RE: Description based on notes Steve 06 Aug 1992 01:38 UTC
I agree that Description Based On notes are helpful to library users. My department is a periodicals public service area that assists about 100,000 users each year. Aproximately half of those people are faculty or graduate students doing some pretty in-depth research. Particularly for those people in literture, history, foreign languages, and with general periodicals (Dewey 051's and LC AP's), the description based on note can be very helpful in determining what serials to look further for, and often the basic history of a specific publication can determine whether a researcher should or can use it for certain purposes. Our OPAC (formerly LS/2000, now NOTIS) has never been profiled to display description based on notes to the public. That has never seemed necessary to me. It seems to always be enough that staff have access to that information in the MARC record when the need arises. We also have a very large newspaper collection here. The description based on notes are extremely (!) helpful in helping users determine titles that may be helpful to them. This is particularly true with pre-World War II titles for which holdings may be scattered. For staff who work with a collection for a long period of time, description based on notes can also reveal patterns to the contents of a collection. An example of this comes from our collection of Kentucky newspapers. After having worked with this collection for a few years, I've been able to recognize which areas of Kentucky were hardest hit by the Civil War and which areas had particularly usual natural disasters, and when. When nearly every title from a give area, such as a county, has a description based on note, with practically the same dates in those notes, patterns of history become more evident than is always the case from holdings information. There are subtle differences between implications of description based on notes and holdings, especially when viewed on the level of numerous titles at once, rather than on a title-by-title basis. This whole discussion brings up an interesting point. Based on my experience at a periodicals public service desk, the provision of full cataloging records to desk staff via an OPAC created TREMENDOUS changes in the manner of provid- ing public service. And all of these changes were improvements! Even though it probably is true that for most purposes, serials public service is much more concerned with holdings records than with bib records, I believe that serials public service is much more dependent upon bib records than is monographic-related public service. But maybe that's just my serials-bias coming through! At any rate, the quality of our public service for periodicals has improved greatly, in my opinion, because our public service staff now has access to full and up-to-date bib records on immediate demand. We at the University of Kentucky are also very lucky to have a serials cataloger who has an excellent understanding of needs of serials users, even though she has never worked in a public service area (if I remember correctly). As we begin to convert our holdings records to the NOTIS 5.1 serials control system in a couple of months, I am anticipating major changes in how and how well our public service staff can serve our users - these changes will probably be as great as when we began having electronic access to bib records. These are all just ramblings and opinions. Does anyone else have related or contrasting ideas? I'm very interested, if anyone would care to offer them. Steve Savage, Head, Periodicals/Newspapers/Microtexts Dept. University of Kentucky Libraries Lexington, KY 40506-0039 Internet: smsava01@ukcc.uky.edu Phone: (606) 257-8387