Help OCLC with its Terminologies pilot project!

I am posting this on behalf on our colleague Susan Westberg. Maybe in the spirit of Google we should call this Terminologies Beta.

Does your institution use thesauri other than LCSH or LC Names when adding access points to your bibliographic records?

Are you a Connexion browser user?

Have you upgraded to Microsoft Office 2003 with MS Internet Explorer 6.x?

If so, consider joining the OCLC Terminologies pilot.

What is the pilot? Its goal is to explore a service offering additional terminologies/thesauri/vocabularies for libraries, museums and archives. The pilot is to test functionality of current technology as well as which thesauri OCLC might offer. While the targeted thesauri will be searchable and use a copy and paste methodology from thesaurus to bibliographic record, authority control of these headings will not be available. However, you can be assured that the headings are both accurate (i.e., no typos) and valid terms.

The pilot requires using OCLC Connexion browser (MARC text area), MS Office 2003, and MS Internet Explorer 6.x. MS Office and IE offer a Research Pane that allows you to add services that you can access in Microsoft applications, in this case, URLs that provide access to available thesauri. While the pilot offers only a few thesauri, and for some, limited subsets, another purpose of the pilot is to find out if this presentation method is feasible and desirable. The pilot should last 3-4 months and begin in early March.

The intention of the pilot is to provide a means to access and search thesauri you currently use (be it in paper or web formats) in one place in an online environment. During the pilot, you would search, copy and paste terms from a variety of thesauri into the bibliographic records you are creating or updating,using the Connexion browser and the Research pane available with MS Office 2003. This allows you to expedite adding valid access points to bibliographic records rather than keying them in. Pasting the text into the MARC text area does include the correct tags and subfields.

The list of potential thesauri is:
- gsafd – Guidelines on subject access to individual works of fiction, drama, etc. (ALA)

- gmgpc lctgm – Thesaurus of graphic materials, TGM I & II (LC)

- radfg – Radio form / genre terms guide (LC)

- mim – Moving image materials: genre terms (LC)

- ngl – Newspaper Genre List (University of Washington)

- aat, tgn, ULAN – Getty vocabularies (subsets only): AAT (Art & Architecture Thesaurus), TGN (Thesaurus of Geographic Names), and ULAN (Union List of Artists’ Names)

- mesh – Medical Subject Headings (NLM)

We plan on a phased approach, adding thesauri during the pilot, beginning with GSAFD. If you are interested in participating in the pilot or would like more information, please let me know by February 18.

Thanks,

Susan Westberg

OCLC
Digital Collection Services
Toll-free phone: 800-848-5878 (USA and Canada only)
Direct phone: 614-761-5079
Email: susan_westberg@oclc.org; westbers@oclc.org