The Dewey Consortium in Iceland and the use of Dewey in the National Union Catalogue

Ragna SteinarsdóttirDirector of Acquisitons and CatalogingNational and University Library of Iceland

Overview

• Library environment in Iceland Library consortium

• DDC classification in the Union catalog Icelandic exceptions Problems – tasks

• Dewey Consortium in Iceland

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Union Catalog

• Gegnir / Aleph 500, version 22

• Two OPACs: Gegnir.is and Leitir.is

• Gegnir is the catalog of the National and University Library

• Gegnir is also a catalog of 300 other libraries More than 200 catalogers

• One union catalog, one library catalog

• Gegnir hosts the National bibliograpy of Iceland

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Consortium

• Gegnir (the system) is run by the systems office Consortium of Icelandic Libararies Six staff members Independant The board is represented by public and

university libraries as well as government and municipal authorities

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Standards and rules

• MARC 21• AACR2

• Icelandic translation of abridged version• RDA before too long, hopefully

• Catalogers handbook http://hask.bok.hi.is/

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Quality control

• Quality control is the big issue in a single, national bibliographic database

• Quality control effective in Gegnir, we do not have much control over other databases in Leitir.is

• DDC numbers are not subject to quality control

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Quality control

• Quality manager for Gegnir is employed at the National and University Library of Iceland Some authority control in other databases

managed by the library: Skemman (repository of academic

and research documents, students’ thesis) Rafhladan (digital arhive)

• Authority files for personal names and topical terms analogous to Gegnir‘s authority database, Lykilskrá

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What do we do?

• Cataloging council, subject headings council and the quality team are the managing bodies of the bibliographic database

• There are strict regulations as to who gets permission to catalog

• We try to make sure that metadata for the databases NULI controls is in compliance with the metadata in Gegnir

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Authority file in Gegnir

• The authority file includes: Icelandic personal names with some cross

references Subject headings according to a thesaurus that was

used by school and public libraries and has been extended to serve as a thesaurus for Gegnir

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Cooperation - responsibility

• Co-operation is the key to success Everyone needs to change their practices when

becoming a member in Gegnir Gegnir depends on responsible staff

• 200 catalogers that have permission to do almost anything with the bibliographic records

• Co-operation takes time Patience, flexibility...

• Specialization is difficult in Iceland There are not enough people to do the job, dive into

the details, but the tasks are the same as elsewhere

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Dewey in the consortium

• Dewey Decimal Classification is predominant classification system in Icelandic libraries

• Different classification traditions in the University library and National library that merged in 1994 Effects can still be seen in the catalog

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Icelandic exceptions

• Icelandic language, literature, history and the geography of Iceland 810 for Icelandic literature, 823 for literature in English 910 for Icelandic geography (+ Table 2) 949.1 for Icelandic history (+ Table 2) We do not use -092 for biographies, we use 92*

• 925.5 – biography of a geologist• 927* - artists• 928* - writers

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Languages

• The most difficult exceptions are for languages

• 410 is used for Icelandic linguistics• 401 is used for general linguistics

We added an extra 0 after 4*• Language acquistion is 400.193

DDC: 401.93

• Translating and interpreting is 401.802 DDC: 418.02

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Table 2. Geographic areas

• The number in the full edition for Iceland: -4912 in the full editon -491 in the Icelandic edition

• How do we tackle that in WebDewey?

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Table 2 for Icelandic areal numbers

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Problems - tasks

• Decisions made by a small university library long time ago are in effect now in a much larger library system F.ex not to use periodic tables for literature

• We use our own number for Old Icelandic (Norse) literature – before 1550

819.09 819.1819.3

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More...

• Dewey numbers are not easily searchable in the OPACs

• They can only be seached in Advanced search in Gegnir.is, not in Leitir.is

• This is one side effect of being in a consortium with many other libraries Too many numbers in the records

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Numbers in records

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Numbers in records

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Dewey Consortium

• Contract signed 2011 6 libraries including The National and University

Library of Iceland Managed at NULI (Rósa)

• 14 libraries now participate in the Dewey Consortium 2 public libraries 5 university libraries 1 school library 6 government and institutional libraries

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Advantages of WebDewey

• WebDewey ensures more conformity in classification

• Searching is quicker and easier• You always have the latest version readily

available at your computer• Comments can be added – available for all

users

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Web Dewey - comments

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Web Dewey - comments

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Web Dewey - comments

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Thank you

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