Books without boundaries: A brief tour of the system-wide print book collection

Journal of Electronic Publishing

Volumn 9, Issue 2, 2006, Pages

  Schonfeld, Roger C ^c   Lavoie, Brian F ^a,b  

^a Online Computer Library Center Inc   (United States)

^b OCLC ^*

^c ITHAKA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33748669034     PISSN: 10802711     EISSN: 10802711     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3998/3336451.0009.208     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. Preliminary results from this study were presented at the 2005 CNI Spring Task Force Meeting. The presentation is available at: http://www.cni.org/tfms/ 2005a.spring/abstracts/presentations/CNI_schonfeld_system.ppt. The authors would like to thank Lorcan Dempsey, Joe Esposito, Kevin Guthrie, Joseph S. Meisel, Donald J. Waters, and conference/symposium participants at CNI, Ithaka, and the Yale Law School Library, as well as two anonymous reviewers, for helpful suggestions and comments.
2. There may also be cases when the system would be better understood as containing other institutional or individual repositories of texts and not just libraries as they are traditionally defined.
3. For example, OCLC researchers have examined the combined holdings of the five libraries participating in the Google Print for Libraries digitization initiative: see Brian Lavoie, Lorcan Dempsey, and Lynn Silipigni Connaway, "Anatomy of Aggregate Collections: The Example of Google Print for Libraries," D-Lib Magazine 11, no. 9 (2005), available at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september05/lavoie/091avoie.html.
4. See, in particular, Anna H. Perrault, "Global Collective Resources: A Study of Monographic Bibliographic Records in WorldCat," (Dublin, Ohio: OCLC, 2002), available at http://www.oclc.org/research/grants/reports/perrault/ intro.pdf.
5. Other important examples and reviews include: Sue O. Medina, "Duplication and Overlap among Library Collections: A Chronological Review of the Literature," in Advances in Collection Development and Resource Management, ed. Thomas W. Leonhardt (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1995),
6. Anna H. Perrault, "The Changing Print Resource Base of Academic Libraries in the United States. Collection Patterns from 1985 to 1989 in 72 ARL Libraries; Summary of a Ph.D. Dissertation; Presented at the 1995 ALISE Conference," Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 36 (1995),
7. Anna H. Perrault, "National Collecting Trends: Collection Analysis Methods and Findings," Library & Information Science Research 21, no. 1 (1999),
8. Anna H. Perrault, "The Shrinking National Collection: A Study of the Effects of the Diversion of Funds from Monographs to Serials on the Monograph Collections of Research Libraries," Library Acquisitions 18, no. 1 (1994),
9. William G. Potter, "Studies of Collection Overlap: A Literature Review," Library Research 4 (1982).
10. For some purposes, of course, we might prefer to focus on the holdings of a type of library (such as academic libraries or national libraries), the libraries of a region or country, or other profiles.
11. Bibliographic criteria were byte 6 of the MARC21 leader equal to "a" (language material) and byte 7 of the leader equal to "m" (monograph). Language material restricts the focus to items that contain text, as opposed to musical scores, audiovisual material, objects, or maps. Monographs are items "either complete in one part... or intended to be completed in a finite number of separate parts," which excludes, among other things, serials. There is no authoritative bibliographic definition of a "book" available, but monographic language materials are often used to represent books. More information on these criteria are available at http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/ecbdldrd.html.
12. The OCLC Research work set algorithm was used to create a FRBRized version of WorldCat. The algorithm converts MARC21 bibliographic databases into FRBR work sets, where a work set is a cluster of all records (i.e., manifestations) pertaining to the same work. See http://www.oclc.org/research/ projects/frbr/algorithm.htm.
13. The phrase was coined, and the strategy first identified as such, in Stephen G. Nichols and Abby Smith, The Evidence in Hand: Report of the Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections (Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2001), 53.
14. For more background on the secure preservation framework that paper repositories are meant to afford, see Bernard F. Reilly, Jr., Developing Print Repositories: Models for Shared Preservation and Access (Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2003).
15. See for example "Google à la française," The Economist, March 31, 2005, available at http://www.economist.com/world/europe/ displayStory.cfm?story_id=3819169.
16. M.B. Iwinski, "La Statistique Internationale Des Imprimes," Bulletin de l'Institut internationale de bibliographie 16 (1911).
17. LeRoy C. Merritt, "The Administrative, Fiscal, and Quantitative Aspects of the Regional Union Catalog," in Union Catalogs in the United States, ed. Robert B. Downs (Chicago: American Library Association, 1942), 78-82.
18. UNESCO Statistical Yearbook, 1999.
19. Iwinski, M.B. "La Statistique Internationale Des Imprimes." Bulletin de l'Institut internationale de bibliographie 16 (1911): 1-139.
20. Lavoie, Brian, Lorcan Dempsey, and Lynn Silipigni Connaway. "Anatomy of Aggregate Collections: The Example of Google Print for Libraries." D-Lib Magazine 11, no. 9 (2005), available at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/ september05/lavoie/091avoie.html.
21. Medina, Sue O. "Duplication and Overlap among Library Collections: A Chronological Review of the Literature." In Advances in Collection Development and Resource Management, edited by Thomas W. Leonhardt, 1-60. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1995.
22. Merritt, LeRoy C. "The Administrative, Fiscal, and Quantitative Aspects of the Regional Union Catalog." In Union Catalogs in the United States, edited by Robert B. Downs, 1-128. Chicago: American Library Association, 1942.
23. Nichols, Stephen G., and Abby Smith. The Evidence in Hand: Report of the Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections. Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2001.
24. Perrault, Anna H. "The Changing Print Resource Base of Academic Libraries in the United States. Collection Patterns from 1985 to 1989 in 72 ARL Libraries; Summary of a Ph.D. Dissertation; Presented at the 1995 ALISE Conference." Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 36 (1995): 295-308.
25. _. "Global Collective Resources: A Study of Monographic Bibliographic Records in WorldCat." Dublin, Ohio: OCLC, 2002, available at http://www.oclc.org/research/grants/reports/perrault/intro.pdf.
26. _. "National Collecting Trends: Collection Analysis Methods and Findings." Library & Information Science Research 21, no. 1 (1999): 47-67.
27. _. "The Shrinking National Collection: A Study of the Effects of the Diversion of Funds from Monographs to Serials on the Monograph Collections of Research Libraries." Library Acquisitions 18, no. 1 (1994): 3-22.
28. Potter, William G. "Studies of Collection Overlap: A Literature Review." Library Research 4 (1982): 2-21.
29. Reilly, Bernard F., Jr. Developing Print Repositories: Models for Shared Preservation and Access. Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2003.