The Library of Congress’ Cooperative Cataloging Team is pleased to announce that
two subject proposal web forms are now available on the SACO Home Page
http://ww.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/saco.html
The web form for new subject heading proposals had been in an experimental phase
since 1998 and available only to BIBCO and select contributors to the SACO
Program. Since the form’s inception over 3,500 proposals have been processed
successfully and internal studies indicate that the majority of these proposals
were approved and available to the library community via the OCLC and RLG
authority files within 4-6 weeks of submission. The form for proposing changes
to existing LCSH headings is newly developed and will continued to undergo
development and improvements as contributions and comments are received.
In an effort to expedite the growing number of new and changed proposals the web
proposal form is now the mainstream mechanism for processing subject proposals
contributed to the SACO Program. Regretfully, there is no “save file” mechanism
to facilitate internal review practices and prevent re-keying. Review of all
proposals before submitting to the SACO Program is highly encouraged. Coop will
continue to accept e-mail proposals; however, resources in Coop can no longer
support an expeditious processing of proposals submitted via that mechanism.
To facilitate the approval of a proposed heading, please consult the appropriate
LC Subject Cataloging Manual (SCM) instruction sheets and/or the proposal
guidelines and FAQs on the SACO home page. Prospective SACO contributors are
encouraged to attend the SACO workshops presented in conjunction with ALA before
submitting new or changed subject proposals. Proposals that fail to follow the
SCM guidelines to a reasonable degree will be deleted without further
processing.
To facilitate the processing of the web form proposal read and follow the
editorial instructions provided on the form before clicking the submit button.
The web form programing is simple and will work best provided that ASCII
characters are not used in any field, diacritics are copied and pasted from the
list of diacritics linked to the form, and that initial subfields are left off
in all fields.
Proposals submitted via the web form will be available for searching through LC
web authorities http://authorities.loc.gov/ within two working days of receipt.
Comments, questions, suggestions for improvements to the forms, etc. may be sent
directly to [log in to unmask]
****************
Ana Lupe Cristán
Acting Team Leader/BIBCO Coordinator
Cooperative Cataloging Team
Library of Congress, LM 537
Washington, DC 20540-4382
tel: 202.707.7921
fax: 202.252.2082
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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