improving access to latin american microfilm
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Improving Access to Latin American Microfilm
LASER March, 2004Teresa Chapa, UNC Chapel HillEmily Stambaugh, Wake Forest Univ.
Microfilm is underused
Stats about microfilm holdings and declining microfilm usage in general.
If available, stats about specific Latin American microfilm usage.
Reason for declining usage: what’s your theory?
A wealth of information is going untapped.
How can we improve access?
Make the indexes to microfilm collections searchable electronically.
Consider the user’s questions:1. Where can I find newspapers or
pamphlets around this time period for this country?
2. I’m looking for a specific title…3. Diplomatic records related to country,
entity, period. - or - int’l relations b/w country X and country Y
Improving access…
Catalog / MARC records / WorldCat Web. Union catalogs by subject/area
studies Electronic Indexes and Databases Reference Librarians
What tools can libraries use to provide access to content?
Examples of tools Catalog: http://www.lib.unc.edu,
http://library.tulane.edu/index.php ex. Ti=“princeton university latin american pamphlet”
Union Catalog: http://lal.tulane.edu/lasermicro.html , find in page “latin american pamphlet”
Electronic Indexes and Databases: -UNC-CH LAIR Microfilm Database. http://www.lib.unc.edu/cdd/crs/international/latin/microforms/index.php
Vendor on-line guides -Scholarly Resources on-line guides: http://www.scholarly.com/guides/Guidetitle.html-Primary Source Media http://microformguides.gale.com/?psm=guides
Print guides- examples
What direction might we take?
Pros Subject access by
conventional LCSH Accessible through the
catalog, a familiar e-tool for the user.
Indexing done by experts (catalogers, microfilm producers)
Cons Some sets lack MARC
records Lack of analytic
cataloging – item level access
Does not allow for cross-institutional searching/access
Does not group content for area studies
Catalog/MARC Records/WorldCat
What direction might we take?
Pros Serves as a cross-
institutional guide. Conducive to cooperative collecting
Maintained cooperatively
Groups subject/area studies content
Cons No subject access,
some country level access
No item level access Access policy to
microfilm unclear Researchers unfamiliar
with the electronic location of the union catalog.
Web. Union Catalogs
What direction might we take?
Pros Cross-institutional
searching Groups subject/area
studies content May provide item level
access May use MARC records
or other metadata standard
Cons Subscription cost may
be high Heavy investment in IT
for programming and indexing
May bypass our experts (catalogers)
Electronic Indexes and Databases
Possible solution / Question for LASER
Shall we create an electronic search tool that allows users to search across microfilm indexes, like an abstracts-and-citations database?
One stop shopping: a comprehensive finding aid for researchers to find microfilmed content specific to Latin America.
Discussion
Points to consider: What do you think about engaging in such a
project? Start by monitoring usage? Involve microfilm vendors? OCLC? Purchase MARC records with microfilm
collections. Role of our catalogers Digitization requirements Level of access and delivery. ILL? IT commitment Organizational structure for on-going
maintenance
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