SCIPIO Users Group Meeting
Minutes
March 20, 2000
Art Libraries Society of North America 28th Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA
 
 
The meeting was chaired by Deborah Kempe (Frick Art Reference Library, New York), Chair of the SCIPIO Advisory Taskforce.
Twenty-four participants were present, including Tony Gill, RLG Program Officer.

Debbie introduced herself and distributed printed copies of the meeting agenda and the report on the SCIPIO Taskforce she presented at the RLG meeting [posted on SCIPIO-L, March 27, 2000]. Participants introduced themselves and indicated their affiliation with SCIPIO, as either subscribers, contributors, or both (the ratio was 3/5 contributors and 2/5 subscribers). She went over the Taskforce Report, and then invited the audience to express questions, concerns, comments.
The main topics of interest that emerged from Debbie’s report were:

Discussions:
Lorraine Perrotta from Huntington Library launched the first question: her library has a good collection of un-cataloged book dealer catalogs and she asked the audience if SCIPIO would be an appropriate database to include them. The general response was "no". Evalyn Stone, Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, wouldn’t want to see any in SCIPIO, since that will create a precedent for other "catalogs" to be input there. The consensus was to not encourage this practice. Other institutions catalog them in the Books file in RLIN.

Anne Champagne from the Art Institute of Chicago was invited by Debbie to talk about the loading of auction catalogs into their local OPAC (Innovative Interfaces). After last year’s session on SCIPIO recon featuring Prima Casetta’s presentation on The Getty’s loading of SCIPIO records into their local OPAC, Ann contacted her and followed the same example. The Art Institute worked with Innovative to perform "scoping" and now has separate files for periodicals and for auction catalogs, as well as a combined file. Users search for auction catalogs only or for a combination of other files including auction catalogs. They catalog in SCIPIO and download daily into their OPAC.

Due to the fact that users of the Auction Catalog file in the OPAC don’t usually look for the auction house, but mostly search by the date of sale, the decision was made not to download the SCIPIO Authority File into the OPAC, though this can probably be done through scoping by Innovative. The Art Institute’s OPAC now contains approximately 70,000 records in the local Auction Catalog File.
 
 
Kay Downey from Cleveland Museum of Art mentioned that they have a Dynix system, and also plan downloading their 40,000 records from SCIPIO into the local OPAC. They hope to retrospectively catalog 40,000 more pre-1980 auction catalogs.

The next major topic was clustering. Many in the audience expressed the need for clustering. As per the SCIPIO Taskforce report, many at the meeting were surprised to learn that as an initial step, RLG will consider returning to the old kind of clustering specific to SCIPIO, which is again, not a standard clustering and is "messy", as someone expressed. Tony Gill, noting the comments, answered that clustering can be done using different fields, but because SCIPIO has so many inconsistencies, it is more difficult to do "standard" clustering. Depending on time and budgets, RLG sets priorities in solving this type of issue.

Debbie initiated the next discussion, on the desirability of having a SCIPIO editor or coordinator, who would coordinate database maintenance and communicate changes related to the database. There was unanimous agreement on that, but no proposals were made as to specific individuals or institutions that might want/volunteer to do it.

The next topic suggested by Debbie was authority control. The proposal of the Taskforce to work towards making the NAF the authority for SCIPIO by proposing that new authority records be added to the NAF rather than the SCA was received with approval. Debbie mentioned that even if that change is implemented, SCIPIO catalogers will need to search both NAF and SCA for some time. Lorraine Perrotta mentioned the authority concerns of contributors who have SCIPIO records in their OPACs, since automated authority processing is based on the NAF.

Evalyn Stone mentioned that the Watson Library (Metropolitan Museum of Art)’s intention is to follow The Getty’s approach of having the records in the OPAC, and follow up on how to integrate the authority files. Debbie added that the Frick intends to do the same.

Next topic: how much is SCIPIO used at the Reference desk? It seemed that people were not too prepared to answer that, but the consensus was that it varies according to the scope of the library and the collection. Susan Moon affirmed that at the Atkins Nelson Museum, librarians perform the searches for users. Debbie mentioned that at the Frick, the number of inquiries about auction catalogs has increased since retrospective conversion was done. The Frick has a single-user Eureka subscription for reference, and plans to extend it to five-users; readers may access SCIPIO onsite from the library electronic resources webpage.

The last question brought up by Susan Moon was how do institutions achieve subject analysis in SCIPIO? Irina Kandarasheva from the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts stated that they decided on using the 505 – contents note, for access to such info as: category of design, cabinetmakers, etc. The access is done through Keyword search.

Debbie stated that the level of subject analysis desired is an institutional decision and that contributors should feel free to provide additional subject access as they see fit, within the existing MARC perimeters.
 
Prepared by Rodica L. Preda
April 21, 2000