ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


0 4 1 C&RL News ■ December 2003

Lazerow Fellowship recipients research copy cataloging 
and electronic resources management systems

E d note: E ach y e a r  ACRL a w a r d s the 
Sam uel Lazerow Fellowship f o r  Research 
in Collections a n d  Technical Services in Aca­
dem ic a n d  Research Libraries. Recipients 
are awarded $1,000 cash a n d  a citation do­
nated by Thomson LSI. Below are synop­
ses o f the research projects conducted by 
Jeffrey Beall, the 2002 Lazerow Fellowship 
winner, a n d  A dam  Chandler, the 2001 w in­
ner. Information on all ACRL aivards is avail­
able on the ACRL Web site (www.ala.org7 
acrl, click on “A wards”).

How su ccessfu l is cop y ca ta lo g in g  
at ca tch in g  and fix in g  
ty p o g ra p h ica l e rro rs in records 
im ported fro m  b ib lio g ra p h ic  
u tilitie s?
Copy cataloging has increased libraries’ 
efficiency by eliminating the n eed  to p er­
form original cataloging on every w ork 
the library acquires. But one dow nside 
o f copy cataloging is the presence of ty­
pographical errors on the master records 
found in bibliographic utilities such as 
OCLC and RLIN. The am ount of quality 
control done in copy cataloging differs 
from library to library and can differ within 
the same library, depending on the source 
of the record. This research quantifies the 
rate of success that libraries have achieved 
in eliminating typographical errors dur­
ing the copy cataloging process.

Typographical errors are significant be­
cause they can m ean the difference b e­
tw een a library user finding needed infor­
mation and not finding it. Errors that occur 
in access points, such as authors and sub­
jects, can be especially serious. Knowing 
the extent to which errors creep into local 
library online catalogs can help libraries 
decide how much effort they need to make 
to eliminate typos in shared bibliographic 
records.

In 2002, Karen Kafadar and I conducted 
a study of 100 typographical errors taken 
from the Web site Typographical Errors In 
Library Databases (faculty.quinnipiac.edu/

libraries/tballard/typoscomplete.html). The site 
collects typos found in library catalogs and 
divides them into five categories, based on 
frequency. The categories are very high, 
high, moderate, low, and very low.

In our study, we randomly selected 20 
words from each category (for a total of 
100 words) and found 100 OCLC records, 
each containing o n e o f th e m isspelled 
words. We then randomly selected five li­
braries listed on the “holdings” of each 
record; that is to say, w e found five librar­
ies that had used the record in question to 
copy catalog the book. Next w e searched 
the online catalogs of these five libraries, 
examined the record in their local catalogs, 
and recorded w hether each had corrected 
the typographical error.

The study looked at a total of 500 in­
dividual bibliographic records. We discov­
ered that the errors had b een  corrected 
o n  179 (35.8%) o f the records, and the 
errors w ere not corrected on 321 (64.2%) 
o f the 500 records. In the course o f the 
study, w e thought that a typo’s position 
in a particular MARC field in relation to 
the total number of words in the field might 
affect its likelihood o f being corrected, 
but the data show ed no such relation­
ship, so w e did not pursue this hypoth­
esis any further.

The data shows that libraries may wish 
to examine quality control in copy cata­
loging to more effectively eliminate typo­
graphical errors. One way to do this is to 
perform keyword searches of commonly 
misspelled w ords (such as w ords found 
on the W eb site m entioned above) and 
correct the typos that are retrieved in the 
searches. By eliminating errors in library 
catalogs w e improve data quality and in­
crease the probability of library users find­
ing the inform ation they seek.—Jeffrey 
Beall, University o f  Colorado a t Denver, 
Jeffrey.B eall@ cudenver.edu; a n  a rticle 
based on this research by Jeffrey Beall a n d  
Karen Kafadar will appear in Library Re­
sources & Technical Services in 2004.

© 2003 Jeffrey Beall

7

http://www.ala.org7
faculty.quinnipiac.edu/
mailto:Jeffrey.Beall@cudenver.edu