0Please reply to:  CONSER-survey@mit.edu  or the "paper mail address"
(as cited below) rather than to this list.   Thanks.  -ed.

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
This message is being cross-posted to ACQNET-L, AUTOCAT, BI-L, COLLDV-L,
CONSRLST, COOPCAT, ILL-L, INTERCAT, LIBREF-L, SERIALST, and STS-L.

We apologize in advance for any duplication.
**************************************************************************
                                                             May 31, 1996

The CONSER Task Force on the Cataloging of Conference Publications is
charged to review and recommend changes to the current practices
surrounding the cataloging of ongoing conference publications (as outlined
in AACR2 and the LC Rule Interpretations), taking into account the needs
of a variety of users.

One specific area the Task Force was asked to address was that of
monograph vs. serial treatment.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

The Task Force recognizes that some publications of an ongoing named
conference are clearly serials.  Unfortunately, serial treatment excludes
certain types of access points often identified by our users as important
for retrieval purposes (e.g., editor, date, venue, series number).
Frequent conference name and/or title changes can also cause an unwanted
proliferation of successive entry serial records.

Monographic treatment, on the other hand, does provide a way to access
those elements commonly identified as important.  Although an attractive
alternative, the Task Force rejected the idea of treating all conference
publications as monographs.  Often serial treatment simply provides
benefits, such as "automatic" call number collocation and less prohibitive
added volume cataloging costs, which outweigh the potential gains of
monographic cataloging.

Many hours of discussion and research have convinced the Task Force that
there is no easy solution to the cataloging of ongoing conference
publications.  One of the recommendations that the group has been working
on is a revision to the conference publications portion of LCRI 12.0A.
The Task Force tested many previous draft guidelines before formulating
the current proposed version.  The intent of this revision is threefold:

     1)   to provide clearer guidelines that will facilitate
          decision-making on the part of the cataloger

     2)   to reduce costly and time-consuming recataloging

     3)   to provide improved access points for users

We would like to receive your comments on this proposal and any other
thoughts you would be interested in sharing about the cataloging of
conference publications.

PLEASE send your response, by June 21st, to:

         CONSER-survey@mit.edu

DO *NOT* SEND YOUR RESPONSE TO THE LIST.

A paper mail address also appears at the end of the message.

Thank you.

Cooperative ONline SERials (CONSER) Program Task Force on the
Cataloging of Conference Publications:

Bob Ewald (LC), Mechael Gago (Indiana University, chair), Judy
Herrick (LC), Jean Hirons (LC, ex-officio), Sara Shatford Layne
(UCLA), David Van Hoy (MIT), Beacher Wiggins (LC)

====================================================================
                                                         5/31/96

DRAFT REVISION TO LCRI 12.0A (CONFERENCES PORTION ONLY)**

**NOTE:   Exhibition catalogs will be retained as a separate
          category.  They have been omitted from this draft
          revision.

4) Special types of publications

     b) Conference and exhibition publications.

     (1) Conference publications. Apply the following to ongoing
conference publications that are being cataloged for the first time.
Consider a conference publication to be "ongoing" if words such as "first"
or "annual" are associated with the name of the conference and/or the
title of the publication.

     Catalog conference publications that meet the three criteria for
serial consideration as serials, unless one or more of the following is
present:

     (a) a distinctive or unique title is presented on the
     chief source.  These special titles are usually
     dedicated to a particular topic and vary from issue to
     issue and conference to conference.

     (b) the conference publication is issued as part of a
     numbered monographic series.

Once a treatment decision is determined based on the first conference
publication (or earliest issue in hand), prefer to retain that treatment.
For conference publications treated serially, any change that would
require the creation of another successive entry serial record should be
considered "new" for the purposes of descriptive cataloging and once again
re-evaluated against the above criteria.

Use cataloger's judgement when changing the treatment and when deciding
whether to recatalog the earlier issues.  For instance, if a conference
publication exhibits evidence of seriality only after the first issue, and
it does not contain a distinctive title or series number, it is probably
best to change the treatment to serial and recatalog the first issue (as
would be done for other serials).  However, if a number of issues have
been cataloged and it becomes clear that the current treatment is highly
undesirable (e.g., the serial changes title with each issue), the earlier
issues need not be recataloged.  In the serial record, a linking note may
be added to indicate the preceding/succeeding monograph record or
treatment change:

     580     Beginning with the 1995 conference, issues are cataloged
             separately.

     580     Continues the monograph: Conference on Abelian Group
             Theory (3rd : 1985 : Oberwolfach, Germany). Proceedings
             of the Third Conference on Abelian Group Theory at
             Oberwolfach.

In general, prefer not to recatalog when the treatment is changed.

As previously noted, ISSN centers create serial records for conference
publications even though they may meet one or more of the above criteria
that would qualify them for monographic treatment.  If LC catalogs the
publication as a monograph, "xlc" will be added to field 042 in the ISSN
record.  Other CONSER participants differing in their treatment decision
may continue to use these records but may not further authenticate the
record by adding "lcd."

================================ E N D =================================

PAPER MAIL ADDRESS:

Mechael D. Gago
Asst. Head, Serials Dept.
Main Library, Rm. E-048
Indiana University Libraries
Bloomington, IN  47408-1801

FAX:  (812) 855-3072