 Hello and welcome to the presentation for cataloging ETDs in Ohio, a weaving of IR innovations cataloging standards and library work workflow, the experience of Kent State University. Your presenters today are Sven McCutcheon and Peter Lycius from Kent State University. I'm Terry Robinson and I'm going to be your moderator for this session. Hello. Thank you for coming. My name is Sven McCutcheon. I use pronouns she, her and hers. I'm a catalog librarian at Kent State University Libraries focusing on monographs and maps. My colleague Peter Lycius pronouns he, him and his is the music and media catalog librarian and began cataloging ETDs as well in 2018. Today we're going to talk about Kent State University experience of cataloging ETDs in Ohio, especially the interplay among the statewide institutional repository, our statewide consortium and our individual libraries workflow. Our presentation is in three parts. First to provide information on the current context in a little history of Ohio link standards created for cataloging ETDs first in ACR2 then RDA. The tech currently in use, we call ETD cat, the consortium metadata harvesting tool, which creates basic mark records from students supplied metadata. We're going to talk about the steps in KSU's workflow, which utilizes mark edit OCLC constant data and a tag team approach to cataloging. In the second part, Peter will demonstrate how we go about originally cataloging ETDs pointing out the distinctive intellectual challenges they pose. And since KSU is an eco library, he'll also demonstrate how we create a typical name authority record for an ETD author. We'll update on upcoming replacement successor to the Ohio link ETD metadata harvesting tool and the concurrent initiative to reassess and update the consortium ETD cataloging standards. In the interest of time, I'll fly through some of my slides in part one, but the slides will be available on the conference website with speakers notes and some additional readers notes. KSU is a member of the Ohio link consortium, which has as members 88 universities and colleges plus the State Library of Ohio. We each have our own Sierra catalogs that are local and also the shared Ohio link central catalog, from which patrons can place requests and material delivered from throughout the state to their home library so intro library loan. Ohio link hosts the Ohio link ETD center and institutional repository devoted to ETDs from Ohio academic institutions. It contains over 103,000 ETDs. They're also searchable in Google Scholar. Currently 35 of the 38 Ohio link member institutions have students upload papers to the ETD center. And you'll hear me refer to OCLC's bibliographic formats and standards during the presentation or the abbreviation BFAS. So for orientation, here's what the Ohio link ETD center looks like at the initial screen when you get on it. And what an individual ETD looks like there the website is describing it. And the text is provided by the student authors they fill out their submission form. When I started at Kent State University in 2006, universities all over were in the process of transitioning from manuscript theses and dissertations to electronic. And we catalog like librarians knew how to handle print theses and dissertations both they and ACR two had been around a long time. But he books in general and ETD is a special kind of you book we're pretty new then. So highly formed a working group to develop consortial standards for cataloging ETDs. We did this, our group was primarily to serve the needs of Ohio institutions but we did so with an eye to create standards that could be widely applicable and compatible with national international standards. We repeated that general process for RDA in the 2013 2014 timeframe, although that time around it was ETDs that were familiar and the cataloging rules were new. And I was a member of both working groups and and now involved in the 2020 updates. On the tech side in 2016 a KSU systems librarian might create she now retired, experimented and created what he called a software cataloging agent, a cataloging bot. This was a first used locally and then adapted for statewide use in 2008, sorry, 2008 and created ACR to bib records for ETDs. Fortunately in 2013, the tools stopped working when Ohio link both addressed a security issue and had a major upgrade concurrently in 2013 RDA was coming into widespread use. The second statewide tool was ready in 2014. At first it created a ACR two records only than in 2015 RDA bib, bib records became an option as well. The records from Ohio link for ETDs and other resources are both on the Ohio link website, and also through the ND LTD website network digital library of the season dissertations. I'll quickly run through a couple issues we grappled with pulling together a ACR two standards might seem old have now but they were headscratchers at the time. Welcome to read more about these in the readers notes. We determined that ETDs were the only or first version of the work. So they were born digital and born digital ETDs were published. So we put on these and other quandaries through the years we thank J whites of OCLC. During both the time periods, the working groups were engaged a BFAS said apparently contradictory things on the topic of government government publications and the season dissertations. In addition, available at the time, we landed on the side of considering ETDs published by state institutions to be state level government publications. So for many years we at KSU coded fixed field g pub within us. Within the past few years BFAS has become clear and landed on the opposite side that ETDs are not considered government publications so KSU we now leave it g pub blank. So this is an example of something will revise the upcoming version of a high link standards for cataloging ETDs. Another issue was that BFAS wording at the time instructed catalogers to use only local fields in this 790s for advisor and institution access points. Such information was considered fine and local catalogs but not acceptable in OCLC master records. It seemed at odds with the new guidelines since RDA specifically provided relationship designators for ETD advisors and the institution. So a high link wrote to OCLC and got a reply. OCLC folks were on board with a high links consortial standards to include 700s and 710s access points for degree supervisors and degree granting institutions in master records and set an update to BFAS was planned, which has now happened. Just a couple of examples there. Oh, dear, that's a lot smaller than I'd hope. Oh, I see there. So now that we've discussed the content for ETD bib records, let's move on to the tech of getting the content into mark bib records. Just very quickly here's a graphic overview of how KSU systems librarian might create cheese initial cataloging bot worked for us locally in 2006. It used Pearl OA IPMH and ETD MS, which included a mark 21 crosswalk. And a case you we call the resulting records coming out of the metadata harvesting with ETD cat provisional records because we consider them temporary, reasonably good descriptions for users to access immediately in the local and consortial catalogs until full OCLC cataloging can be done. However, some libraries due to staffing or other issues may accept this record as their final record. Once the ETD cats work ends KSU work begins. So here's some KSU context. The university is a rather large university in a small Ohio city with about 38,000 students and multiple libraries some at regional campuses. We typically get about 400 ETD papers a year, approximately 350 to 360 graduate level papers for which we do full level cataloging on WorldCat plus 35 to 50 undergraduate honors papers on which we do minimal level cataloging. At KSU we've had the commitment to fully catalog these dissertations from back in the days of print manuscripts. When we transition to ETDs the philosophy continued that it's a worthwhile endeavor to maximize discovery to the unique research and scholarly contributions of KSU graduate students. Two factors contribute to making this possible. We're a big enough library system to have multiple catalog librarians. So one me the monographs cataloger has had main responsibility for TDs and now ETDs. Also, we've had a supply of high school students as temporary pre professional catalogers. And the high school in Ohio is located just down the hall from our tech services department in the main library. The synergy has been win-win for several years. Internship students and paid hourly graduate student assistants do original cataloging under supervision, and they gain skills in an especially challenging activity and resource type. Mark or Peter, he goes to this Ohio Link ETD center interface to retrieve new ETD records with ETD cat. And then he selects among different document types, grad papers, and then honors papers, uses mark edit to convert files and loads the same baseline bibs into two places. And then he selects our local OPEC and uses a few more Sierra tools like rapid rapid update to tweak the records a bit more. So patients will have immediate access. And the second place is the OCLC online save file ready for further cataloging. The default ETD cat bib records are pretty good, but have some emissions and inputting quirks, including some that cause validation errors on OCLC. The editing we do at KSU makes an additional layer of changes to the baseline bibs. Here's a representative sample of the changes. And a few more. After those two processes, an ETD bib in Sierra will look like this. Now people get involved at the individual bib level. As part of tag team cataloging, a student worker typically an undergrad figures out which ETDs to tackle next by searching Sierra by a local field we insert for identification. Then finds that same bib in OCLC and does descriptive cataloging. The student applies a constant data record examines the full text plus the website and follows internet instructions to verify, fill in, edit and correct data we couldn't easily do by automatic methods. And to give you a sense of what's in a constant data record. Here it is. Primarily reminder fields. Don't forget to add these things. Delete if not applicable. The student records on our ETD tracking spreadsheet info about the bib and its status to communicate with the cataloging specialist who will get involved next. And a bib record number four by Fatima Anafa, you'll see a lot of her work today as an example. The descriptive cataloger also communicates via the spreadsheet that an ETD author might need an R, a name authority record, such as when there's a discrepancy between forms of name in different sources. And then the OCLC online save file is ready for handoff. It looks like this, ready for the original cataloger to start on. And the next two slides are the rest of the bib record. A cataloging specialist either a catalog librarian or a graduate student assistant under supervision, does the second part of tag team cataloging what we call the original cataloging part. And my colleague Peter will take it for here from here for part two. Thank you, so then. So next we go on to part two is after descriptive cataloging is taking place. The professional catalogers focus on the more unique challenges catalog on logging ETD is which primarily to do with classification subject analysis and authority control. Next slide. So, after descriptive cataloging is done. I perform subject out analysis using library of Congress subject headings and medical subject headings. By by the National Library of Medicine. Then I signed classification. And then I evaluate access points. Next. Okay, so for subject heading analysis, the primary sources for subject are the title abstract summary field self a time assigned terms by the author and some other places to I go. The department website body of the dissertation. And also Google, and some of the issues of this. They're challenging very specialized topics. Usually one subject heading isn't enough. And creativity is often required within these parameters LC SH. And then you just do your best with all of that. Next slide. So, first considering the content of the title. So in our dissertation we fought him enough up. You'll see there's the title there. And then I just focus on the principal parts of that title so hidden cognitive skill dependency knowledge units, Markov cognitive knowledge state network. Next slide. And then the content of the abstract. I'm not interested in what the title implies, but that's not always the case so you have to determine what's the same what's different and is their new content introduced it's not introduced or not mentioned in the title. Next slide. And so I transcribe the abstract from the dissertation bib rec. And then I just highlighted these terms that I would focus on, and some of them duplicate what's on the title, but basically I go through like I was reading an article in college and just highlighting terms as I read. Next slide. So, some of the old concepts that were first found the title include cognitive still dependencies and the Markov cognitive state knowledge network. And some of the principal new concepts introduced an abstract including the following terms that you see below. Next slide. So self assigned terms are assigned by the author and harvested on the mark OCLC records and mark field 653. And so our author she assigned cognitive psychology computer science. And then you look what's common among all the areas you've looked at so far. So, in this case, the self assigned terms are added. And our example cognitive psychology found all three areas of computer science is founded to the multi disciplinary topic, you get primary consideration department and the district which the dissertation is created. So the body of the body of dissertations also useful you can't make sense of everything that you look so far in the title abstract yourself assigned terms, and then you can go to Google, find information and any sources providing a lay person's information. And one reason I selected this dissertation to present on I did this at the summit Ohio link back in March. I'm an arts and humanities person so I want to demonstrate what someone like me would do to look into something in the hard sciences cattle provide access. Next slide. Subject heading assignments there's two columns here so the concepts that are brought up in all the areas I've looked for it thus far, and then you go in LCSH and mesh to determine what those headings are. So you'll see from those non catalogers out there the m dash is proceeding additional terms indicate a subdivisions. So those are some of the correlating a subject headings with subdivisions that I found, and mesh. Some of the other terms I found in mesh. Next slide. So here is a slide showing how all these access points looks like on a bib rec so first five or LCSH terms. They're hot linked so they go right back to the subject authority files you can see the actual subject headings and subject heading subdivision files. The medical terms are next. There's three of those and then the self assigned terms are in the mark 653 field LC GFT is a Library of Congress genre form term. And we always assign academic theses to those next. Okay, next you move on to classification so when I classify it's always best to do subject analysis first classifications based on LCSH using Library of Congress classification web. The first subject heading is the basis of classification but if two or more subject headings are given equal prominence, you search all those terms and class web. And then you pick the best term, and sometimes the best way to do that is go back to the apartment school. The one classifications better you move the subject heading terms as appropriate. Next slide. So in our dissertation we found two nearly equivalent terms. And then if we look in the next slide to see the result of those searches. You'll see that on the left cognitive science psychological aspects is BF 311 else and library of Congress classification. And then BF 201 is cognitive psychology and that's actually a see from the same range where we found cognitive science psychological aspects. Next slide. So, here we have the hierarchy and class web for both terms and the classification and what that is so cognitive science psychological aspects BF 11 311's general works, and then BF 2 ones cognitive psychology. Next slide. So the winner here is cognitive psychology. It's the most general classification term. BF 311 was about consciousness and doing a keyword search over the entire dissertation yielded no hits and cognitive science is hierarchical to cognitive psychology. And though both terms are already on the bib rec. Next slide. So, based on this, we swapped the first two subject headings which sometimes happens after you do classification. Next slide. So, this is a breakdown of the classifications of BF 201 is the classification for the topic point and 34 is for Napa and then a after three and four is done the cutter tables in 2019 for the data was published. Next slide. So, I'm going to try to sail through these so you don't have time to wrap up an authority control is a process by which bib recs are organized in the library catalog and you see some of the considerations down there. I basically have authorized access points. Access points was point those authorized access points. And all these exist behind the scenes not ILS they link the bib recs to which a particular name, etc are associated. And these are all from the national authority file, which can be viewed publicly on the LC website or the OCLC connection as we're cataloging and those places have identical content. So, some considerations and terms here, the catalogers use manipulate these records in the national authority file. And these are called name authority records or NARS. So, those of us with authorization to do that are NACO certified. And we can update or make put new ones in there and that's run by the program for cooperative cataloging at LC. So Kent State three of us are certified to do NACO and we also train high school grad students to do it when they're available and all of us contribute to NACO regular and I also have two additional ones in my work with the music and AV based names. These NARS. Yeah, we and we usually do them for NACO regular so next slide. Types of names so that might have to be create new or vetted authors, advisors, departments and schools. Next slide. Primarily, my very primary priority where we work on them every time the conflict and the NAF and we need to know how to break the conflict. The author has a compound surname that will yield a variant access point. Then catalogers judgment if they'd have difficulty accessing a name without the NAR and some of the secondary priorities include differences of name. There's a suffix, the authors and international student or there's a year of birth. Next slide. The NAR dissertation so the author's name from the top of the bib rec, the advisory department names are found at the bottom. Next slide. So there's no authority record for the author. And this is a second priority name. And actually the third thing down the list is catalogers judgment. patrons probably wouldn't have access problem accessing the name. So it falls in a primary priority, but move on to the next slide. And then you can see some of the things that are to make that a secondary priority there. You can look at that later. And I made a new NAR as a judgment call here. But it fit three of the four secondary considerations. So next slide. So here's a picture of our author in question. I was able to get some good information here off our office of global education. Website picture of her and there's a link to her a little bit bio on her next slide. Here's what an authority looks record looks like for her after I've gone through all that so these different fields starting the three, starting with three seven three seven X fields. I mean, different things like place, a field of activity, associate institutions and the fact she's a graduate student and a woman. Next slide. And then the 670 notes what's in black below are those fields blown up 670s or where you document all the information you're going to put the body of the authority record and so the sources. And the last slide here. Yeah, so next one, got an advisor. Next slide. We didn't make authority for the computer computer science because so generic and there were no problems with it. So next slide. So the appropriate fields look after you've vetted everything. So next slide. And other examples, authors and advisors and departments name changes we don't have time to talk about that now. And I think the next three slides are how the Bible and looks in the Bible is can't link so some of them I'll turn it over to you now to wrap things up. All right, I'll close here in this part with an update on current Ohio link etd activities and use a little on the case you context. There are two closely intertwined activities going on now at on the Ohio link level with etd's creating a new way to get etd baseline records and updating standards to go along with. The new metadata harvesting method currently in testing uses the OAI PMH feed from the etd center with market it. The goal is to get as much done to the records upstream and automatically from Ohio link as possible so that when libraries load bids they'll have as little local editing as possible to do. I find this very appealing very much in the spirit of efficient labor saving cooperative cataloging programs. We're working on an update and reassessment of the consortium etd cataloging standards for RDA. In, in February of 2020, Ohio Metadata and etd coordinator Emily Flynn contacted me and Joan Milligan of Dayton University to review the test records being created. And because we had both been active on the Ohio link standards for etd's in RDA working group and reviewing the records in the past. I'm sorry to interrupt but we're at a five minute warning. Thank you. Examining the first batch of etd bibs generated by the new tool we came up with a list of requested changes for programmers to make for the next batch. I have some feedback from folks on the Ohio link etd council, which I'm a member and brought a review by some constituents volunteers from the Ohio link etd discussion list to step forward. Next will be providing Ohio link and programmers with the request for adjustment document to inform the content of the next batch of test records, and there will be more opportunities for high link members to examine and give feedback on the big records. There will be no point in the fairly near future when as a group we find the etd baseline big records in good shape to meet our needs. The consortium will make the switch from the current method to the new method. It was the request to test that prompted that to the review for content standards but it's also come at a good time. In the past several years, since they were last written, there have been changes and developments in standards at the international level. What's been around so much easier and straightforward than previous times is that OCLC's bibliographic formats and standards section pertaining to theses and dissertations got that recent overhaul. So itself is up to date with current standards. So in terms of Kent State at our metadata cataloging department, we do full level cataloging for etd's as well as other resources our libraries acquire. We have a fortunate position in which we have the skills and human resources significantly augmented by iSchool graduate student personnel to do so. I find that original cataloging etd's is an excellent way to teach graduate students complex and marketable skills in preparation for the future library careers. However, recent current shifts are affecting the availability of iSchool graduate students as both student workers and interns. iSchool has been a fully online program for some years. So for on campus jobs candidates must consider logistics of driving time and parking to a campus they wouldn't normally come to. As of 2018 internships are no longer required. They are optional instead. On the other side of the library student budget had constraints. These were preceded by the COVID-19 pandemic but have been exacerbated by it. Pay rates of KSU library student jobs were not particularly high compared to off campus jobs in general. And now both the total number of library student jobs and the types that are eligible for middle and higher tier pay rates have been sharply reduced. So grad students must consider and contrast the lure of gaining professional skills and letters of reference with the viability of the wage. So what does this mean for monographs and etd's in our cataloging unit. I suspect that the trend is fewer people with the high skills and less time available to those people to devote to challenging original cataloging. So now we're simply monitoring the situation and haven't made any changes as to priorities or levels of cataloging, especially with the added layer of COVID-19 repercussions and uncertainty we're waiting to see what's a shorter term anomaly, and what's the new longer term norm. So that's one of the decisions that we would be making that would impact end users will be sure to discuss their public services and reference librarians. Thank you, Sam and Peter. I think that kind of takes us to the end of the time. Looks like Peter you answered the question that was in the chat. So I think if there's any additional questions we can probably refer them to the chat as well. Thank you so much that was very informative. I'm always in awe of the cataloging magic the catalogers do so. Thank you for sharing your methodologies.