Technical Services
Cataloging and Authorities Team

Office Location: General Library Building
Mailing Address: 419 21st Avenue South, TN 37240
Telephone: (615) 343-2089 Fax: (615)343-1292

The Cataloging and Authorities Team (CAT) performs original and copy cataloging of library materials in all formats, including books, serials, microforms, manuscripts, computer files, electronic resources, videorecordings and sound recordings for the Central, Science, Management, and Peabody libraries. The team also provides authority control for name, Library of Congress subjects, and controlled title headings on Acorn.

The catalog librarians and copy catalogers, along with our support staff, input original bibliographic records on our bibliographic utility, OCLC, download records into our local system, adapt and modify catalog records found on OCLC and the Library of Congress database in order to imporove our local users’ access to materials, enhance description, or maintain consistency within our catalog. Vanderbilt has long been an OCLC "enhance" library, providing us the opportunity to make corrections to or upgrade the quality of member-supplied records in the OCLC database. Team members create and modify name and series authority records, and propose new subject headings, for the national authority database as members of the NACO and SACO programs. We also perform changes to CONSER serial records as a CONSER enhance member library. In December 1997, the team took the BIBCO training, the final component necessary to become full members of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging.

The authorities coordinator, with the help of support staff and catalog librarians, is responsible for maintaining the authority records, keeping them current and consistent with the bibliographic records on the on-line catalog. In order to make this as efficient and cost-effective as possible, we use the services of an authority control vendor to provide available authority records for names and subjects on bibliographic records entering our catalog (prior to cataloging) and to update our existing authority file of over 1 million records. The authorities unit utilizes many means to identify and eliminate typographical errors and errors in usage and tagging occurring in the established headings on bibliographic records. The authorities librarian, who is also our NACO and SACO coordinator, Mary Charles Lasater, maintains communications with OCLC and the Library of Congress regarding name and subject authority contributions made locally and bibliographic corrections that need to be made on OCLC and LC catalogs. Our series authority expert and NACO coordinator for series, Ann Ercelawn, acts in this same capacity for all series authority issues.

The team also strives to maintain the integrity, consistency and usefulness of the library catalog as a whole through recataloging, authority work on name, subject, title and series headings, and other kinds of high-level maintenance. We respond to requests from users and public services staff for changes and corrections which will improve the catalog. We consider ourselves to be stewards of the catalog and take a keen interest in all processes and decisions affecting it.

Each of the librarians on the team has certain "liaison" responsibilities to particular library divisions or subject bibliographers. This allows the catalogers to develop special expertise and consistency of approach to the subject collections, and facilitates communication and cooperation between catalogers and subject bibliographers.

The Team is very interested in correcting errors, improving access and references, and making the headings more consistent on Acorn. If you see errors or want to recommend references, please send a message indicating the problem to Zora Breeding.

Cataloging and Authorities Mission Statement

Team Members

Note: e-mail addresses are of the form username@library.vanderbilt.edu (for example, bell@library.vanderbilt.edu). The area code for all Nashville numbers is 615.

NAMEE-MAILPOSITIONPHONE
Becky Atack atackAssistant343-2086
Ann Barnette barnetteAssistant343-2091
Susan Bell bellLibrarian343-2090
Yuh-Fen Benda bendaAssistant343-2091
Regina Berry berryLibrarian343-1967
Zora BreedingbreedingLibrarian343-2089
Denise Chavez chavezAssistant343-2085
Linda Davis davisl Assistant 343-1967
Molly DahldahlLibrarian343-2089
Ann Ercelawn ercelawnLibrarian343-2088
Don Jones jonesdLibrarian343-2090
Mary Charles Lasater lasaterLibrarian343-2085
Jeff Taylor taylorjAssistant343-2091
Pete Wilson wilsonLibrarian343-2089
Jean Wright wrightLibrarian322-2718

Jeff Taylor

Jeff Taylor is our project person. He excels at a variety of complex, often challenging and constantly changing tasks. His regular duties include processing inventory dispersal material, on-line searching of OCLC, theses processing, url maintenance activities, help with map cataloging, helping with e-journal cataloging and copy cataloging regular materials as time permits.

Ann Barnette, Becky Atack and Regina Berry

Ann Barnette and Becky Atack catalog materials for which incomplete or inadequate cataloging is available from the national bibliographic utilities in order to provide more complete on-line access. They edit and revise existing on-line records for monographs as needed. They update and add to our local file of established names, series, and subject headings and their cross-references. New authority records are now supplied by a vendor, Marcive. Becky and Ann share primary responsibility for reviewing the daily loads of series authority records and transfer or overlay and code as needed those series authority records that the vendor fails to provide. Ann and Becky also do subject analysis for Vanderbilt University theses, subject to review by the original catalogers. They review the work of and train the "junior" copy cataloger and explain and coordinate projects with the cataloging support staff. Regina Berry is responsible for handling the titles with Library of Congress copy that need additional work, such as cataloging in publication, or copy that needs some change when the information on a book is presented in a different way. Gina also handles OCLC records from other member libraries which have been approved by the original cataloging team.

Yuh-Fen Benda

Yuh-Fen Benda is our East Asian Studies cataloger/bibliographer. She supports the selection and coordinates the acquisition and cataloging of materials in Chinese and Japanese for the East Asian Studies collection. The position is split between the Central Library and the Cataloging and Authorities Team. Yuh-Fen has had NACO and NACO CJK authority training and can create authority records in the national authority file.

Susan Bell

Susan has been with Vanderbilt since 1982 as a professional librarian. She catalogs monograph titles in the following areas: Afro-American Studies, Communication Studies/Theater, English, East Asian Studies, and Government Information. She also catalogs non-serial material for the Education library. Susan is also responsible for the direct supervision of our catalog support personnel, Becky Atack and Jeff Taylor.

Zora Breeding

Zora is the Cataloging and Authorities Team leader. She represents the team on the Technical Services Management Team, facilitates team meetings, and coordinates communication within the team and with other library units and staff. She catalogs German and Russian language and literature, both monographic and serial titles, in all formats. She has responsibility for all non-English History Studies materials, Philosophy, Classics, Film Studies Videos and Communication Studies.

Denise Chavez

Denise Chavez provides support to our authorities librarian in all matters dealing with name and subject authority records and the corresponding headings in bibliographic records.

Molly Dahl

Molly catalogs monographs in Spanish and Portuguese language studies.

Linda Davis

Linda performs maintenance on the catalog, handling typos, withdrawals, transfers, and reinstatements. She also edits periodical holdings, and assists the team in various capacities.

Ann Ercelawn

Ann catalogs serials in a variety of disciplines and several foreign languages for the Central, Science and Engineering and Education Libraries. She coordinates series authority work for the Original Cataloging Team and CONSER serials enhance activity. She is an active member of the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG), having served for 4 years as a member-at-large of the Executive Board.. She is also on the Steering Group of the SCCTP and a certified trainer for the program, teaching classes in Basic Serials, Advanced Serials, and Electronic Serials.
Ann is the author of Tools for Serials Catalogers, a Web page devoted to cataloging resources, and is an associate moderator for SERIALST, an electronic mailing list devoted to serials.

Don Jones

Don catalogs monographic materials in all formats in these areas: French language and literature, Italian language and literature, Arts, Geology (including maps), Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy. Don also specializes in training cataloging support personnel and new cataloging librarians. He also reviews and revises much of the team's BIBCO contributions.

Mary Charles Lasater

Mary Charles is the Authorities librarian. She supervises the staff who work primarily with authorities activities. Together they are responsible for maintaining the authority files in Acorn and changing headings in bibliographic records as needed. Mary Charles also serves as coordinator for the catalogers' work in the NACO name authority program. She also does original cataloging of monographs in all formats in Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, Linguistics, Psychology, General Science, Science Reference, Central Reference and Government Documents.

Pete Wilson

Pete catalogs both monographic and serial materials for Economics, Latin American Studies, Latin American Anthropology, Sociology, Women's Studies, Special Collections and the Management Library. He catalogs monographic material for Political Science and Religious Studies, and he catalogs serials for Anthropology and Spanish and Portuguese.

Jean Wright

Jean is semi-retired, with a background in serials, retrospective conversion, special projects and library automation. Her current activities are concentrated on work with United States government publications.

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Last updated 6/9/2008