rev. CONSER core record test statistics Steve Oberg 13 Jan 1995 16:47 UTC
There have been many questions raised by the posting to SERIALST of our informal test comparison of the current CONSER full level guidelines and the proposed CONSER core record guidelines. I hope that the following additional points will clarify these issues, and will give others the information they need to interpret our results in a meaningful way. Furthermore, a "total" was included in the original posting which should not have been there. I am referring to the 21.2 hours which appeared as a "total" in the original posting. The original posting, including a corrected statistical summary, is appended to this message. My apologies for any confusion caused. 1. We did not include time spent on classifying and shelflisting each title. 2. We did include the time spent on assigning subject headings as appropriate. 3. We did not include time spent on searching for copy; this is done up front by a copy cataloger who triages incoming material. All other searching needed to catalog the item was included in the time study, e.g. checking 4xxs on authority records against our local file. 4. We did not include the addition or editing of any local fields. 5. The material used for the study was mainly in English, with a few in Spanish, German, and French. 6. Only a few titles had added complexities such as linking entries or series. 7. Catalogers participating in the test had a minimum of 3 yrs. experience in original cataloging of serials. _____________________ ORIGINAL MESSAGE: A short time after the guidelines for the CONSER core record were posted to various listservs, some of the serials catalogers here decided to conduct an unscientific, limited study to get an impression of the possible impact this new standard might have on our cataloging workflow. Perhaps others on this list will find the results of interest, or perhaps others have conducted similar studies and can then make some kind of comparison with our results. It is important to emphasize that our study was an informal one with a very limited scope. The study was conducted for one week by three original catalogers. Only incoming material with no available copy was used. Each title was first cataloged according to the core record guidelines. All necessary work to "beef up" each record to full record guidelines was done next. Each step was timed separately. Total cataloging time for a full level record therefore equals time spent on creating a core level record, added to the extra time spent to beef it up to full. Finally, time spent on creating headings for NACO contribution was also measured. CONSER CORE RECORD TEST STATISTICS (Revised 1/12/94) CATALOGING Number of cataloged records: 21 Total cataloging time (in hours) Core: 5.1 Full: 6.6 Time difference between Core and Full: 1.5 hrs. Average cataloging time (in minutes) Core: 14.6 Full: 18.9 Average time difference between Core and Full: 4.3 min. _____________________ NACO Number of NACO records: 10 NACO time (in hours): 4.4 Average NACO time (in minutes): 26.6 ****************************************************************************** Steve Oberg e-mail: so67@midway.uchicago.edu Serials Cataloger Tel. no. : (312) 702-8769 The University of Chicago Library FAX : (312) 702-0853 1100 East 57th St., Rm. 220 Chicago, IL 60637 ******************************************************************************