Library and Archives Canada - Cataloguing and Metadata

These pages contain information regarding cataloguing standards, practices and policies as they apply to published heritage at Library and Archives Canada's (LAC). This is a working tool for LAC cataloguing employees, as well as a resource for all library professionals who would like to learn from it. For further information, please contact normesdecatalogage-cataloguingstandards@bac-lac.gc.ca.

Policy on levels of cataloguing treatment 2021

Intent of Document

The intent of this document is to share Library and Archives Canada’s (LAC) new Policy on Levels of Cataloguing Treatment with Description Division staff and other interested employees at LAC, as well as senior management. Once approved, a version of this document will be developed to be posted on LAC’s website and shared with Canadian libraries.

Introduction

The cataloguing records created within the Description Division of Library and Archives Canada (LAC) serve a variety of purposes, including:

• to identify and provide access to published items in the LAC collection;
• to record the existence of Canadian publications within the national bibliography;
• to provide MARC-based metadata that follow internationally recognized standards and that can be re-used by Canadian and international libraries in their local systems and in their contributions to the National Union Catalogue (Voilà), to WorldCat, and to other shared databases;
• to provide cataloguing metadata to support Canada's inter-library loan infrastructure;
• to provide a valuable source of reference and research for Canadian studies; and
• to ensure that related works are brought together (by subject, creators' names, titles, geographic area, etc.) when searching Aurora and other large bibliographic databases.

The policy on levels of cataloguing treatment was first introduced by the former National Library of Canada in 1996 and was revised in 2003 and again in 2009. The present version (2021) was created to reflect the environmental shift brought by LAC’s transition to OCLC WorldShare Management Services (WMS) in 2018 as well as the decreased ratio of cataloguing resources to publications received through various channels of acquisition.

Context

In 2018, Library and Archives Canada decommissioned its in-house integrated library system AMICUS and replaced it with WMS. As a result, LAC’s bibliographic data were migrated into WorldCat, a shared bibliographic environment where member libraries can use, enhance, and enrich other member libraries’ records.
Furthermore, authority work is now done in two separate files:

• Library of Congress/NACO Authority File (LC/NAF) for English-language authority records. This file is shared with other members of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) as part of the Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO) Program.
• Canadiana Name Authorities in French for French-language authority records. This file is shared with Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) and member libraries of the Bureau de coopération interuniversitaire (BCI) as part of the PFAN - Francophone Name Authority Program.

This shared cataloguing environment allows LAC to leverage the contributions from other libraries to improve the efficiency of its own processes. However, as a consequence, LAC has relinquished some control over the cataloguing metadata it creates.

Principles

The present version of the policy on levels of cataloguing treatment is a response to LAC’s current bibliographic context. It recognizes the need to address the growing accumulation of publications received through various channels of acquisition and the limited resources available to catalogue them fully, while maintaining the programmes and services that are considered priorities for LAC and its stakeholders.
Concretely, this policy considers:

• resource capacity

The Description Division has seen a significant reduction in staff since the last revision of the policy. Consequently, the present policy provides for a significant reduction in overall cataloguing work to reflect the change in capacity.

• growth of the backlog

Each year, LAC acquires more publications than Description Division staff can fully catalogue. Consequently, the present policy provides for a significant reduction of overall cataloguing work to decelerate the growth of the cataloguing backlog.

• LAC’s priority programmes and services