ACRL College & Researc Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

Inside Washington

Christopher Wright Assistant Director ALA Washington Office

There was genuine excitement in his voice when Joseph Howard, chief of the Library of Congress’ Serials Cataloging Division, suggested to a room full of librarians in October that a new U.S.–Canadian cataloging project might someday mean “a serial can be cataloged once in the U.S.—once in the world—and never be cataloged again.” The amount of work saved would be staggering.

Howard was talking about CONSER, the Cooperative Conversion of Serials project, which is designed to build a 300,000-title computer catalog describing the serials held by eight major North American libraries. The file will be stored on the Ohio College Library Center computer and will be made available to the public at the cost of reproducing the computer tapes. The project is scheduled to begin operation early next year. Initial funds have been provided by the Ford Foundation through the Council on Library Resources.

CONSER is an important development for the whole world. The way it has come about says something about the energy and resourcefulness of librarians and raises some questions about the way library cooperation is evolving in the United States.

The project began, at least formally, in the summer of 1973 when about two dozen people formed another of the library world’s myriad ad hoc discussion groups at the ALA Conference in Las Vegas. Encouraged by staff from CLR and led by a small steering committee, the group produced a plan. After some discussion with the library community, not all of it friendly, CLR and the principal participating libraries began negotiating with OCLC, and the project is hoped to be underway by the beginning of 1975.

There are three important elements to this story.

First is the fact that CONSER developed more or less spontaneously. Participants at the Las Vegas meeting have said there appeared to be a general feeling among a number of librarians that the time had come to try applying modern technology to the intractable and expensive problems of serials cataloging. The idea was the product of a committee and not the brainchild of one person or one institution.

Second, the project has remained throughout a nongovernment operation. Even though it will use a version of LC’s MARC format and the resulting computer tapes will be distributed through the Library of Congress and the National Library of Canada, the ultimate control of the project remains in the hands of CLR and the participating libraries (four government and four private).

Third, the operation is, for the moment at least, critically dependent on a private foundation for support. Also, the Ford Foundation has announced that because of its own economic problems it will not be able to provide longterm operating funds for projects such as this, and once the seed money runs out the libraries must seek help elsewhere. Unofficially, the participants hope that the Library of Congress will find room in its appropriations for the modest cost of maintaining the CONSER network and data base. But for the moment CONSER remains privately funded.

Of course, this is a simplified account. Events were hastened through the leadership of energetic people and the support of key institutions.

But the fact remains that a major international project has been launched through the efforts of a handful of professionals working as a simple discussion group trying to solve a problem.

Over the years America’s libraries have developed in this manner—often informally, responding to the needs of the moment. Programs such as CONSER were born out of a general agreement that the time had come, and then sent out into the world to find a home.

But there is a problem with this system. Today, advances in the techniques of disseminating information, and increases in the volume of information, are occurring so fast that our old haphazard ways are becoming too risky.

ACRL Membership
October 31, 1974	13,729
October 31, 1973	13,075
October 31, 1972	12,333

What is going to happen when the Ford Foundation money runs out? Is the Library of Congress the proper sponsor of CONSER? How does this fit into a national program for library service? How can the government best encourage these problem-solving informal discussions? What is the role of the Library of Congress? When should tax money subsidize interlibrary cooperation? These are questions which must be addressed soon. They are questions which a White House conference on libraries could bring out in the open.

One hundred seventy-five library administrators and catalogers came to Atlanta in October to attend an Information Science and Automation Division conference on automated serials control. At that meeting one of the principal criticisms of CONSER they voiced was that there had been so little communication with the library community.

How many other discussion groups are out there working away? How does their work fit into a national plan? This is why we need a White House conference.

We need a forum for communicating the remarkable steps being taken by librarians to help themselves.