OCLC CJK Users Group 2000 Annual Meeting
(Continental Breakfast provided)
Agenda:
8:30- 8:50 am Chair's Report (Hideyuki Morimoto)
8:50-10:00 am Program Committee Meeting
8:50- 9:00 am Program Committee Chair's Report (Phyllis Wang)
9:00- 9:25 am Demo of CJK Z39.50 (Sunyoon Lee, Joy Kim)
9:25- 9:40 am OCLC Presentation on Z39.50 (Hisako Kotaka, Marty Withrow)
9:40-10:00 am Report of the Task Force on Pinyin (Hsi-chu Bolick)
10:00-10:10 am Break
10:10-11:45 am OCLC Report
* Wade-Giles/Pinyin Conversion Plans, Services to Member Libraries (Glenn Patton) * OCLC CJK News (Glenn Patton) * OCLC CJK Software Plans (Hisako Kotaka) * Plans for Arabic Script Support (Marty Withrow) * CJK Contract Services (Bing Yu) * A Look at the Future of OCLC Cataloging (Glenn Patton)
Minutes
After a continental breakfast hosted by OCLC, Hideyuki Morimoto, Chair, convened the meeting at 8:30. He thanked OCLC for its financial and logistics support for the annual meeting.
Mr. Morimoto said that Mr. Glenn Patton, Manager, Cataloging Products Department, has been the new OCLC Executive Liaison for the Users Group. There will be OCLC CJK 3.01 Software User Update Session in the afternoon in the same room, following the Users Group meeting. The current officers were introduced, as follows:
Reporting on the past year’s activities, Mr. Morimoto acknowledged the following people’s contributions.
Abraham Yu chaired the Web Site Management Committee, with contributions from Fung-yin K. Simpson. (URL: http://oclccjk.lib.uci.edu/)
Phyllis T. Wang, Chair of the Program Committee, prepared the Program Committee session of the annual meeting this year, assisted by Program Committee members Sharon Heather Domier and Joy Kim.
Joy Kim recorded and prepared the 1999 Annual Meeting minutes.
Fung-yin K. Simpson, Treasurer and Membership Officer, worked hard to expand the membership, adding 28 new members (more than a 20% increase).
Hsi-chu Bolick chaired the Pinyin Conversion Task Force. Members of the Task Force are: Sarah Su-ehr Elman, Wen-ling Liu, and Phyllis T. Wang. They studied the background, monitored development, maintained communication with OCLC, surveyed membership, and wrote reports.
Sharon Heather Domier served as a resource person regarding issues with acquisitions-level and vendor records in the WorldCat for Japanese-language records. She maintained communication with OCLC, secured record editing guidelines from OCLC for acquisition-level/vendor records and roman field provision for long content notes. Mr. Morimoto was the resource person for Chinese and Korean languages.
The Chair strived to maintain good communication with OCLC. The Users Group was instrumental in getting OCLC to offer an Update Session on the OCLC CJK 3.01 Software, which will take place in the afternoon. The Users Group also collaborated on the contents and the format of the annual meeting.
In an attempt to maintain good communication with members as well, the Chair wrote to each new member (as well as those who filed an address change) to encourage active participation in Users Group activities. He also frequently distributed messages to keep members informed of new developments.
Mr. Morimoto announced that, at the conclusion of the 2000 Users Group meeting, Phyllis Wang is resigning from the Vice Chair/Chair Elect position. Mr. Glen Patton, representing the OCLC staff, presented a certificate of appreciation to Ms Wang for her dedicated service.
In order to fill the vacancy created by Ms Wang’s resignation by election, there was an attempt to amend the Bylaws, which did not provide proper election procedures to fill vacancies for the Vice Chair/Chair-Elect position. In consultation with other Officers, Mr. Morimoto formulated and submitted an amendment proposal to the membership for a vote. Unfortunately, the ballot failed to receive the required two-thirds votes of the voting membership and did not pass. Accordingly, the Executive Board appointed Wen-ling Liu to be Vice Chair for the period from March 2000 to spring 2001 and then to be Chair from spring 2001 to spring 2003.
Mr. Morimoto further mentioned that a new Program Committee Chair and a Recorder need to be arranged for the coming year. He projected that the following activities will continue in the coming year: Web site management; membership drive ; Pinyin record conversion information collection/dissemination; record editing guideline clarification; communication with OCLC and members.
Phyllis Wang introduced the agenda and the speakers: Sun-yoon Lee on USC’s experience on the CJK Z3950 client, Marty Withrow and Hisako Kotaka on the new version of the CJK Z3950 client, and His-chu Bolick on the activities of the Pinyin Conversion Task Force.
Demonstration of the OCLC CJK Z39.50 Client
Sunyoon Lee began her presentation by giving a brief introduction on the concept of Z39.50, a computer protocol which can be implemented on any platform. It defines a standard way for two computers to communicate for the purpose of information retrieval, and specifies data formats and communication procedures for the exchange of messages between a client program and a database server. It also enables one interface to access multiple systems. This standard is maintained by the Z39.50 Maintenance Agency, which is administered by the Library of Congress. It is promoted, enhanced, and modified by actions of the Z39.50 Implementers Group (ZIP), a consortium of interested organizations, including information industry vendors, academic institutions, and government agencies. Originally proposed in 1984, Version 1 was out in 1988. In 1992, Version 2 incorporated and became compatible with an ISO standard called Search and Retrieve. Version 3, released in 1995, extended the features of the protocol. The OCLC CJK Z39.50 Client employs Version 2.
To demonstrate how easy it is to set up, Ms Lee created an OCLC CJK Z39.50 connection profile on the spot. The plan was to have a live demo by connecting to the USC host system; however, the connection failed and the demo was done off line, via transparencies.
After walking the audience through the set up and connecting to the server, Ms Lee demonstrated various search techniques. Most databases provide these indexes: ISBN, ISSN, author, title, and subject. The search syntax is the index label (in lower case), an equal sign (=), and the search word(s). There should be no space before or after the equal sign.
She reviewed the following search tips:
It is difficult to determine what is the responsibility of the local system and what is the client’s. For example, the corporate or conference name search is explained with same rules in the client’s manual. However, she could not find corporate or conference name searches. It turned out that the problem was not with the client, but with the way the USC’s local system, SIRSI, was configured.
Multiple keyword search tips:
- Use Boolean operators "and" "or" (space is an implied "and")[index]=[keyword] and [index]=[keyword].
The system retrieves records that contain both keywords in the specified indexed fields.
[index]=[keyword] or [index]=[keyword].
The system retrieves records that contain either keyword (at least 1) in the specified indexed fields.
Search results are displayed as follows:
- Single record.
For further information, Ms. Lee referred the audience to the following sites:
Preview of the New Z39.50 Client
Marty Withrow, Director of Technical Services Development division, OCLC, demonstrated an enhanced version of this client, which is currently being Beta-tested. The contents of his presentation is available at
http://www.oclc.org/oclc/cjk/report/cjkz39/index.htm
Report of the Task Force on Pinyin Conversion
Hsi-chu Bolick reported on the activities of the Task Force on Pinyin Conversion. Organized by the Chinese Officer, the goals for 1999-2000 were to organize/update available information for the Users Group; to facilitate communication between the Users Group and OCLC on conversion service plans; and to provide a forum for the Users Group to express, discuss and share ideas on effective conversion of local data.
After introducing the Task Force members (Sarah Elman of UCLA, Wen-ling Liu of Indiana University, Phyllis Wang of UC, Davis, and Hsi-chu Bolick, Chair, of UNC-Chapel Hill), Ms. Bolick gave a summary of the Task Force activities.
On May 14, 1999, the Task Force released the first report, Pinyin Conversion Status by Wen-ling Liu & Phyllis Wang. http://oclccjk.lib.uci.edu/task1.htm
On June 21, 1999, the Task Force released the second report, Wade-Giles to Pinyin Conversion: Australian Experience and Local Issues by Sarah Elman. http://oclccjk.lib.uci.edu/task2.htm
In June-August, 1999, member input was solicited, and Chicago Public Library, University of Oregon responded.
Regarding the year 2000 and beyond, Ms Bolick reminded the new timelines. Conversion of Authority Files will take place in July 2000 (Name Authority File) and August 2000 (Subject Authority File). Split files will occur at this point. From August to October 2000 is the LC gap period.
Then Ms. Bolick projected likely scenes in the library in the summer 2000: split files, missing records caused by conversion errors (a scene that is likely to happen if local records have poor cataloging quality), and raised stress levels for the librarians. In order to minimize complications, Ms Bolick emphasized that having clean databases before the conversion was crucial. In order to prepare the local database for the conversion, she urged that the quality of the local databases be examined as soon as possible. She recommended that each library try to develop efficient ways to clean up their databases, such as identifying error patterns (e.g. the use of diacritics, etc.).
Then she offered the following survival tips when dealing with split files. Always search both romanization schemes, Pinyin and Wade-Giles, before concluding anything. Train the staff to do the same. Check on pinyin conversion marker on a regular basis to make sure record status on the conversion (see field 987 for bibliographic record and field 008/07for authority records). Ms. Bolick then urged the audience to share information on effective ways to deal with the problems.
Ms Wang opened the floor for comments and questions. Karl Lo thanked OCLC for being very cooperative and responsive to his suggestions. He reiterated that, in layman’s term, Z39.50 is only a display devise. It cannot support searching or editing. Searching is done by each library’s own OPAC. If the host database does not have CJK, the Z39.50 client cannot display CJK; however, it easily accesses other CJK databases in the world. It supports both pinyin and Wade-Giles romanization schemes, as easily as a click of a button.
A question was raised as to what other local systems have successfully implemented the OCLC CJK Z39.50 client. Karl Lo answered by saying that any system that has a Z39.50 server will work. He further mentioned that the records do not have to be in US MARC or EACC either. Any C, J, K character codes and MARC formats will serve just as well.
There was a suggestion that all searchable sites be included in the pull down menu in the program. Marty Withrow responded that it can easily be done, but it would be impractical, since IP addresses change all the time. Instead, a suggestion was made that it could be incorporated in the Users Group’s web page.
A question was raised about the multiple call numbers being displayed on the Z39.50 client, while only one call number is valid for the local site. Hisako Kotaka responded by saying that there is a way to "flag" the valid call number for one’s site. [recorder’s note: In a follow up email, Marty Withrow said that the new version will be totally configurable, allowing the users to decide which fields to display and in what order they should appear on the screen.]
After a 10-minute break, there were reports by OCLC staff. The contents of the reports are available from http://www.oclc.org/oclc/cjk/report/2000cjk/index.htm. Recorded below are only the questions and answers.
There were many questions regarding the possibility of combining the conversion options offered by OCLC. Mr. Patton said that, basically, the options could not be combined. Regarding the possibility of upgrading lower level records in Option 1 for additional fee, Mr. Patton said that it had not been discussed, but he would find out. Regarding the possibility of getting related authority records, Mr. Patton said that authority work is separately priced, although the pricing information is not currently available. Will non-CJK records with Chinese names be included in the conversion? The answer was yes. There was a request that a letter be sent to each CJK member institution, summarizing the conversion options that OCLC offers. Mr. Patton responded that the best source for that information is the OCLC Web site. To the question of whether OCLC would make the conversion software available, Mr. Patton replied that OCLC is not in the business of distributing this kind of software. The software that OCLC develops to meet its own needs would not be usable in other environments.
A question was raised why OCLC’s pricing is higher than that of RLG’s. Mr. Patton answered that, according to the agreement between OCLC and the Users Council, OCLC does not seek outside grant funding, and all costs must be recovered through charges to the customers. OCLC has a custom quote system in which the pricing will depend on the volume of work.
There were questions on any plans for CJK or multilingual support for ILL and SiteSearch. Mr. Patton said that they have not been talked about. In response to the question about JACKPHY languages development, Mr. Patton said that, although not all JACKPHY languages are supported at this point, Arabic is being developed. Other scripts are under consideration.
The meeting adjourned at 12:00.
Respectfully submitted,
Joy Kim, Recorder
University of Southern California
