By Ellen Fox

BCR's Research & Development (R&D) team completed a serials union list database creation project in June for the Long Island Library Resource Council (LILRC). Our goal: to take the union list cataloging records and convert the data into an indexed, fully searchable digital database. The LILRC, a regional nonprofit library network in New York state, produced the data. The Council's Union List of Serials contains bibliographic records for more than 58,000 newspapers, periodicals and serials of all kinds, and more than 143,000 location/holdings statements.

The project began with the Resource Council's requesting that OCLC send tapes of LILRC's MARC cataloging records to BCR. The R&D team took the MARC records and, using SilverPlatter's Partner Publishing software, converted the complex MARC data into a more readable, simplified structure. We then ran several types of analyses on the data to determine that all the records had a uniform structure, to decide the list of stopwords, to normalize the appearance of Cyrillic characters and to make other changes that smoothed out the data for readable display.

LILRC wanted the author, title, publisher, frequency, ISSN and several other fields to appear in the records, as well as the holdings information. Following LILRC's direction, the R&D team customized the database's design, then BCR's computer programmer wrote the code that structured the records to LILRC's specifications. The R&D team then mapped the appropriate tags in the MARC records to the fields in the database. For example, we mapped the 245 MARC field to the title field in the finished database. We structured the output display so the spacing, indenting, formatting, etc., were customized just as LILRC wanted them.

The BCR team also coded and wrote an online help file and produced a hard-copy Quick Reference Guide that explains how to use the database. When the work was completed, BCR sent LILRC 150 CD-ROMs for its member libraries. The database is also mounted in web-searchable format using SilverPlatter's WebSPIRS software. To see the finished product, point your browser to the URL: bcr2erl.bcr.org/cgi-bin/ webspirs.cgi. Log in as "guest."

All in all, it was a fun and challenging project, and BCR was able to make some enhancements to the previous editions of the Union List with which the Resource Council was very happy.

LIULS was produced by BCR's Research and Development project, but all BCR programs played a role in developing the final product. The data for the project was somewhat unusual, since the MARC records contained both composite holdings and copy-specific holdings. BCR's cataloging staff participated in the analysis of the records and gave advice about the correct display of the holdings records. Internet and Database Services staff collaborated with R&D staff on UNIX programming issues and system administration.