1 Introduction

To start with I would like to briefly delineate the technical and organizational changes of the German cataloging landscape:

1.1 Changes in rules and working techniques

In the seventies and early eighties German research libraries underwent major changes within cataloging:

• the cataloging code changed from Prussian Instructions (PI) to Rules for Alphabetical Cataloging (RAK)
• PI was mainly characterized by grammatical structure of title headings and missing corporate bodies etc.,
• RAK is mainly based on Copenhagen and Paris Principles, nevertheless major differences between RAK and AACR remain.
• Online-cataloging and catalogs were introduced based on RAK and using the German exchange format MAB (Maschinelles Austauschformat für Bibliotheken) which is again different from MARC esp. in its hierarchical structure.

1.2 Organizational Changes

Based on the changes in rules and techniques corresponding organizational changes took place.

1.2.1 Data suppliers and data producers

During the eighties and nineties regional networks were formed and developed. In the meantime most of the state and university libraries, including their university institute and seminar libraries and many special libraries, are cataloging cooperatively in regional networks. Most of the bibliographical records of the regional networks are combined in the National Union Catalog in Berlin (which is supposed to be closed and given up).

Serials cataloging is centralized in the Serials Database at the Prussian State Library in Berlin. In addition Germany has 3 national authority files:

• NAF for Corporate Bodies at the Berlin State Library
• NAF for Names of Persons (Frankfurt/Main)
• NAF for Subject Headings (Frankfurt/Main)

The Deutsche Bibliothek is the national data supplier for German bibliographical records.

1.2.2 Rules landscape

A little over two years ago the organization of cataloging rules committees was changed into:

2 Reasons and facts causing the insufficiency

In the meantime many of the regional networks are importing foreign bibliographic data - esp. from the US and Great Britain - and it’s becoming obvious that exchanging bibliographic data with AACR countries still has many obstacles to overcome.

On the other hand library managers require simplified cataloging rules that take advantage of the opportunities of the online environment, and because of this they are demanding that all codes that refer to card catalogs be aborted. With financial support being reduced every year we are forced to react and I think many of us consider this to be a great chance.

Thus we are kind of torn between

• introducing AACR or/and,
• concentrating on online requirements,

and of course staying compatible with the large amount of old data converted into machinereadable form in the meantime.

2.1 What is being criticized?

2.1.1. Differences between AACR and RAK

The Project REUSE - Reuse of each others’ bibliographical data (a project between OCLC and the Göttingen State Library). With assistance of Dr. Barbara Tillett, LC, and me as chair of the German Working Group for Descriptive Cataloging the differences between AACR and RAK were analyzed.

I would like to point out a few of these differences:

• RAK has different terminology in many instances, the most important of which are:
• the title: RAK includes the author statement. In many cases the title proper is not entered as it is given in the item but instead a filing title is formed;
• the author: if you can differentiate parts of works of two or more authors they are not authors any more, but other contributing persons;
• Collections as defined by AACR do not have equivalents in RAK;
• RAK has different headings and entities for persons and corporate bodies.

• Names of persons: the most important impediment was
• that we used to abbreviate the second forename (we abandoned that a few years ago with continuing work in authority files);
• we don’t differentiate between equal names (thus one record may exist for two or more persons).
• As far as corporate bodies are concerned many entities do not match. Within REUSE these differences were investigated:

• ships and aircrafts, buildings such as churches and castles,
• activities such as expeditions and projects,
• executive and information agencies,
• meetings of corporate bodies

• RAK has different structures as far as multivolume works are concerned:

• the collective title , i.e. the item as a whole,
• the subseries under certain conditions,
• and for all volumes regardless if the title is specific or generic.

URL: Part/Whole Relationship

2.1.2 Online reflections:

These are the main demands for online cataloging rules:

• streamline rules by abolishing all codes relating to card catalogs and their entries, as
• formalizing (thus simplifying) regulations for main and added entry;
• titles or title elements entered into a bibliographic record automatically producing access points, no additional manipulating for entries;
• discarding all name and title references that are not necessary in online catalogs;
• revising of many see or see also general references;
• improve indexing instead of regulations for additional entries;
• enhance secondary search criteria such as: language, year of publication, document type, genre terms, material designations etc.

To resume:

On the one hand a general introduction of AACR is not possible for many reasons: the user would not accept Anglo-American headings (Examples), the huge amount of converted data will not fit into a completely new structure, and AACR is as highly list oriented as RAK is.

On the other hand a complete new code that only takes care of online requirements could lead even further away from the worlds’ cataloging.

Thus we tried to concieve a new code which would serve both goals, partly an AACR harmonization with several features of better and easier online handling.

3 How will the solutions look?

3.1 Hierarchies in multivolume works

To start with: One of the most difficult parts to adapt is the hierarchical view of multivolume works I described before. RAK will give up the records for subseries within multivolume works and possibly volume records that do not contain relevant bibliographical information (such as volumes of encyclopedias etc.), but we will not give up the hierarchical structure as a whole. After the REUSE project we still do not have a solution for cataloging multivolume works; yet, we do have a proposal: if American colleagues would introduce an indicator in the tag 505 (or elsewhere) to indicate the contents of 505 field is a volume statement an exchange on a minimal basis could be reached.

I could imagine this to be a European petition, as the British MARC provides the tag 248 for the volume statement, and as far as I know it was one of the major problems in the harmonization of the MARC formats.

3.2 Basic terms

We are about to replace some RAK terms by AACR terms, as e.g.:

• the Rules Conference has already accepted the new title terminology;
• author: we hopefully will introduce the author definition as well as the handling of single, shared and mixed responsibility,
• collection: we hopefully will abandon our terms Sammlung (collection of 2 and more works by one author) and Sammelwerk (2 and more works by different authors) and replace them by a German equivalent of „collection" according to AACR;

With the revision of other basic terms we will wait for future AACR revisions (see below).

3.3 Encoding of form titles, material designations, qualifiers etc.

By introducing codes for several existing designations we hope to achieve easier online cataloging and better OPAC presentation. In addition the codes will hopefully provide easier exchange with AACR records. We are about to introduce codes for:

• form titles as: festschrift, treaty, constitution, Sammlung (collection of two and more works by one author - to come closer to AACR collective uniform titles);
• languages in order to replace qualifiers in uniform titles and the former Sammlung; we will introduce ISO 639-2 = the Alpha 3 code;
• codes will replace general and specific material designations and thus can easily be generated; other material codes will be introduced;
• compulsory and optional codes for document types will be used;
• conference proceedings will be coded, as well as exhibitions. The qualifiers will be replaced by two different tags:
• the conference place (with the possibility of a linkage to the name authority file for corporate bodies in order to have all references for the place heading),
• another tag for the conference enumeration and year;

3.4 Title Adaptations

It is already accepted by the Rules Conference that the title will be entered as it is given in the item. This leads to greater AACR harmonization as well as better online handling, as the title could be scanned. The primarily used filing title

(Ansetzungssachtitel) has been given up. We will introduce it as a secondary filing title for subseries within serials where we think it to be useful (example).

3.5 Access Points

In accepting single, shared and mixed responsibility according to AACR, harmonization in the most important area of entries under persons will be reached as soon as it is accepted by the Conference. In all cases of work modifications (AACR 21.9ff) we’ll try to follow AACR as well.

The instructions for entries under corporate bodies are slightly different, we preferred formal aspects: name of a corporate body will be entered when it is part of a title (unless it is an object) or has to be added to a title in case of a generic title. But we do think that in most cases the entries under corporate bodies will either match, or in case of data exchange, can be constructed via codes (e.g. in the cases of conference publications, constitutions etc. where AACR provide main entries under these bodies).

As far as main and added entries are concerned we are about to replace the card ideology with citation rules: if a work is supposed to be cited under a personal or corporate name this name is tagged according to a main entry. Thus authors are still differentiated in relation to other contributing persons. But we will hopefully eliminate many useless discussions in regional networks relating to main entries, the work is cited under the author in all cases of doubt - it doesn’t matter in the online environment.

As far as the number of entries under authors and corporate bodies is concerned, more than three authors can be entered when prominently named (the Joint Steering Committee of the AACR countries is currently addressing the same problem).

3.6 Authority Work

The entity principle in the authority files for personal names has now been accepted. In the future we will differentiate between equal names and add qualifiers as birth and death dates, thus the biggest hurdle for cooperating in international authority files has been eliminated.

And I am glad to announce that the Deutsche Bibliothek has begun a project on April 1st: the colleagues in the office for authority file for personal names will download parts of the name records into their file whenever a certain name is looked up in LCNAF. This will serve a long-term goal to have automatic replacement of the national name headings when exchanging bibliographic data. We hope that some of the regional networks will join this venture and as soon as the Library of Congress has migrated they will start to load parts of the record in their file when researching German NAF.

We will have to work on the entity problem regarding corporate bodies. I am not sure if we are able to adapt different terminologies as far as conference proceedings are concerned.

4 Prospects

I tried to delineate our efforts leading to greater AACR harmonization and online adaptation at the same time and where we decided to go the one or other way, or stay with the present rules for reasons of converted data or for reasons of easier handling rules when the same goal can be achieved.

As far as basic cataloging philosophy is concerned (such as work, expression etc.) we will wait for the Revision of AACR. We have been closely watching:

• the Toronto Conference,

• the ongoing work in this context as e.g.
• the work on ongoing publications,
• the implication of Functional Requirement of Bibliographical Records,
• the logic of AACR - by Tom Delsey and others.

We were not able to wait for a whole revision of AACR, but still hope that our decisions will serve the different goals in the best possible way, and perhaps will be possibly of European interest.

Monika Muennich, University Library of Heidelberg, Germany

Heidelberg, 4-9-99