Book Review: Cataloging Collaborations and Partnerships

Abstract

Cataloging and Partnerships. Edited by Rebecca L. Mugridge. New York: Routledge, 2014. 317 p. $145 hardcover (ISBN: 978-0-415-71235-4). Libraries have a long history of collaboration with other libraries, especially with regards to cataloging. This book contains many articles originally published in Cataloging l? Classification Quarterly (CCQ) volume 51, issue 1-3, which discuss collaborative efforts of cataloging units within libraries. The articles are broken down into the following broad categories: * Collaborations in Cooperative Cataloging and Authority Initiatives * Collaborative Cataloging Initiatives * Collaborations in Merging and Migrating Online Catalogs * Collaborative Development of Training and Documentation * Collaborative Approaches to Special Projects As acknowledged by the editor of this work, there is not a lot of published information on collaboration within cataloging units. To help increase the amount of library literature on this topic, the editor of this book placed a call for articles that were brought together into a triple issue of CCQ. This book brings to light a representative sampling of the different types of collaborative cataloging efforts that are currently underway in libraries. While there are many collaborative projects mentioned in this book, the following is a summary of a few of these ideas. The first section of the book discusses different projects that have been completed to enhance authority initiatives. This includes information on how the Library of Congress worked with different libraries to develop the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms (LCGFT) as well as the Electronic Cataloging in Publication (ECIP) Cataloging Partnership Program. The second section gives some examples of cataloging initiatives with regards to bibliographic records. One of the projects includes the idea of insourcing the cataloging of music items within multiple libraries of the University of California system. Another cooperative cataloging project discussed is with the University of Montana working closely with the US Government Printing Office to catalog pre-1976 US Forest Service publications. In a section on merging and migrating online catalogs, two different articles discuss the benefits and problems with combining multiple library catalogs into one system. These two use cases, completed in Florida and the West Indies, have similarities in that a major goal of each was to reduce the number of resources that each institution was committing to maintaining the same types of databases and systems. Combining their catalogs made it possible to have a centralized unit responsible for the management of their integrated library systems (ILS). Another interesting collaboration demonstrated in this section includes the migration to an open-source ILS at a library in the Galapagos Islands, which is mainly staffed by volunteers. …