Newsletter of the IFLA Section on Serial Publications

No. 36,
February 2000

Minutes of the Standing Committee Meeting

65th IFLA Council and General Conference
Bangkok, Thailand,
August 20 - August 28, 1999

Saturday, 21 August 1999

Attendants:

Hartmut Walravens (Berlin State Library, Germany),
Nina Khakhaleva (Russian State Library),
Karen Darling (University of Oregon, USA),
Cathérine Omont (Bibliothèque Nationale de France),
Marjorie Bloss (Center for Research Libraries, USA),
Agneta Holmenmark (Royal Library, Sweden),
Elizabeth Gazdag (ISSN, Hungary),
Esther Skaarup (Royal Library, Denmark);

Ex Officio Member:

Françoise Pellé (ISSN International Centre, France)

Observers:

Isabelle Rollet (Bibliothèque Nationale de France), Alex Bloss (University of Illinois, USA)

Welcome and Introduction

Approval of the Agenda

1. Welcome, Introduction
2. Approval of the Agenda
3. Approval of the Minutes of the Berlin Meeting, Dec. 1998
   (continued on Friday, 27 August 1999)
4. Report of the Chair
5. Financial Report
6. Election of Officers
7. Programme at the Bangkok Conference
8. Implementation of the Tasks and Strategies as Discussed in Berlin
   (continued on Friday, 27 August 1999)
9. Medium Term Plan. Action Plan 2000-2001
   (continued on Friday, 27 August 1999)
10. Programme in Jerusalem
11. Programme in Boston
12. Current Harmonization Efforts in the Serials World
13. Projects
14. Liaisons, Cooperation
15. Miscellaneous

Approval of the Minutes of the Berlin Meeting, Dec. 1998

Report of the Chair

We succeeded in publishing two Newsletters: the first one, prepared by Elise Hermann, referred to the Amsterdam meeting; the second issue, edited by Ruth Carter, was devoted to the SC meeting in Berlin. The chair thanked both colleagues for their strong support.
The discussion of the future activities as determined in Berlin was referred to a later item on the agenda.
The Chair also gave information from the Coordinating Board meeting which had taken place the day before.

Financial Report

Election of Officers

After some discussion Agneta Holmenmark was willing to stand for Secretary and she was duly elected. She would cooperate with the chair in program planning, act as treasurer and take the minutes at the SC meetings.
Elizabeth Gazdag was asked to take over the function of Information Coordinator, to establish the links between the SC and IFLANET and to help with the SC publicity work.

Programme at the Bangkok Conference

Implementation of the Tasks and Strategies as Discussed in Berlin

Medium Term Plan. Action Plan 2000-2001

Goal 1
Promote the importance of good practice in library serials collection management and development

Actions:


Produce French and Spanish translations of the Section's Basic serials management handbook.
Catherine Omont informed the members that she was close to finish the French translation, but Cathérine Marandas, who had prepared the first two chapters, had lost what she had done and had to do the work over again. Nevertheless, they hoped to have the translation ready for publication next year. As for the Spanish translation it turned out, after the meeting, that Manual Básico de Gestión de Publicaciones Seriadas was published in Madrid in 1998. The translation was prepared by Antonio Lozano Palacios in cooperation with graduates of the Faculty of Library Science and Documentation of Granada. (Kind communication by Judith Szilvássy.)
Therefore the action was retained as being under way.

Investigate the feasibility of mounting an Internet version of Basic serials management handbook
Marjorie Bloss expressed the idea of updating the book, provided, of course, that the original author would agree. The proposal was supported by all the members but with understanding that it would need much more time than two years. We have to make the decision how to go on, have to look for a person or for a group of people who might be willing to undertake this work. Besides it would be desirable to add some material on the current revision efforts and the expected harmonization of formats and rules. Therefore the action for 2000-2001 years was formulated as following:
Investigate the feasibility of preparing a revision of Basic serials management handbook.

Continue to work closely with the Round Table of Newspapers
The action remains in force.

Organize a workshop at the Bangkok 1999 conference on basic serials management It was considered sensible to continue the theme of management depending on harmonisation. Karen Darling proposed to organize another workshop with a discussion of harmonization problems and new rules coming. Hartmut Walravens called the members' attention to the conference in Pretoria to be held by Document Delivery and Interlending SC at the end of October; it might serve as a starting point for the organization of an African serials seminar to familiarize a wider audience with current developments in the serials field. Basis might be our Basic serials management handbook which thus would pass the test as a tool for practical work. Such a seminar might also bring up issues and matters for a possible revision of the Handbook.
It was decided to specify the action during the further discussions of the future programmes.

Goal 2
Work towards the improvement of national and international cooperation towards access to serials holdings information

Actions:


2.1. Continue work on serials union catalogues in association with UAP Core Programme to update the Directory of Union Catalogues.
This is an on-going project.

2.2. Continue to disseminate information on union catalogue initiatives by the inclusion of papers in the Section's conference programme.
Marjorie Bloss pointed out the significance of holdings information in union catalogues especially for interlending and suggested to change the wording of point 2.2 to the following:
Continue to disseminate information about union catalogue initiatives with emphasis on bibliographic and holdings information by the inclusion of papers in the Section's conference programme.

2.3. Participate in the IFLA Conference on National Bibliographies, Copenhagen, November 1998
The Conference took place and was rather successful.

Hartmut Walravens made a suggestion to insert one more action dealing with a new project which regards a Directory of Article Databases. The proposal will be specified during further discussions.

Goal 3
Promote the importance of, and improvement to, national and international standards for serials

Actions:


3.1 Continue involvement with ISBD(S) and related work in collaboration with the Cataloging Section and by representation on the ISBD Working Group Marjorie Bloss proposed to rephrase the action to strengthen the role of the Section on Serial Publications in the work. From today's point of view "participation" would be a better reflection of the situation. The proposal was adopted:
Participate in the revision of ISBD(S) as well as related work in collaboration with the Cataloging Section and the ISBD Working Group.

3.2 Continue close liaison with the International ISSN Centre and support development of OSIRIS
Françoise Pellé gave some information about the latest activity of the International ISSN Centre and the development of OSIRIS. She asked the Section to think about being involved in the preparation of a new version of OSIRIS under Windows.
Marjorie Bloss proposed to have a joint project with UDT to actively participate in the new version, to promote it to small and medium size libraries. Perhaps it would be possible to get support from UNESCO. The chair formulated a new action on the basis of this proposal:

3.3 Strengthen the cooperation with UDT.

3.4 Monitor the development and application of national and international standards, including SICI and DOI, by involvement in relevant working groups. This is an on-going development and requires careful monitoring.

Goal 4
Work with publishers, suppliers and other IFLA Sections to promote cooperation within the serials information chain

Actions:


4.1 Discuss further collaboration with the Section on Acquisition & Collection Development, on a survey of the costs of licensing agreements versus subscription costs.
Marjorie Bloss gave information about possible programmes at the Jerusalem IFLA as discussed by the Section on Acquisition & Collection Development. One of the things they were looking at were the problems in acquisition, licensing, and pricing of electronic publications. As the theme concerned serials they appealed to our Section to co-sponsor a workshop. Library of Congress has some pilot projects looking at licensing, and next year they intend to present the results. Besides there is another group sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries in the USA working with the SPARC project.

4.2 Continue participation in meetings and activities of the Publishers' Liaison Committee
The Chair called special attention to this action. The relations with publishers should become more intensive, and we may want to explore the options. Currently the Publishers Liaison Committee waits for an initiative from the Executive Board to be revived, after many of its formers tasks were taken over by the new Committee on Legal Matters (CLM).
Hartmut Walravens will try to help reactivate the PLC and relations with publishers. A more concrete action can be defined only when the PLC issue is cleared.

Friday, 27 August 1999

Observers:
Isabelle Rollet (Bibliothèque Nationale de France), Regina Reynolds (Library of Congress, USA), Reinhard Rinn (Die Deutsche Bibliothek, Germany)

Medium Term Plan. Action Plan 2000-2001

4.3 Continue close liaison with other serials related organisations such as the European Federation of Serials Groups, the UK Serials Group and the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG).
It was decided to omit the European Federation of Serials Group because de facto it seems defunct at the moment, but to add GeSIG (German Serials Interest Group). GeSIG will try to give some more momentum to international serials work. The Scandinavian groups would contribute to the future activity, too. Elizabeth Gazdag was asked to familiarize the community with the Hungarian Serials Interest Group, to give some information in newsletters and report on other issues regarding serials.

Goal 5
Monitor and provide information on the impact of new technology on serials management

Action:


5.1 Ensure the inclusion of papers on new electronic initiatives in the Section's 1998 and 1999 conference programmes.
This should be continued in 2000-2001.

Goal 6
Raise the profile of the Section by improved dissemination of information about the programmes, publications and activities of the Section

Actions:


6.1 Improve the Section's Newsletter by inclusion of reports from appropriate open sessions and workshops.
We are working on that and should continue in the future.

6.2 Ensure that the Section's Information Officer mounts further information about the Section and its activities on IFLANET.
Hartmut Walravens and Elizabeth Gazdag discussed the future activity of the Section's Information Officer.

6.3 Revise the Section brochure
The brochure must be updated. Karen Darling agreed to help with it.

Approval of the Minutes of the Berlin Meeting

Implementation of the Tasks and Strategies as Discussed in Berlin

The Union List Project. Hartmut Walravens reported on the Union Catalogues project and stressed the necessity of updating and adding new information.

Second edition of Basic Serials Management Handbook. Cathérine Omont and Esther Skaarup volunteered to look at the handbook to identify the parts where an update was needed. If possible there will be a report to the SC in about six months.

Guide to Basic Serials Resources. There was an agreement on the project but some questions about the scope arose and are still to be discussed.

Links with the standards community. No decision could be made as SC 9 was still in the process of restructuring. Hartmut Walravens promised to find out from the secretariat of TC 46 which other fields might be currently interesting to the Serials Section. He would volunteer to conduct a survey of that activity.

Practical activity in South Africa. There is a proposal to involve the State Library in Pretoria to help organize a workshop on serials in the region. But it will be very important to secure some support or funding for such an activity. Hartmut Walravens encouraged all the members of the Section to get in touch with support organisations to explore options for funding.

Training course. In many countries serials training is really neglected. The only way of getting serials staff is to train them on the job. There could be different models of training. We should manage to get somebody from a Library School or Training Institution maybe as a corresponding member of the SC on Serial Publications. We will try to start projects on serials training in the future.

Article/contents databases. A survey was proposed to be conducted in cooperation with the UAP Core Programme. After the meeting Hartmut Walravens will discuss the issue with them. [A report was made later on at the Coordinating Board Meeting. UAP is willing to cooperate. If the SC manages to work out the project application till the middle of October, funding could be asked from the Professional Board.]

Monitor pricing. Hartmut Walravens gave some information about IFLA's links with the publishing community. There was agreement that the relations with publishers should be fostered and the PLC revived, or a similar group be established. Marjorie Bloss reminded the SC of the proposal of the Section on Acquisition & Collection Development to have a joint event in Jerusalem regarding the pricing of electronic publications. The proposal was approved.

As the time ran out and the agenda had not been finished the Chair asked all members of the Section to continue the discussion by e-mail. Besides he made a proposal to think about an additional meeting sometime between the General conferences.

10.-15.
For reasons of time TOPs 10.-15. could not be discussed.

Minutes taken by Nina Khakhaleva, revised by Hartmut Walravens.

Programmes at the Bangkok Conference

Theme: Asian Serials: Problems and Issues

65th IFLA Council and General Conference, Bangkok, Thailand
Wednesday, 25 August, 15:30-17:50

1. Access to Asian serials in Australian libraries/ By Andrew Gosling, Chief Librarian, Asian Collections, National Library of Australia;
2. Malaysian Serials: issues and problems / By Che Norma Bahri, Librarian, Universiti Sains Malaysia;
3. The earliest Tibetan Serials/ By Hartmut Walravens, International ISBN Agency, Berlin, Germany;
4. Serial murder in Southeast Asia: collecting and preserving serials in changing landscape / By Carol L. Mitchell Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, Wisconsin, USA (read by Judith Henchy)
   

Access to Asian Serials in Australian libraries/ By Andrew Gosling, Chief Librarian, Asian Collections, National Library of Australia

Serials are at the heart of a number of recent developments in Australia. Efforts to develop Australia's East Asian collections in a coordinated way began in the 1950s. The National Library and ANU Library in Canberra agreed as early as 1955 that to avoid duplication the responsibility for collecting Japanese and Chinese language materials should be divided.
The most important recent national development for East Asian serials has been the National CJK Service. The National CJK Service was implemented in June 1996. The mission of the National CJK Service is to support Australia's closer relationship with Asia by providing Australian libraries and their clients with improved access to holdings of Chinese, Japanese and Korean library materials.

While there were no formal agreements for Southeast Asian resources until recently, a considerable degree of co-ordination has been achieved for Indonesian publications, through the Indonesian Acquisitions Project (IAP) officially established in 1971 by the National Library with the aim of acquiring a broad range of government and non-government publications for the National Library and participating university libraries.
In the future, cooperative agreements between libraries may be more about access than division of collecting responsibility. The 1996 National Library and ANU Library Korean agreement is an example.
In the twenty-first century there is likely to be increasing library cooperation regionally and internationally in the supply of Asian periodical articles.

Malaysian serials: issues and problems / By Che Norma Bahri, Librarian, Universiti Sains Malaysia

Publishers of Malaysian serials include universities and research institutions, government departments, corporations, professional bodies, commercial and industrial enterprises and the commercial press. Subjects cover almost all areas of human interest. While most publications remain in the traditional print format, microform is preferred for archival backruns and CD-ROM for multimedia effects and large storage data banks. As for online formats, Malaysian resources are making inroads in World Wide Web publishing.

Cooperative efforts of university libraries and the National Library have been undertaken to make local history special collections available to their users. To this end various projects to improve library services in Malaysia have been carried out. Among these was the Union List of Serials in Malaysia last published on microfiche in 1988, a cooperative microfilming project (SCOM) where the National Library acts as secretariat responsible to coordinate microfilming activities among libraries and relevant institutions in Malaysia to avoid duplication.
Malaysiana collections abroad exist in the Library of Congress, the (US) Ohio University Centre for Malaysian Publications, the Malaysian Resource Centre (for Malay literature, language, history, politics, culture, sociology and anthropology) at The Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology (KITLV) Leiden, among others.

As the new millennium imminently approaches, serials publishing in Malaysia does not show signs of very significant change from the traditional print-based format to online full-text complements. The whole infrastructure of the publishing industry involving the National Book Development Council, writers, editors, publishers, printers, libraries and information centres will have to strive together to forge ahead in developing and strengthening the print-based sector while innovating in web-based publishing for the future.

The earliest Tibetan Serials / By Hartmut Walravens, International ISBN Agency, Berlin, Germany

La-dvaks-kyi ag-bar [Ladakh News]
Leh 1904-1907. Monthly. Lithographed. 4° 4 pages per issue.
It was edited by August Hermann Francke, and the missionaries Ernest Shawe and Friedrich Peter collaborated.
The continuation was published as:
La-dvags-kyi pho-ña [Ladakh Herold].
'di ni Slel La-dvags-kyi Mo-re-bi-an mi-son par-khan-du par brgyab-bi [Leh, Ladakh: Moravian Mission]. 4 pp. per issue.
1908-1910. 8 issues in the Herrnhut archives.
The contents follows a regular pattern:

1. Yul so-so'i gnas-tshul ni "Reports on individual countries", e.g.
   Bod yul-na "in Tibet"
   rGya-gar yul-na "in India"
   Ja-pan yul-na "in Japan"
   O-ros yul-na "in Russia", etc.
   
2. sGrun_s-ni "story"
3. gTam-dpe "proverbs" (usually Christian maxims)

The pagination was intended to cover 1 year, but this was not done consistently. This publication is often called a newspaper but as it was published only once a month most newspaper experts would object.

Walravens quoted extensively from Moravian sources, giving many details on the compilation and reception of this serial. He then mentioned later periodicals, among them La-dvags pho-ño. Bod-yig phal-skad-kyi gsar-'gyur, a semi-official gazette of the Chinese Government, published 1913-1916 in Peking, and Yul-phyogs so-so'i gsar-'gyur me-lon_-dge [Mirror reporting news from different countries], edited by the Christian journalist and teacher Tharchin in Kalimpong, from 1925 onward. The Moravians were again responsible for another paper, namely Kye-lan_-gyi ag-bar [Kyelang News]

Kyelang 1927-1935. 4° The editor was the British missionary Walter Asboe. This means that serials and newspapers in the modern sense were started in Tibet (as also, however much earlier in China) by Christian missionaries, actually, in this case, outside of the country proper. In Tibet itself the periodical press started only after WWII, mainly owing to Chinese efforts.

Serial murder in Southeast Asia: collecting and preserving serials in changing landscape / By Carol L. Mitchell Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, Wisconsin, USA (read by Judith Henchy)

Titles at risk are: Statistical serials, Regional press, Minority language magazines, Science and Technology publications, Political and non-governmental organizations publications, Popular or mass press, Women's magazines, Electronic titles, Children's publications.
Many of these categories of magazines did not exist in Southeast Asia ten years ago. Today's titles will become nonexistent if they are not preserved in many collections. Southeast Asia collections need strong representative collections of popular, mass-market magazines.

Fifty years ago American research libraries conceived a bold cooperative experiment ? the Farmington Plan. "Its objective [was] to make sure that at least one copy of each new foreign book and pamphlet that might be reasonably expected to interest a research worker in the United States will be acquired by an American library, promptly listed in the Union Catalogue at the Library of Congress, and made available by interlibrary loan or photographic reproduction."

It is imperative that a truly international Southeast Asian librarianship be created. Southeast Asian librarianship has yet to evolve to a point where librarians from the region fully participate in meetings and forums in Europe and the United States and visa versa. At the very least full participation of all national libraries and archives, major university libraries from each country, and the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore is needed.

The action agenda for the new millennium is to:

Undertake a broad fact-finding project to define the scope of the serials acquisition and preserveration problem.
Develop appropriate legal structure to enable development of international cooperative endeavors.
Work with commercial microform publishers in their efforts to create complete editions on microfilm.
Develop a strong program to ensure bibliographic control and physical access to cooperatively developed collections.
Develop microfilm registry or registries for Southeast Asia in an effort to eliminate duplication of preservation efforts.
As part of project management, develop strong evaluation tools that provide for constructive feedback that will help in the development of future programs.

Questions and Answers

Q: What is the percentage of serial publications that are still required by the academic community?

A: (by Judith Henchy) In recent times we used to buy everything published. At present Cornell University purchases technical and agricultural journals. The Library of Congress purchases only regularly published serials. We pursue the following policy: if any two US libraries buy a certain title the LoC in this case abstains from purchasing this title. Otherwise it purchases all other titles.
LoC is very specific in selecting serial publications. Only serials that contain new information are selected while titles containing references are not selected.

Q: What is the situation in South-East Asia regarding the online access to catalogue and information?

A: (by Judith Henchy) Singapore and Malaysia have access to catalogues throughout their countries.

Q: What is the role of ISSN as a search tool in Malaysia?

A: There is a national ISSN center in Malaysia. More and more serial publications are issued with ISSN. The problem is with the publishers. Many of them do not follow the laws on serial publications and legal deposit. A lot of serial publications are being published without ISSN. Only 100 serial publications bear ISSN.

Serials in Evolution: Programmes, Standards and Identification

65th IFLA Council and General Conference, Bangkok, Thailand
Thursday, 26 August, 13:00-17:00

Workshop

The Standing Committee on Serial Publications, joint with ISSN Centres and Cataloguing, presented a very successful workshop at this year's IFLA General Conference in Bangkok. The workshop was called "Serials in Evolution: Programmes, Standards and Identification."

The workshop was divided into two panel discussions. The first, "Harmonization of cataloguing standards for serials", was introduced by Hartmut Walravens (SC chair) and Francoise Pellé (ISSN). The first discussion included four papers. Two were presented by Regina Reynolds (Library of Congress) about the possible new definition of seriality and the revisions to AACR2. She explained how the new definition would include traditional serials and ‹continuing› resources such as web sites and electronic journals. In her second paper she explained the proposed changes to AACR2; including the goals for the revision, the definition of a minor versus a major title change and the use of latest and successive entry for serial description.

Next Ingrid Parent (National Library of Canada) spoke about the revision to ISBD(S). She spoke about the process the committee is following and indicated that it hopes to have a draft prepared by next year's IFLA General Conference. She discussed the difficulties in harmonizing the three standards and listed the benefits of the harmonization. Her paper is available on IFLANET.

Jasenka Zajec (ISSN Centre for Croatia) was the third speaker. She spoke about the ISSN manual revisions and the importance of the ISSN as a serial identifier. Additionally she spoke about the harmonization efforts from the ISSN standpoint.

Conclusions about all the papers were drawn by Karen Darling (University of Oregon). The speakers gave us a very informative overview of the current work being done on the various serials standards. They made it possible for all of us to understand this important work and the relationships between the standards and why we are working so hard to achieve harmonization. It is obvious that there is a great desire to bring the three standards into greater harmonization, simplify the title change rules and hopefully make the serials world a bit easier to understand. There is much work still to be done but all three groups are working toward the same basic goals.

The second part of the workshop, again introduced by Francoise Pellé, was "Issues related to electronic serials". We heard three updates on the current work being done to enhance access to electronic serials.

The first speaker was Diann Rusch-Feja (Library of the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research, Berlin, Germany) who spoke about metadata and its uses. She thinks there will be more uses for metadata in the future. It can be used for serials to help provide standardization, clear, unique identifiers and as a resource directory.

Next on the program was Sally McCallum (Library of Congress) who gave us a status report on the CDNL (Conference of Directors of National Libraries) Persistent Identifiers. She indicated that there will be a need for a resolver to be the link between the resources and the URN.

Her report was followed by Francoise Pellé who told us about work the ISSN Centre is doing on URN's. The URN is a persistent identifier for a resource. The Centre will have a prototype plugin available this autumn which will enable an internet browser to interpret the URN string.

All three speakers provided excellent information concerning electronic serials. We heard there continues to be considerable work undertaken to make electronic serials easier to find and access.

We all came away from the workshop much better prepared to look at and react to the current issues related to serials standards and electronic serials. Additionally we heard that there should be useful answers to some of our questions and some solutions to related problems in the near future.

Editor of this number: Nina Khakhaleva