There have been many questions raised by the posting to SERIALST of our
informal test comparison of the current CONSER full level guidelines and the
proposed CONSER core record guidelines.  I hope that the following additional
points will clarify these issues, and will give others the information they
need to interpret our results in a meaningful way.  Furthermore, a "total" was
included in the original posting which should not have been there.  I am
referring to the 21.2 hours which appeared as a "total" in the original
posting.  The original posting, including a corrected statistical summary, is
appended to this message.  My apologies for any confusion caused.

1.  We did not include time spent on classifying and shelflisting each title.

2.  We did include the time spent on assigning subject headings as
appropriate.

3.  We did not include time spent on searching for copy; this is done up front
by a copy cataloger who triages incoming material.  All other searching
needed to catalog the item was included in the time study, e.g. checking 4xxs
on authority records against our local file.

4.  We did not include the addition or editing of any local fields.

5.  The material used for the study was mainly in English, with a few in
Spanish, German, and French.

6.  Only a few titles had added complexities such as linking entries or series.

7.  Catalogers participating in the test had a minimum of 3 yrs. experience in
original cataloging of serials.

_____________________

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

A short time after the guidelines for the CONSER core record
were posted to various listservs, some of the serials catalogers
here decided to conduct an unscientific, limited study to
get an impression of the possible impact this new standard might
have on our cataloging workflow.

Perhaps others on this list will find the results of
interest, or perhaps others have conducted similar studies
and can then make some kind of comparison with our results.
It is important to emphasize that our study was an informal
one with a very limited scope.

The study was conducted for one week by three original
catalogers.  Only incoming material with no available copy
was used.  Each title was first cataloged according to the
core record guidelines.  All necessary work to "beef up"
each record to full record guidelines was done next.  Each
step was timed separately.  Total cataloging time for a full
level record therefore equals time spent on creating a core
level record, added to the extra time spent to beef it up to
full.  Finally, time spent on creating headings for NACO
contribution was also measured.

CONSER CORE RECORD TEST STATISTICS (Revised 1/12/94)

CATALOGING

Number of cataloged records:  21

Total cataloging time (in hours)

Core:        5.1

Full:        6.6

Time difference between Core and Full:  1.5 hrs.

Average cataloging time (in minutes)

Core:       14.6

Full:       18.9

Average time difference between Core and Full:  4.3 min.
_____________________

NACO

Number of NACO records:  10

NACO time (in hours):  4.4

Average NACO time (in minutes):  26.6

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Steve Oberg                                   e-mail: so67@midway.uchicago.edu
Serials Cataloger                                    Tel. no. : (312) 702-8769
The University of Chicago Library                         FAX : (312) 702-0853
1100 East 57th St., Rm. 220
Chicago, IL   60637
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