1 / 10

Improving Access to Latin American Microfilm

Improving Access to Latin American Microfilm. LASER March, 2004 Teresa Chapa, UNC Chapel Hill Emily Stambaugh, Wake Forest Univ. Microfilm is underused. Stats about microfilm holdings and declining microfilm usage in general.

tahlia
Download Presentation

Improving Access to Latin American Microfilm

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Improving Access to Latin American Microfilm LASER March, 2004 Teresa Chapa, UNC Chapel Hill Emily Stambaugh, Wake Forest Univ.

  2. 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.

  3. How can we improve access? Make the indexes to microfilm collections searchable electronically. Consider the user’s questions: • Where can I find newspapers or pamphlets around this time period for this country? • I’m looking for a specific title… • Diplomatic records related to country, entity, period. - or - int’l relations b/w country X and country Y

  4. Improving access… What tools can libraries use to provide access to content? • Catalog / MARC records / WorldCat • Web. Union catalogs by subject/area studies • Electronic Indexes and Databases • Reference Librarians

  5. 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

  6. Pros Subject access by conventional LCSH Accessible through the catalog, a familiar e-tool for the user. Indexing done by experts (catalogers, microfilm producers) What direction might we take? Catalog/MARC Records/WorldCat 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

  7. What direction might we take? Web. Union Catalogs 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.

  8. What direction might we take? Electronic Indexes and Databases 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)

  9. 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.

  10. 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

More Related