Expert Community Experiment An Update Jay N. Weitz WorldCat Quality Management Division

Expert Community Experiment Timeframe: mid-February 2009 through mid-August 2009 All OCLC Cataloging members with full level authorizations invited to participate — no applications. Guidelines, FAQ, and Recorded Webinar available at: http://www.oclc.org/us/en/worldcat/catalog/quality/expert/default.htm What is this? I assume most of you know, but if you don’t, this is where we’ve allowed all cataloging members with full level authorizations to enhance any non-PCC records in WorldCat. So, BIBCO and CONSER records are excluded. We’ll be talking more about the BIBCO side of this tomorrow morning in the BIBCO meeting. Prior to the experiment, members could do minimal level upgrades and database enrichment. Once thing we’ve learned from the experiment is that many people didn’t realize they could do these things. The team responding to askqc questions and responsible for the experiment are Glenn Patton, Jay Weitz, Brenda Block, Robert Bremer, and Cynthia Whitacre.

Expert Community Experiment Allows member libraries with full-level Cataloging authorizations to make additions and changes to almost all fields in almost all records PCC records (both BIBCO and CONSER) are excluded LC records not coded as PCC are included CIP records (not coded as PCC) can be changed but the Encoding Level must remain ‘8’ So, we’re embarking on an experiment to allow member libraries with full-level Cataloging authos to make more additions and changes to almost all fields in almost all records. As always, there’s some “fine print” so I need to note some exclusions … [one of the goals of the experiment is to test if these exclusions are reasonable or if we need to go further …]

Sharing Experiences We’ve asked member libraries to use OCLC-CAT (OCLC-CAT@OCLC.ORG) as a means of sharing their experiences. A new generic email (ASKQC@OCLC.ORG) is also available for questions. We’ll be encouraging libraries to use OCLC-CAT as a means of sharing experiences. (We’d talked about setting up something special for the experiment but decided we’d keep things in one place. We have established a new generic email address for questions.

Are people participating? Yes .

Webinars in February and March We had over 900 individual log-ins for the 5 webinars.

Expert Community Replace Transactions

Number of Institutions Number of institutions doing at least one replace.

All Replaces February (15-28) March April May June Expert Community 5,816 18,010 19,489 16,704 19,387 Database Enrichment 7,824 18,235 19,250 15,950 16,992 Minimal-Level Upgrade 6,045 14,791 14,568 13,178 14,185 Enhance Regular 6,681 15,052 14,705 15,521 15,212 Enhance National 1,657 3,583 3,323 2,998 3,400 CONSER Authentication 635 1,929 1,547 1,188 1,490 Maintenance 2,741 6,183 6,010 5,410 5,785

Activity Compared to Last Year   Mar-08 Mar-09 Database Enrichment 14,512 18,235 Minimal-Level Upgrade 9,260 14,791 Enhance Regular 13,444 15,052 Enhance National 3,002 3,583 CONSER Authentication 3,634 1,929 CONSER Maintenance 2,915 6,183

What Have We Learned So Far? Member libraries are mostly behaving responsibly and are mostly making the kinds of changes that we hoped they would make. No one understands parallel records and the concept of “language of cataloging.” Lots of users didn’t know what they could already do. We’re seeing lots of cases of fixing a minimal-level record but not changing the Encoding Level value (so no credit is generated). Users are using the ASKQC@OCLC.ORG address to ask general cataloging questions. … And we’re also seeing a decrease in the number of change requests (both paper and electronic) !!! That’s a good thing! … (as evidenced by the increase in activity in the existing replace categories).

What’s Next? More monitoring of user activity. Evaluation of the Experiment as a whole. the first of what we hope to be a series of “special topic” cataloging-related webinars.

Thank you! Questions? Comments? ASKQC askqc@oclc.org Now … What questions do you have? ASKQC askqc@oclc.org