Serial tables of contents (Julia Blixrud) ANN ERCELAWN 09 Sep 1993 14:09 UTC
Date: 08 Sep 1993 23:58:35 -0400 (EDT) From: "Julia C. Blixrud" <jblix@CNI.ORG> Subject: Serial tables of contents Cross-posted to PACS-L and SERIALST: The Serials Industry Systems Advisory Committee (SISAC) at its meeting next week will be discussing a request for comment on a Book Industry Communications (UK) project to test the use of a two dimensional bar code representation of journal tables of contents. The PDF417 technology can include about 2,000 ASCII characters and the experiment will be using labels or plain paper to test the scanning. Data elements to be included in the bar code are journal title, publisher, article title, authors, and beginning page no. Naturally, SISAC has already sent a recommendation that journal article identification include the SICI (Serial Item and Contribution Identifier, ANSI/NISO Z39.56-1991), but there are other questions about the possibility of bar coding tables of contents that were raised by a SISAC task force that met last month. (We are also aware that some journal publishers are also providing tables of contents over the internet, and of course we are aware of table of contents services.) We seek some additional input from the library, systems, and publishing communities, 1. Would it be useful to have bar-coded tables of contents? Why? Why not? 2. If not bar-coded, in what other electronic format? 3. What data elements should be included? Suggestions include: SICI, full text article title, authors, beginning pages, abstract 4. What format should the data take? ASCII? MARC? SGML? How should the data be delimited? 5. Would data be stored? Where? In bibliographic records? 6. Do libraries have the staff resources to scan TOC data for each issue as it is received? 7. Would system vendors be able to develop applications to receive and process TOC data? 8. Would publishers be willing to supply bar-coded TOC? (N.B. SISAC has worked hard to encourage publishers to include the SISAC bar code symbol for easy issue identification, but those bar codes are not yet universal.) 9. Where should a TOC barcode be placed? Current TOC? Cover? 10. Is there merit in retaining information about the printed table of contents presentation? (e.g., trade magazines usually organize their content pages under section headers and regular features or columns). 11. What is the relationship of article identification (i.e., a bibliographic citation) to a table of contents (i.e., an organized presentation of information). Too many questions for one message, I know. But if any immediate thoughts come to mind, I would appreciate hearing from you. Julia Blixrud SISAC Document Delivery Task Force Chair and de facto chair of the Expanded Table of Contents Task Force -- Julia C. Blixrud, Program Officer Council on Library Resources 1400 16th Street, N.W., Suite 510 Washington, D.C. 20036-2217 Internet: jblix@cni.org (202) 483-7474