Association for Asian Studies
Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA)
Subcommittee on Technical Processes
1997 Annual Meeting Minutes
Thursday, March 13, 1997, 2-4 p.m.
Illinois Executive Boardroom, Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers


Present: Larry Ashmun (Asia Society), Edita R. Baradi (Yale), Rohayati Paseng Barnard (Cornell), Lan Hiang Char (Hawaii), Lee Dutton (Northern Illinois), Fe Susan Go (Michigan), Lian Tie Kho (Yale), Angela Kinney (Library of Congress), Carol Mitchell (Wisconsin-Madison), Robin Paynter (Oregon), Chan Phan (Harvard), Swee-Lan Quah (Ohio), Susan Rabe (Center for Research Libraries), Richard Richie (Arizona), Sari Devi Suprapto (Cornell), Virginia Jing-yi Shih (Chair and Recorder, Berkeley), William Tuchrello (Library of Congress), and May Kyi Win (Northern Illinois).

I. ISEAS (Hanoi) Vietnamese Acquisitions MARC Records Project

Virginia Shih went to Vietnam and trained the staff at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Hanoi to create descriptive Vietnamese cataloging records last summer. The original goal was to help ISEAS staff to create acquisitions records in the MARC program for the materials that Berkeley will purchase in Vietnam. Although the IBC (Initial Bibliographic Control) work was acceptable, due to staff turnover in ISEAS the time it took ISEAS to get the records completed was slower than we could accept, things may not work out as planned. Berkeley will look into other alternatives to solve the need of providing timely bibliographic access to the Vietnamese materials in the future. LC-Jakarta has speeded up the process of sending its IBC/preliminary Vietnamese cataloging records by sending them via FTP transfer to LC-Washington and these records are some made available to universities. Virginia Shih recommended that LC look for ways to have its IBC records available to universities in the U.S. and Canada even faster.

II. Remarks on Cataloging Electronic Resources

Lian Tie Kho reported that Yale is a member of North East Research Libraries (NERL) Consortium that consists of Boston University, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, New York State Library, New York University, Princeton, Syracuse, Temple, University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts, University of Pennsylvania, Rochester and Yale. The consortium would lease electronic journals such as Britannica Online, Oxford English Dictionary, academic press journals, SIAM (Society for Industrial Applied Mathematics) journals, etc. Consortium members would propose titles, create a package and work out licensing agreements, pricing, and get access to the package. Only one cataloger at Yale began to catalog electronic journals since last year. 124 titles have been cataloged so far. It's still in the experimenting stage and guidelines are being developed. Kho also noted that some libraries use the "multiple version" techniques to catalog electronic resources, both paper and electronic version as in the Berkeley's case. Yale decided to catalog electronic journals as different version of the hard copy and create a separate record since paper version and electronic version are not always identical. Yale has long runs of scientific journals and short versions of the electronic versions, only 1995-. Patrons should be alerted before checking the URLs and there are also restrictions to have access to the electronic resources.

III. Southeast Asia Cataloging Issues Update

Sari Devi Suprapto reported that Cornell participates in BIBCO (Bibliographic Record Program) and PCC (Program for Cooperative Cataloging) core records. The goal is to create quality useful catalog records. Core records will include at least the defined core standard and may also include the additional elements up to full-level cataloging standard.

IV. Survey of Who Is Creating Original Cataloging Records

Virginia Shih conducted an informal survey around the table of who is creating original cataloging records for Southeast Asia vernacular materials. LC asked the members what kinds of services the Cooperative Acquisitions Program Southeast Asia membership would like to see the Jakarta office provide them in the future. Some responses included MARC cataloging for materials acquired by the field office, but not for LC as a "fee- based" system, more access to Vietnamese records and subject cataloging and or more annotations.