1. Alma - A Cataloguer’s Experience
Jane Daniels - Cardiff Metropolitan University
Amy Staniforth - Aberystwyth University
Siân Thomas - National Library of Wales

2. National Library of Wales
Legal Deposit Cataloguing - Key workflow
Over 2,000 printed items per week, 121,186 in 2015/16
NLW contribution to Shared Cataloguing Programme - 4,228 bibs, 1,931 authorities
Authorities
NACO contributor (via OCLC Connexion)
No local authorities on Alma
Normalisation
Data clean-up
Assisting cataloguing workflows
2015/ ,467 books, 52,719 journals
Journals are shelf ready, no processing unless new title
Quick end-to-end workflow for the majority of books: 3 staff - Search for and import record (usually from BL), create inventory, label and shelve - little change
More senior staff catalogue from scratch, more detail, Welsh imprints plus allocated letters (I-O, W-Z). File of these records sent to BL weekly, sets and publishing have made this process much easier!
Getting used to no local authorities, plan to increase NACO contributions
Data clean-up used to be via export, XSL scripts and imports - potential for authorities work as well as consistency to improve searching
Macro-like entry, auto-creation of holdings tags for serials

3. Cardiff Metropolitan University
Advanced repository search – query titles, items, holdings, authorities for:
Testing data-migration
Identifying post-migration data cleansing tasks
Establishing cataloguing housekeeping / collection management routines
Create & manage sets of records
Set contents placed in folder in MD Editor for further analysis
Run jobs against sets to carry out bulk changes
Advanced repository search provides a method of querying titles, (physical, electronic and digital), holdings, items and Authorities (if you are managing these locally) in real time. It’s not as granular as Analytics reporting but has been invaluable for:
Testing results of data migration from old system to Alma
Identifying post-migration data cleansing tasks e.g.
Items with no barcodes, no item policy.
Holdings with no items
Bib records for print resources containing 856 tags – misleading display in Primo i.e. looks like the resource is online but it’s just a link to ToC
Bib records resource type “undefined”
Establishing cataloguing housekeeping / collection management processes and routines
Reclassification
Suppressed records
Withdrawn items
Create & manage sets of records
Private or shared
Logical (real time i.e. search results are refreshed each time that you view the results) or itemised (static list of records)
Edited e.g. you might look at the initial list of results and think of more refinements to produce a “better” set
Combined with other sets for greater granularity
Catalogued i.e. if you select this option the contents of the set are visible in the MD Editor in a separate folder ready for you to work on e.g. further assessment, compare and contrast
Run jobs against sets to make changes in bulk e.g. run a job to delete 856 tags from records for print resources – Amy will say more about this.
Analytics is a more powerful reporting tool but we are just getting to grips with it! Using Advanced search and experimenting with creating sets a good way to get to know your metadata.

4. Aberystwyth University
Import profiles:
Profiles for each vendor (shelf-ready supplier & ebooks)
Awareness of record workflow
E-resources:
E-record quality (& more collaboration)
Open Access collections
Community Zone records
Imports:
Profiles – look neater in Alma and Primo (can tell much more quickly which provider they are from)
Sets – before we dealt with the records individually and couldn’t retrieve an import job…now have a sense of the records as a group and where from and what changes undergone (want to have more bibliographic changes upon import but waiting for EL to fix a bug that means only one rule can be added at a time)
More likely to identify issues and fix them ourselves…
Able to create new import vendor when someone asks if we can import some new ebooks – e.g. OA
E-resources:
Improved quality of records as more visible to cataloguers (other than CZ records we upload…)
Proactive on OA collections
CCC – explore creating records/portfolios and sharing them through CZ (both the promise and the flaws of EL!)
CZ – ideally we want to link to as many CZ collections as possible as we can’t maintain accurate reflection of large ebook collections – so will start to lobby for vendors to share better records (e.g. Jane on Dawsonera)
& if that works we can start on journals!

5. WHELF Network Collaboration
Shared Cataloguing
Purchasing
Standards
Training
WHELF Network Collaboration
First meeting of WHELF cataloguers November 2015:
Briefed by ExLibris about creation of WHELF Network Zone which would require de-duplication of records from across the Consortia. There is support in principle for this and the technicalities are currently being investigated.
Collected data on cataloguing tools in use across the Consortium and number of Cataloguing staff.
Meeting resulted in the creation of a Yammer community where we can ask questions, view and comment on documents and share ideas.
Shared Cataloguing
A NZ would allow us to search across our de-duplicated records and attach local holdings to a master record where one exists. We could contribute records for titles not in the Zone.
Anticipated benefits:
Quicker to catalogue standard materials releasing time for cataloguing Special Collections & donations
Data enrichment projects e.g. for legacy data, institutional repositories
Reclassification
Creation and maintenance of authorities e.g. NACO funnel for Wales?
In the meantime we have been working together to:
Map specialist cataloguing expertise across WHELF
Survey range of cataloguing tools and services in use
Identify the source of records used for copy cataloguing of books, serials and eResources
Explore accredited cataloguing training opportunities
Start lobbying for better quality records for eResources in the CZ
Obtain feedback from other Ex Libris Consortia who have established their own NZ
Purchasing
A WHELF NZ could also be used to maximise consortia purchasing power for library resources and services.
For cataloguers there could be opportunities to share the costs (and negotiate discounts?) for:
Cataloguing tools e.g. RDA Toolkit subscription
Catalogue records for copy-cataloguing
Enrichments for Primo
Training/CPD
Standards
Agree standards (amongst ourselves) for records so that they provide the best possible FISO(E) experience via Primo
AACR2 v RDA
Use of local tags
Policy on hybrid records
Creation and maintenance of LoC name and subject access points & other specialist vocabularies
Pass on required standards to vendors via development of pro-forma that specifies what we need.
Training
Possible to develop generic cataloguing training for use across WHELF based on best practice and agreed standards.
Could incorporate accredited cataloguing training available via distance learning from UK Library Schools and/or organisations based overseas e.g. ALCTS, Library Juice.
Initial survey of cataloguing resource shows staffing levels vary across partner institutions but that everyone has skills and knowledge to contribute.
WHELF needs to consider what staff resources will be required to continue creating, maintaining and managing metadata in the future e.g. For the NZ we can establish a sliding scale for catalogue records and for cataloguers.
Roles & responsibilities may change but this provides new opportunities for those willing to grasp them.