Cataloging supplied by Casalini Libri used at Princeton University Library

· Princeton’s Casalini approval plan for Italian language monographs within scope: ca. 3,500 titles per year, primarily humanities, including history, titles.

· Senior professional cataloging staff in concert with the Literature Bibliographer responsible for the Casalini plan assessed the cataloging as being of an acceptable quality to be processed with same level scrutiny and modifications as is afforded non-LC derived cataloging in general.

· 99+% of receipts are cataloged immediately on receipt under the general direction of a designated support staff (non-professional) cataloger with student assistants performing the majority of the preliminary evaluation and revision. A very small number are remanded for professional cataloging attention. Significantly less than ½ of these acquisitions would have LC cataloging copy available for them a year after receipt and a large proportion would have to be originally cataloged.

· Casalini variations from AACR2, LC practice and MARC standards are few, consistent and predictable. The following is a list of the primary verification and modification that is required:

o Name entries.

80% of name entries are established in the NAF. However, Casalini catalogers do not use this as a point of reference with the result that Casalini name forms for personal authors in particular frequently are at variance with the corresponding NAF name form. This does not pose a special problem for us as our Voyager authority validation system provides the correct heading form at the point the record is saved. If no NAF form is established the name is NACOed by our support staff cataloger.

o Series.

Casalini series treatment does not conform to AACR2 and LC practice. For us this is not an issue as our practice is to verify all series on non-LC copy and revise as necessary to conform with LC form and treatment if established in NAF, or with local form and treatment if not in NAF.

o Leader fields.

Casalini records uniformly lack encoding level (005) and contents (008) values. These are fairly simple corrections to frame instructions for and are easily supplied.

o 043 field.

Casalini tends to overuse the geographic area code. When no point of reference for this exists in the subject headings, they are deleted. Casalini also tends not complete the 043 in the case of works about localities. Framing instructions for staff to be alert to and correct these cases is fairly simple.

o Notes.

Records frequently contain redundant 500 notes repeating information from contents (504) notes, present in subject headings or highlighting contents from the work described. For a trained support staff cataloger, or even an experienced student assistant, these are easy to spot and remove.

o Call numbers (050) for literary authors.

If the author is already established by LC Casalini catalogers can be relied upon to employ the correct number. If the author is not yet established by LC, Casalini catalogers may not select the correct number. Our support staff catalogers are all trained to independently class belles lettres material and are able to verify and correct as necessary. Our sampling indicates that other call numbers are all right though Casalini may sometimes adopt a broader classification than might be argued is appropriate.

o Subject analysis.

Subject headings seem to be generally good and in reasonable conformance with LC practice as we understand it. The chief Casalini “foible” we have noticed in this area is a tendency to provide a heading for “Italy” in the case of works with a broader geographic focus that include content related to Italy among other locales. We have decided we can live with that, though our support staff cataloger is trained to make some judgments as to when to accept and when to delete these headings.

o Local 9XX fields.

Casalini records include a number of fields with 9XX tags that contain acquisitions and vendor information required for managing acquisitions records in our local system. These are easily identified and deleted by running a macro.

· Summary: Purchase of these enhanced records has allowed us to eliminate redundant handling of about 3500 Italian language approval books annually. Books are handled once, mostly by students under the supervision of senior support staff, very few of these books are ever handled by professional catalogers. Adjustments to records are standard and straightforward. Books are sent to the shelves for patron use about 12 months earlier than would have been possible without purchase and acceptance of these records. There is no interest locally in further enhancing these records by attempting to harvest “better” cataloging at a later date. These records are exported to the utilities along with all other catalog records from Princeton.