1. The British Library and SUNCAT Brenda Young The British Library Bibliographic Development

2. 2 The British Library: a (very) short history The British Library Act 1972 Combined: British Museum library departments National Central Library National Lending Library for Science and Technology NCL & NLLST became the British Library Lending Division

3. 3 The British Library: a (very) short history The following were added in 1974: British National Bibliography Office for Scientific and Technical Information Added later: India Office Library and Records (1982) British Institute of Recorded Sound (1984) See http://www.bl.uk/about/history.htmlhttp://www.bl.uk/about/history.html

4. 4 MARC records Blaise (British Library Automated Information Service) established in 1977 UKMARC i.e. British National Bibliography LCMARC i.e. Library of Congress Books All BL catalogues added later H&SS ( Humanities and Social Sciences - 1984) SRIS (Science Reference and Information Service - 1987) BLC (British Library Catalogue - 1988-1991) DSC Serials ( Document Supply Centre - 1995) Other databases which include serial records BNB ISSN (International Standared Serial Number)

5. 5 Integrated Library System Aleph implemented 2004 All the BL’s records in a single catalogue for the first time One bibliographic record per title Integration of non-bibliographic records also required Long period of preparation preceded implementation

6. 6 Problems with the data Duplication of records Varying quality DSC serials Converted to MARC from an in-house format Very little data in the records Included SRIS holdings BLC Keyboarded from printed catalogue Lack of information and subfield coding SRIS BNB numbers, DDC and LCSH removed All made the matching and merging a very complex process

7. 7 Migration to Aleph Main tasks Standardise the bibliographic data Convert the data to MARC 21 Convert the data to UNICODE Enhance the records by adding ISSN Key titles Library of Congress Subject Headings Dewey numbers Over 500,000 records enhanced in this way

8. 8 SUNCAT A challenge! An opportunity!

9. 9 BL contribution to SUNCAT Original dataset of 698,137 records supplied Supply monthly update files of records flagged as new, changed or deleted Records are cleaned before submitting them i.e. all local and Aleph fields removed Updates have now been loaded to SUNCAT

10. 10 BL contribution to SUNCAT Dedicated SUNCAT team working on enhancing records 4 full-time equivalent staff; 2 full-time, 4 part-time Based in Data Quality Team Priority work on Inside titles Work from list of titles on spreadsheet On Aleph, merge duplicate records, copy records to be deleted to deletions library Use external sources: COPAC, OCLC, ISSN Portal, SUNCAT Retrieve items from collections when necessary Have processed 23,000 records representing 5,000 titles New and changed records also contributed by mainstream serials cataloguers

11. 11 ISSN requests We can only fulfill requests for ISSN for UK titles We expect requesting library to make every effort to find out if an ISSN already exists We need evidence of the publication; photocopies are acceptable We need as much information as possible Requests from SUNCAT contributors will be dealt with by the SUNCAT Team Guidelines are to be posted on the SUNCAT web pages

12. 12 Any questions?