How can publishers help librarians? Cambridge University Press leads the way with a metadata revolution

It’s no secret that library budgets have been slashed in recent years, and the burdens of trying to do more with less are growing for librarians and information professionals. But what is it that adds most stress to the lives of cataloguers and librarians? Quite possibly it is unhappy users; users that cannot find resources within library catalogues and consequently cannot use these resources within publishers’ platforms. Cambridge University Press is listening to these concerns and has embarked on a huge project to improve the discoverability of resources and ensure that the MARC (MAchine-readable cataloging) records across all eBooks are impeccable. A MARC record is the bibliographic record a library needs for their online catalogues – the online description of a resource, coded according a specific format. Once a MARC record is uploaded in a library catalogue users are able to find it and have access to the resource described within. Over the last year, Cambridge University Press has been through almost all its collections – over 24,000 titles – and updated or enhanced the metadata according to the requirements of librarians and researchers. The Press has added in subject headings where there were none, authorised forms of authors’/editors’ names and series titles and removed punctuation marks that affected search capabilities. Publishers don’t want users to be unhappy because this makes unhappy librarians; librarians that cannot offer the best servi...
Source: News from STM - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: European Featured Source Type: news