Update on the Original Cataloging Project

The NHAIS Original Cataloging Project continues to add records to the NHU-PAC (and to OCLC's WorldCat) for materials held by NHAIS libraries that have not been cataloged by anyone else.



During 2008 original records were created for 196 books, 35 sound recordings, and 59 visual materials (VHS and DVD recordings). You can see these records as a group by clicking on the year and MARC format you are interested in on the NHU-PAC's "About NHAIS" tab (on the Original Cataloging sub-tab specifically.)



When a NHAIS library sends us a photocopy of a title page and verso (or a copy of the packaging for multimedia items) in response to our request and the item still cannot be matched to an OCLC record the item goes into the queue for original cataloging. The pile of stuff to be cataloged grows all the time (this is a phenomenon familiar to many of you I'm sure). However, to give an idea of where this project is at, here is a snapshot of things as of January 1, 2009:

• There were 23 actual items on the truck to be cataloged, mostly videos which have to be viewed (well, fast-forwarded through for titles and credits anyway) in order to be cataloged. There are still 8 of these on the truck today.
  


• There were 55 items that have been requested previously but not sent by the library which need to be requested again. Many of these are cases where the item was checked out when it was requested the first (or second, or third) time. Some of these were added to NHU-PAC as brief records several years ago.
  


• In the queue of things to be requested via ILL to be cataloged there were 89 books, 14 videos, and 18 sound recordings. These items were added to NHU-PAC as brief records between January and September 2008. None are older than that. This past Monday 26 of the books were requested for cataloging.
  

Since we began this project in April 2005 we have created new records for 797 titles.