years.
Brian has their names and will put them
in the OBS Chair manual so we can
begin to have a listing of “idea generators”
who have proposed OBS programs.
Most Pressing Need & How OBS Can
Better Serve Its Members— not in
any order
♦ Need a *M*A*S*H* unit version of
OBS/TS for law firm libraries.

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 26
big picture. Where to begin? It is a truth almost universally
acknowledged that you must look at the situation in your
own library without expecting it to be just like the situations
in other libraries; but that is only a partial truth. We in the
Technical Services field have been particularly good about
sharing our resources no matter what our individual idio-
syncrasies: cataloging records from centralized databases
(whether cards from LC or electronic records from OCLC
or RLIN), how-to manuals passed freely or published on
Web pages, or the tell-tale signs of procedures evident in
another library’s online catalog. Miss Manager would like
to suggest a six-step procedure for analyzing and fixing your
workflow (and she does this despite her loathing of the self-
help-book-of-the-month approach that it suggests; but ob-
serve that Miss Manager is not making any assertions about
the efficacy of this procedure for making you wealthy, slen-
der, or alluring).
1. Read what is available in library-related writings on
workflow or efficiency in the library workplace. This
is unfortunately an imperfectly-defined research area,
and it is still tricky to navigate around the terminology.
Just as an example, the following titles showed up in a
search in the Library Literature database at FirstSearch
using the subject term “workflow”:
“OCLC and Innovative Interfaces, Inc.: a Passport con-
nection.” (workflow of the authority section at the Uni-
versity of Oregon Library): OCLC Systems & Services
v. 11 no2 (’95) p. 16-19.
“’Keep them doggies rollin’;’ or, Using series authority
records to improve cataloging and processing
workflow.” (at Trinity University; workshop report
from the 1994 NASIG Conference) The Serials Librar-
ian v. 25 no3-4 (’95) p. 277-81.
2. Read what is available in general and business publica-
tions on workplace efficiency or workflow. These will
not be specifically devoted to libraries, but there may
be some good general principles that could be applied
to our kind of work. The caveat here is that there will
be more chaff and less wheat.
In both steps 1 and 2, it may be worth posting a ques-
tion on your favorite technical services listserv to ask
whether others have come across particularly helpful
articles or books or Web resources on the subject of
workflow or workplace efficiency. You may end up
with not only a list of helpful resources, but the begin-
ning of a great bibliography on the subject you can share
with the rest of us!
3. Theories are fine, of course, but you have to ride the
horse you have, not the one you want. Go public with
your needs: put out a question on the TS listserv, spell
out what your problem is and ask for advice. Look at
the Technical Services manuals from other libraries (es-
pecially libraries with similar staff sizes and the same
ILS) to get new ideas or to “test drive” a procedure you
haven’t done before.
4. Get advice from individual colleagues whom you find
to be particularly good at some activity. If Adelle is
Miss Manager (continued from page 1)
♦ OBS act as a liason/voice to-and-from the bib utilities.
♦ OBS be a conduit for highlighting information by sifting
out important information to share from the
overwhelming mass of information about vendors,
systems, etc.
♦ OBS provide a forum for introducing and discussing new
trends and issues for online bibliographic services, like
an information clearing house.
♦ Provide contacts with other colleagues.
♦ I liked this one, so I’ll quote it. “I want standardized,
accepted multiple version format and I want it now. We
keep kicking this around but it doesn’t seem to be normal
or standard. I’m at a loss how to implement this and what
MARC tags/fields are involved.”
♦ Provide more information on capabilities of local systems.
♦ Give members more information about OPAC design and issues.
♦ More info for new catalogers and/or newly automated
small libraries.
♦ Provide more contacts with the higher-ups in OCLC.
♦ Keep members more informed about changes in
technology and better ways to use our local systems.
♦ Share information via continuing education with
members on new trends in metadata, the Web, networking.
♦ More programs and articles in TSLL about system
functions (other than cataloging).
TSLL Comments
♦ Solicit articles to complement the columns.
♦ Find an automation columnist.
♦ More on automation development and cataloging for
small libraries.
♦ Add a features column (a regular column): “Migration
Pitfalls.”
♦ Include a “Desktop” features column.
♦ Keep the excellent articles coming!
♦ New format is great.
♦ Much improved. Looks very professional.
♦ One of my favorite reads.
♦ Add a “Hot Topics” column.
One Final Note
As I compiled the OBS survey results I was struck by how
much time a lot you spent giving me (us) ideas and comments
to improve and share our knowledge of online bibliographic
services and systems. It’s clear to me, as incoming OBS
Chair, that we must investigate merging into TS/SIS with
the eventual dissolution of OBS as a separate SIS. This will
take a few years in my opinion and we must proceed
carefully, looking at as many pitfalls as possible. As Anne
Myers said in her OBS survey: “Rethinking structure and a
strategic plan is fine, but not with a pre-determined goal of
merging.” G

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 27
clearly a very knowledgeable Acquisitions Librarian
who seems to have a real handle on dealing with egre-
gious publishing practices, ask for advice. If Bernice’s
department puts out 100 more cataloging records per
month than yours of the same size, see if Bernice will
share some of her secrets with you. Most people will
not go out of their way to proclaim their own expertise
but are perfectly happy to share it if they are asked.
5. Bring the new ideas home to your Department. Get
input first of all from the staff who will be affected by
any changes. Ask for their advice (really do ask for
advice; don’t give them the impression that you have a
done deal in hand and that you are just going through
the motions of getting their input).
6. Compile all of the theories and individual suggestions
into a definite plan for doing things in your department,
that is, write up a new workflow. Then try it. Tinker
with it, toss it out and start over, ask for follow up ad-
vice, and share your experiences with your colleagues.
Miss Manager is aware of the burden this activity will place
on anyone who tries it. The unfortunate truth about looking
at workflow or any other big-picture activity is that it must
be done in the midst of keeping up with all the individual
details that go into the day of a Technical Services Librar-
ian. Even if you were to find a ready-made plan that sounds
too good to fail, you will still have to tailor it to the needs of
your own library. But if enough of us work on the problem
and share our successes and pitfalls, we will make life easier
on ourselves and earn the gratitude of future Technical Ser-
vices managers.
Dear Miss Manager:
I am in a dilemma! I am the head of a Technical Services
Department in an academic law library. Six months ago the
law school hired a new library director. This was done with-
out input from anybody in Technical Services. The new direc-
tor is a very prominent scholar, but he doesn’t know very
much about the inner workings of the library. He seems to
be completely uninterested in the work we do in Technical
Services. Morale is low, and our work is beginning to suf-
fer; but no one outside the department seems to care! Do I
do something about correcting this problem before it gets
worse; or do I live with it and not raise any issues that will
get us into a worse position?
Sincerely,
Nervous in New England
Dear Nervous,
Before getting to the specifics of your case, Miss Manager
would just like to make clear that at least in some law schools
things need not have reached this point. That is to say you
might have forestalled some of this current difficulty by both
giving some input into the decision on a new director and
working with the new director soon after he began. Miss
Manager is not one to insinuate anything on scant evidence,
but is there some fault on your own side here? As a depart-
ment head you have a responsibility to make it clear that the
work your department does is important to the mission of
the whole library and the whole law school. If that work is
unknown outside your department, who will come to such
an understanding spontaneously? One need not go to tacky
extremes; one need only engage in an occasional conversation
with patrons (law students and professors), have a good working
relationship with other library departments and with your director.
It may very well be that your director is an utter ogre and
would like to eliminate the whole department and hire trained
chimpanzees to do what he assumes must be such unimpor-
tant work, in which case you should despair. But, if he is
merely ignorant about the value of the work being done in
the department, your first attempt should be to educate him.
It may not be best to do this with a memo. The written word
can sometimes be too sharp, even if sharpness is not meant.
Try to discuss the matter with him face-to-face, in a friendly
and enthusiastic way. Don’t try to change his mind all at once.
First, introduce him to the idea of the work in Technical
Services and its impact on the rest of the library. A nice
chart or a sample of some significant statistics, attractively
presented, may be in order here; or route him an appropriate
article that highlights some significant element in TS that
you would like to emphasize. Then ask him to lunch or for
a brief (15-minute) meeting to discuss. Never assume an air
of superior knowledge in all of this. Remember that you
know more about TS than he does, but also remember that
esoterica will not impress him. Procedures that will make
his library work better will.
Secondly, send him an occasional email (don’t inundate him!)
with an interesting web site or with some brief message about
a current TS concern. This will help to keep him aware of
TS issues as he is going through his day and juggling all the
other concerns in his director’s life (which are plenty). Do
you have a good working relationship with your Public Ser-
vices colleagues? If not, that may be an even more funda-
mental place to begin making the same educative effort. If
you do have a good rapport with your reference and circula-
tion friends, induce them to emphasize as subtly as possible
the value they place on good TS work. If your director is
very public services-oriented, this may make him take notice.
Some people would call all of this “public relations.” Miss
Manager eschews that terminology. It has the odor of the
advertising agency with all of its reliance on visceral per-
suasion and duplicity. Miss Manager prefers to think that
the honest presentation of facts politely delivered will do
much more to earn the true respect of those who are merely
unaware of the good work going on in your department.
Dear Miss Manager:
Why is it that you sometimes end your sentences with prepo-
sitions? I find this to be grammatically offensive.
Sincerely,
Picayune in Pennsylvania
Dear Picky,
Miss Manager is tempted to reply more pointedly than a well-
bred lady should. She will therefore quote Mr. Churchill’s
famous rejoinder to a similar complaint directed toward him:
“That is the kind of English up with which I will not put.”
Besides, if Jane Austen does it, it cannot be wrong. G

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 28
OBS & TS at the Crossroads:
An AALL Conference Schedule
Looking for some good programs or helpful meetings at the annual
meeting? You’re in luck. There are plenty! So get out your
schedules and make sure you mark the following:
Saturday, July 17:
4:00-5:00 p.m. TS 1998/1999 Executive Board
Meeting
4:00-6:00 p.m. OBS 1998/1999 Board Meeting
6:00-7:30 p.m. TS/OBS/RIPS/CS-SIS Joint Reception
Sunday, July 18:
7:30-8:30 a.m. Preservation Committee Meeting
7:30-9:00 a.m. OBS/TS Open Research Roundtable
11:45-12:45 p.m. TS Education Committee Meeting
2:30-3:45 p.m. Crosswalks to Information Management: Metadata — What is it? Who is Using it?
How is it Being Used? (Program B-6)
4:00-5:00 p.m. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (Program C-2)
5:00-6:15 p.m. TS Business Meeting
Monday, July 19:
7:00-8:30 a.m. Cataloging and Classification Committee Meeting (TS)
Local Systems Committee Open Discussion (OBS)
7:30-8:30 a.m. Acquisitions Committee Meeting (TS)
10:15-11:30 a.m. Preservation at the Crossroads: A Debate Between the Traditional World of Print
and the Brave New World of Digital (Program D-7)
2:00-3:15 p.m. Loose-leafs at the Crossroads: Redefining Seriality (Program E-7)
4:45-6:00 p.m. Collection Development Roundtable (TS)
4:45-6:15 p.m. OBS Business Meeting
4:45-6:45 p.m. Cataloging and Classification Roundtable (TS)
5:45-6:45 p.m. Preservation Roundtable (TS)
Tuesday, July 20:
7:00-8:30 a.m. OBS 1999/2000 Board Meeting
7:30-8:30 a.m. Heads of TS Roundtable (TS)
12:45-2:00 p.m. OBS Education Committee
1:00-2:00 p.m. Exchange of Duplicates Committee Meeting (TS)
Serials Committee Meeting (TS)
1:00-2:30 p.m. Binding Roundtable (TS)
2:15-3:30 p.m. Cataloging A La Carte Part I (Program H-6)
3:45-4:45 p.m. Cataloging A La Carte Part II (Program I-6)
5:00-6:00 p.m. Acquisitions Roundtable (TS)
Heads of Cataloging in Large Law Libraries (TS)
OCLC Committee Open Discussion (OBS)
RLIN Committee Open Discussion (OBS)
TSLL Board Meeting
Wednesday, July 21:
7:30-8:30 a.m. TS 1999/2000 Executive Board Meeting
8:30-10:00 a.m. Classifying International Legal Materials by Using Library of Congress Classifica-
tion (Program J-6)
10:15-11:45 a.m. The Smaller Law Library at the Automation Crossroads: Is It Time for an Integrated
System? (Program K-3)
The Internet in Technical Services: Crossroads of Opportunity? (Program K-7)
1:30-2:45 p.m. Collection Development Policies for Electronic Format Materials (Program L-5)

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 29
Cataloging
Tuesday, July 20, 2:15-4:45 p.m.
Coordinator: William Benemann
H-6 & I-6 “Cataloging A La Carte”
Welcome to the Real World: For the last two years (at
least!) catalogers attending the AALL Annual Meeting have
expressed their dissatisfaction with the standard meeting
format. It is a challenge for both speakers and listeners to
have a productive exchange of information about cataloging
minutiae when the presenters are on a raised dais at the
end of a chilly, cavernous room, and the attendees are really
interested in only one part of a three-speaker panel.
In Washington D.C. this summer, catalogers will have a
chance to try out an alternative — actually, they will be
able to try out two of four alternatives — in a program
called Cataloging a la Carte. We will be presenting four
small seminars, running concurrently:
Linking Globally, Coping Locally: an 856 Field Guide
(Karen Selden, University of Colorado, and Mary Stouse,
Howard University) You see 856 fields in cataloging copy.
You read about them in the literature. They are discussed
at conferences and on electronic mailing lists. But how do
you get them to work in your catalog and serve your users?
Gear up for some practical advice on how to edit MARC
856 fields to create usable and useful displays of Internet
access information for your local catalog. Through
discussion and practical exercises, learn about the most
commonly used indicators and subfields, hear the latest on
recent and proposed changes, and explore the display
constraints (and the associated editing implications)
imposed by automation vendors. In addition, information
about broader policy considerations, link maintenance
strategies, and PURLs will be provided.”
Aggregator Aggravation: Cataloging Issues and
Challenges of Electronic Serial Aggregators (Jeanne
Baker, University of Maryland, Jean Hirons, Library of
Congress, and Jean Pajerek, Cornell) Your library has just
purchased access to a large database of full text journals.
The titles are added and dropped and information changes
monthly. Now what? What are your options? How can
you best provide access to the titles?
When What They Want Is What It Is: Genre Terms and
Subfield V (William Benemann, University of California,
Berkeley) Can your patrons search for an official gazette
when they don’t know its name? Can they separate popular
self-help law books from weighty academic treatises? Can
they distinguish between a legal bibliography and book
about legal bibliography? This seminar will explore the
use of 6xx subfield v and genre terms as two ways of
providing a new dimension of access to your collection.
Content vs Carrier: What Are We Trying to Catalog?
(Joan Swanekamp, Yale) Is it a CD-ROM? Or is it a serial?
Or is it both? And what do you do now? Almost 20 years
after the introduction of AACR2 we are still dealing with
the conflict between content and physical carrier, and the
introduction of electronic formats has only added to the
complexity. The seminar will explore the various solutions
being considered to make the cataloging code respond to
the wide range of materials now entering library collections.
Each seminar will be presented twice on Tuesday, July
20th: first from 2:15 to 3:30, and then again from 3:45 to
4:45. Catalogers will be able to select two items from the
menu and join in a small group, intensive exploration of a
very specific topic — light on theory, heavy of practical
solutions. Bring examples of your worst cataloging
nightmares and get the benefit of a hands-on session with
the experts.
Loose-Leafs
Monday, July 19, 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Coordinator: Ann Sitkin
E-7: “Loose-Leafs at the Crossroads : Redefining
Seriality”
The traditional ways we’ve treated serials and monographs
are being redefined. Electronic
publications are making rethink
our traditional bibliographic
treatments. The 1997 Inter-
national Conference on the
Principles and Future Devel-
opment of AACR recommended
examining proposals to redefine serials
as “ongoing publications.” Come get an
update on what all this means for
traditional and electronic publications.
A roundtable discussion will follow --
from 3:30 to 4:30. This will be a great
opportunity for discussion. Come with
questions.
Tech Services and the Web
Wednesday, July 21, 10:15-11:45 a.m.
Coordinator/Moderator : Janet McKinney
K-7: “The Internet in Technical Services:
Crossroads of Opportunity?”
By now, we’ve all developed our lists of favorite Web sites.
When I wrote the proposal for this program, I envisioned
it being much more than just a demonstration of those
favorite sites. While we each might be missing a treasure
by being unaware of a particular site, I thought it more
important to move beyond that list of favorites to a
discussion of how using the Internet has changed what we
do in technical services. I wondered if the program attendees
and I might learn even better methods of incorporating
Internet resources into our daily work. And, I wondered if
incorporating the Internet as much as possible into our daily
work is really advantageous, or whether we’re just overly
enamored with the technology. Pam Deemer, Mary Jane
Kelsey, and Marla Schwartz will discuss the Internet in
technical services from the cataloging, department head,
and acquisitions/serials/collection development points-of-
view, respectively.

Technical Services Law Librarian, Vol. 24, No. 4
Page 30
The Web
Sunday, July 18, 1999, 4:00-5:00 p.m.
Coordinator: Anna Belle Leiserson
C-2 “Information Architecture for the World
Wide Web”
Learn more about the underlying structure of Web sites
and tools to improve your site’s organization and
navigability. And find out why and how librarianship
offers valuable insights into the architecture of Web sites
and Intranets. Discussion of the foundations of information
architecture — organization, labeling, navigation,
searching, and indexing systems — will be interwoven
with examples and case
studies, providing a
balance between the-ory
and practice.
Speaker Louis Rosen-
feld’s book on Web
architecture was
Amazon.com’s num-ber
one Web design book
for 1998.
Preservation
Committee News
Pat Turpening
I have several announcements for those interested in
preservation. The Preservation Committee will meet on
Sunday July 18 at 7:30 am. We will discuss progress made
this year on several projects and make plans for the coming
year. Any TS or OBS members, or any other members of
AALL for that matter, are welcome to come to the meeting
to listen, participate, learn. Don’t stay away because you
don’t know very much about preservation or because you
don’t have responsibility for it in your library. All you
need is an interest in preserving library materials for future
users. I welcome any and all!
There is also a Preservation Roundtable scheduled for
Monday afternoon, from 5:45-6:45. There is no agenda or
planned topic. I would like to invite anyone with specific
or general questions about preservation treatments,
binding, continuing education in preservation, the best
environmental conditions, etc. to come to this roundtable
discussion. This is meant to be a forum for exchanging
information.
The Preservation Committee has made arrangements for
a Tour of the Binding Section of the Library of Congress
on Tuesday, 20 July from 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. They are able
to accommodate 15-20 people. Two years ago, several
members toured the Conservation Lab at LC and found it
fascinating. There is no charge for the tour. Please email
me <pat.turpening@law.uc.edu> if you are interested in
going on this tour and I will contact you via email or the
message board at the convention site with details on where
we will meet.
I urge you all to come to the program sponsored by the
Preservation Committee on Tuesday from 10:15-11:30:
Preservation at the Crossroads: A Debate Between the
Traditional World of Print and the Brave New World of
Digital. Even though “At the Crossroads” is the theme for
the entire convention, this phrase is particularly apt for
the field of preservation right now. Undoubtedly, you all
are aware of initiatives to digitize library collections
(maybe your own). Digitizing is a wonderful tool for
providing increased access to materials, but can we assume
it is also a great tool for preserving the intellectual content?
Digitizing may seem like a panacea - greater access and
no more need to use those brittle volumes with all that red
rot staining our fingers. But, we need to think carefully
about decisions to digitize titles and withdraw the originals.
The material digitized will need to be constantly migrated
to new systems as old ones become obsolete. Will libraries
accept that responsibility? In addition, some of the
information is lost with each migration. If digitizing is not
perfect, though, what other alternatives are there? No one
wants to use microfilm and the books are falling apart.
These questions and more will be raised and debated during
this program. Two very able speakers, Melody Lembke,
Technical Services Librarian at the Los Angeles County
Law Library, columnist in this newsletter, and well known
to many of us, will debate LeeEllen Friedland, a Senior
Digital Conversion Specialist in the Preservation
Reformatting Division in the Library of Congress. Ed
Edmonds, Director of the Loyola University School of Law
Library will moderate the debate.
Smaller Law Libraries
Wednesday, July 21, 1999, 10:15-11:45 a.m.
Coordinator: John P. Bissett
K-3 “The Smaller Law Library at the Information
Crossroads: Is It Time for an Integrated System?”
You want an online library system, but your budget is small
and you’re all alone. Is online the best solution? What
questions should you ask, and of whom? The library
systems market includes a large field of competitors, with
widely varying features, capabilities, and prices. Focusing
on the right questions is the first hurdle, getting clear
reliable answers, the second. A consultant/librarian, Joni
Cassidy of Cassidy Cataloging Services, will identify some
key questions, suggest directions, and point out pitfalls,
and a law firm librarian who has directed automation
projects in two libraries, Les Peat, Director at Sullivan and
Wooster, will share his perspective on the process and his
hindsights. This program is aimed at librarians in small,
possibly one-person libraries, who need some direction
toward the questions to address and the resources to explore
in planning the move to an ILS, as well as some first-hand
guidance from an experienced hand. A roundtable
discussion will follow.

Technical Services Law Librarian, June, 1999 Page 31
Collection Development
Program
Wednesday, July 21, 1:30-2:45
Coordinator: Carmen Brigandi
L-5: “Collection Development Policies for
Electronic Format Materials”
Those of us responsible for selecting library materials,
know that format selection is getting increasingly difficult.
We have never been able to buy everything, so naturally
in the electronic age we can’t buy everything in every
format. What are our best choices? Come join Diane
Klaiber from the award-winning New England Law
Library Consortium, Douglas Lind of Georgetown and
Bobbie Studwell from Thomas Cooley as they share
examples and strategies. Find out how to establish and
apply guidelines to select electronic formatted materials
and how to write and revise your own collection
development policy.
Roundtable
You Are Invited to Attend:
Law Library Collections For the New Millennium:
A Collection Development Round Table
Discussion at the 1999 American Association of
Law Libraries’ Annual Meeting
Monday, July 19, 4:45-6:00 p.m.
Coordinator: Rob Richards
Come and hear presentations by two collections specialists
from private and academic law libraries, and then join in
an engaging discussion with colleagues about such issues
as:
w Integrating electronic resources into collections,
selection practices, and collection development
policies;
w Employing new resources from vendors which have
changed the way selection or collection development
occurs;
w Choosing the right format for a resource depending
on factors such as cost, users, physical layouts, etc.
The presenters are:
Frank Lee, Information Services Manager, Latham &
Watkins, San Francisco.
Rachel Pergament, Collection Development/ Acquisitions
Librarian, University of Southern California Law Library
We look forward to seeing you there!
Metadata
Sunday, July 18, 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Coordinators: Kevin Butterfield & Terri Saye
B-6 “Crosswalks to Information Management:
Metadata — What is it? Who is Using it? How is
it Being Used?”
Anyone who has searched the Internet knows the
frustration of retrieving large sets of data and the
painstaking task of sifting through extraneous information.
One of the answers is metadata — structured data about
data. This program will answer such questions as: What is
metadata? What different metadata schemes are available?
How can it make storage and retrieval of information
accurate? What does metadata mean for information
management in libraries and beyond? Our two speakers
are:
Erik Jul, Associate Director, OCLC Institute.
Prior to his current position, Jul was Manager, Market
Analysis and Special Projects, Collections & Technical
Services Division. He also managed the U.S. Department
of Education-funded project, “Building a Catalog of
Internet Resources.” A member of the OCLC Office of
Research from 1991-93, Mr. Jul managed the Internet
Resources project, which was also funded by the U.S.
Department of Education. He serves on the editorial boards
for LIBRES, Information Technology and Libraries, and
the Journal of Internet Cataloging.
Eliot Christian, Manager of Data and Information
Systems, US Geological Survey
A driving force behind GILS, the Government Information
Locator Service, Christian has given a new meaning for
interoperability also in a global scale. He helped establish
this approach in law, policy, standards, and technology at
the United States Federal level, building consensus among
government agencies and developing key support among
libraries and information service organizations and
corporations. He is now focused on carrying these ideas
to other levels of government and internationally as part
of the emergent Global Information Infrastructure
A roundtable discussion will follow the program.
III Users
The Innovative Law Users Group (ILUG) will hold its
Annual Meeting/Program on July 17, 1999 in Washington
D.C. in the Grand Hyatt (Bulfinch/Renwick Rooms). The
meeting will include two member programs, a short
presentation by Innovative, and breakout birds-of-a-feather
sessions, in addition to a business meeting. Lunch will be
served family style at a nearby Oriental restaurant. All
law librarians using Innovative as their local system, or
librarians interested in Innovative are invited to attend. A
registration form is available on the ILUG web page <http:/
/ftplaw.wuacc.edu/ilug/ilug.html>.

Nonprofit Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Permit No. 658
Madison, WI
TECHNICAL SERVICES LAW LIBRARIAN
c/o Cynthia May
University of Wisconsin Law Library
975 Bascom Mall
Madison, WI 53706-1399
The books you’ve got
On international law,
And classing them makes
Your nerves get raw.
You looks and looks
In LC schedule books
And nothing can be found.
You need some samples
To help you out and
End this merry-go-round.
Fear not dear hearts
For help is here
As program J-6 you’ll read
Through the maze of JZ/KZ
And in some JX we’ll steer.
Sample after sample we discuss
No theory we engage,
Handouts are thick as we together
Flip through page after page.
It’s a JZ/KZ program
With JX re-class on the side,
Marie and Jolande at the front
Each your classification guide.
So bring your coffee, bring your tea
For caffeine you’re sure to need,
No overheads or fancy media used,
Being practical is our creed.
AALL DC JZ/KZ Educational Program Poem
Jay Zee Kay Zee Poetry
Classification
Wed., July 21,
8:30-10:00 a.m.
Coordinator: Brian Striman
J-6.“Classifying Inter-
national Legal Materials by
Using Library of Congress
Classification”
Please look on page 23 of your AALL
DC preliminary program. Read over
the program summary and learning
outcomes. One special feature of this
program will be that you will take
home your thick handouts with the
notes you took during the program.
The handout samples contain actual
published examples of international
legal materials! Everyone will get a
handout and pens will be provided at
the door. Please come. This program
provides the forum to give law
catalogers the real “live” examples
they need to help them with their
understanding of applying LCC as
they catalog.