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September 10, 2007
Bibliographic Data
Andrew Coburn says
"it is misleading to say that the utilities you mention catalogue from the book in hand - they will tell you they work from advance information. Since we try to order in advance of publication that is to be expected. But it means that when the book arrives, the detail we have imported can be wrong (author, title, ISBNs included) which is why we check them and update them when necessary."
Is that right? -- do Neilsen and BDS not know that people order books in advance of publication and that data might need to be corrected when the book is published? Has no one ever told them? tch tch
Posted by Tim Coates at September 10, 2007 12:29 PM
Comments
Why not ask them, Tim?
It's one of the basic weaknesses of the CIP program, that it's done not on the item in hand but on pre-publishing information. If they could change their workflow to incorporate work-in-hand cataloguing that would be an improvement.
A question, Tim. What do you think cataloguing is for?
Posted by: Pete at September 10, 2007 1:15 PM
Before my friends (word used in the proper sense) at BDS etc jump in - I am sure they do know but they can't catalogue from information or a book they do not have. They will provide an updated record when they can but if we want the catalogue to be correct when the book hits the shelves we have to take action ourselves.
Posted by: Andrew Coburn at September 10, 2007 1:39 PM
Retailers manage to sell things on publication day. Their readers find things Perhaps, Andrew, you could do without this process, that's what I mean-- and save the money for some more books? Also it would mean you avoid a potential bottleneck of stock waiting to be recatalogued before publication and the possibility that some copies may not get onto display on time. Some councils do have backlogs of stock in their distribution centres.
It sound like you are potentially improving the catalogue record for a very short period between printed copies arriving with you and the same process taking place at BDS. It can't be worth it can it?
Posted by: tim at September 10, 2007 8:38 PM
I think the simple way to sum this up, is that...
1. Public libraries are confident enough in the pre-publication cataloguing to order the books in the first place.
2. The record was accurate enough to find the book among the listing of around 2.8M titles on an average suppliers site.
Then I'm sure the info is good enough to get the book on the shelf!!
Posted by: A Reed at September 11, 2007 9:01 AM
It is true that Nielsen produces it's initial catalogue records for pre-publication titles from publishers information and that this data is not produced from 'book in hand' cataloguing. However we are continuously updating our bibliographic database (some 34 million updates are made every year) and providing updates of records, to our customers, as and when appropriate (this may be pre or post publication). In this way the catalogue record provided to libraries is kept as up to data as possible and goes a very long way in ensuring the accuarcy of our catalogue data throughout the life of a book.
Posted by: Paul Dibble, Nielsen Bookdata at September 20, 2007 10:57 AM