ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 746 / C &RL News Cataloging Slavic m anuscripts in m icroform By Hannah Thomas Manuscripts Cataloger Ohio State University Phase 2 of a Title II-C Project at the Hilandar Research Library. T he Hilandar Research Library at the Ohio State University is the repository for the largest collection of medieval Slavic manuscripts on microform in the Western Hemisphere. This collection repre­ sents close to twenty years of preservation micro­ filming in more than thirty different Orthodox monasteries, national libraries and private collec­ tions, and serves an international community of scholars and researchers in a variety of disciplines. Growing from an original core group of manu­ scripts film ed in H ilandar M onastery, Mount Athos, Greece, to include materials from many other collections, the more than two thousand manuscripts reproduced to date document the cul­ tural heritage of the Orthodox Slavs for the past one thousand years. Yet until now, descriptive infor­ mation about these codices and documents was scattered and access to individual items cumber­ some. In 1988, OSU received funding under Title II-C (Strengthening Research Library Resources Pro­ gram) of the Higher Education Act to preserve the microforms and to catalog the individual items, with Jill B. Fatzer as principal investigator. The microforms were cleaned and copied to archival standards last year in the first phase of the project, and catalog records describing the collections were created for O C LC and NUCMC (the National Un­ ion Catalog of Manuscript Collections). Catalog­ ing of the individual items will be completed this fall. The records we are now inputting into O C LC are being copied to a discrete archival tape, which will provide the means for sharing these records with research centers and with other bibliographic networks (including RLIN ), and will allow the cre­ ation of derivative bibliographic publications. Since the item cataloging relies heavily on avail­ able published and unpublished finding aids, and since the items fit into broad genres sharing similar patterns of entries, uniform titles, subject head­ ings, etc., we have been able to make use of para- professional library staff wτith a relevant linguistic and cultural background. Before the two fulltime staff members were hired, I spent a year elucidat­ ing these patterns and writing specifically tailored procedural instructions for description, for MARC tagging in the Archives and Manuscripts Control format, and for O C LC inputting. The actual work of cataloging now proceeds through the daily con­ sultation and collaboration of these two assistants with Predrag Matejic, curator of the Hilandar Re­ search Library, and myself. Many cataloging questions were addressed in the planning stages, and new challenges continue to arise as the work progresses. The finding aids we are using vary considerably in organization, detail, quality, currency and language (mostly Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, English or French). For the most December 1988 / 747 part, few directly relevant precedents or examples according to current cataloging standards and practices were found to serve as illustrations. The existing rules and patterns available, e .g ., for litur­ gical uniform titles, for “category of religious work” subject headings, for corporate headings for heads of state, don’t always stretch easily to non- Western, medieval and Orthodox Eastern materi­ als. Fitting the Library of Congress subject head­ ings to O rthod ox C h u rch m a te ria ls , and to manuscripts in general, proved particularly awk­ ward. No thesaurus is now valid for the genre ac­ cess terms we would ideally like to provide. We faced gray areas in the cataloging of collections in microform, in the inconsistencies between MARC formats, etc. W e also needed to establish several hundred names in AACR2 forms, ranging from well-documented saints and church fathers to en­ tirely obscure scribes, virtually all in the absence of citable title pages in the works in hand. Many of the technical cataloging issues raised during this proj­ ect will be discussed in more detail in the literature at a later time. The work began last fall with the more than nine hundred items in the Hilandar Monastery Slavic manuscript Collection, the original core group of microforms in the Hilandar Research Library. W e began with this collection because it covers almost the full range of liturgical genres to be found in the later collections. The majority of the works are li­ turgical or theological, but the wider role of Hilan­ dar Monastery as a cultural center for the Serbs is also reflected by the presence of miscellaneous chronicles, grammars, geographies, and hand­ books on medicine, music, painting, etc. It was possible to achieve considerable economy of scale in this large collection by working on like items at the same time. Thus, we worked on de­ scriptions of all the tetraevangelia together, then later all the menaia, the psalters, the srbljaks, the hesychast anthologies, the patristic miscellanies, etc. As each new genre was encountered, we cre­ ated an example record representing the common pattern for main entry, uniform title, subject head­ ings, etc., and collected these illustrative examples in a notebook. Further efficiency was accomplished at the time of inputting by taking advantage of the similarities in groups of like items. W e were able to set up a “template” for each group by programming the function keys of the O C LC M300 to use the pattern records as the basis for a “new” record and to delete data which is not constant from one record to the next. This very considerably reduced the amount to be keyed in, since several fields in each record con­ tain constant data, such as the name of the parent collection and the description of the microform. W e have also used the O C LC Micro-Enhancer in similar fashion to create skeletal templates which could be copied several times and then filled in. As predicted, the patterns established for the first collection have been very much applicable to most of the subsequent collections from other Mt. Athos monasteries (including G reat L avra, Zo- graph, St. Panteleimon, Iveron) and elsewhere. Even where the specific patterns of entries and notes differ from the liturgical patterns, as in the two groups of im perial edicts and documents (chiefly confirming grants of land and revenues to Hilandar Monastery), the practice of standardiz­ ing a pattern example and handling a volume of similar materials together has remained practica­ ble. The level of detail of descriptive information in the finding aids varies, but in many cases is quite extensive. Typically, the catalog record indicates: author, uniform title, title, date of original, extent of original, parent collection, description of the mi­ croform, location of original, summary (indicating nature, contents, ornamentation, etc.), scribe, lan­ guage and recension, provenance, published edi­ tions, physical condition, variant numbering, sub­ je c ts , added en tries (in clu d in g rep osito ry designation and linking entry to the parent collec­ tion). The call numbers, according to manuscripts practice, reflect the organization and designation of the items in their home repository rather than as­ signment to LC classes. In some instances, the volume of available data is indeed overwhelming. Many of the items are an­ thologies or composites containing multiple works. W here possible, we have tried to give a thorough description of the contents. In most cases, the added research needed to identify and index all in­ dividual com ponent works w ith full a n a ly tic author-title access points was far beyond our scope, but we have made name added entries for at least the most significant identifiable authors, some­ times as many as two dozen or more in a record. A particular effort has been made to highlight au­ thors and subjects of special significance to Slavic studies, such as noting the inclusion of Slavic saints in a menaion. For some collections, very extensive further descriptive information is available on foli­ ation, paper quality, musical notation, watermark designs, etc. Here again, we have tried to set rea­ sonable limits, e.g., indicating the presence of a watermark without a full description, or giving only brief notes about provenance or binding or variant systems of numbering. Fuller information can often be found in the finding aids, which are cited in the collection records. The guiding aim, of course, is always usefulness to researchers. Locally, this cataloging enhances control of the pieces and access to individual items. The scholars currently working with these micro­ forms have indicated considerable interest in our records and several have requested information and examples to show their colleagues in libraries and research centers here and abroad. These re­ searchers have also been able to supply us with new information in turn, and in a few instances these catalog records contain scribal attributions so re­ cent they have not yet been published. In a wider 748 / C &RL News perspective, by sharing these catalog records in the national databases, we hope to integrate these items with the larger universe of related materials elsewhere, both manuscript and print, and hope that other libraries holding such manuscripts will join us in bringing these important but relatively under-researched primary materials to the atten­ tion of scholars in many fields. INNOVATIONS MAC MICRO: Solving the problems of microcomputer applications in an academic library By Diane Richards R eference Librarian North Dakota State University Library* Microcomputers have become a fact of every­ one’s life. In academic library work areas they have sprouted like weeds, to the great chagrin of the computer-phobic. Virtually no one has time to sit down and work through manuals. New versions of software come out with dizzying speed. How are harried librarians and staff to cope? One approach to the problem is being tried at Washington State University, where the Microcomputer Applica­ tions Committee (MAC) came into existence 18 months ago. At the time of MAC’s creation, every unit in the library was going its own way with regard to mi­ crocomputers. Hardware and software were pur­ chased out of departmental budgets, in response to individual needs and often for specialized applica­ tions, producing an astonishing variety of configu­ rations. Different units in the library often didn’t know what was going on down the hall. Inevita­ bly, there was much duplication of effort, particu­ larly in training, and no uniformity in software. At least three different word processing packages were in use on three different floors, making shared data files an impossibility. The creation of systems librarian Jim Kopp, MAC is designed to bring order out of this chaos. Major goals are to promote communication among *The author recently moved to North Dakota State after working on the staff of the Washington State University Libraries. the different units with regard to microcomputers and to develop a core of expertise within the li­ braries. W ith this in mind, the composition of MAC consists of one representative from each of six units or divisions within the Library; Administra­ tio n ; H um anities/Social Sciences/Education; Technical Services; Science/Veterinary Medicine/ Agricultural Sciences; Instructional Media Ser­ vices; and Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Col­ lections. Membership is not limited to professional staff, but is open to anyone in the unit. One highly desirable qualification is microcomputer expertise, or, if that is not available, interest and a willingness to learn. In fact, when MAC convened for the first time, a wide range of skill was represented, reflect­ ing in many respects the varying levels of micro­ computer use among the library units. Given this variety, the sharing of information has become one of the primary functions of the meetings, with the frequent discovery that what is a problem in one unit has already been solved in another. The first order of business for the Committee was to put together a library policy on microcom­ puters. This policy was intended to set out the rules governing such issues as software copyright and li­ censing, and ownership of databases created by li­ brary staff using library-owned hardware and soft­ ware. The desirability of software standardization and training for all staff using microcomputers is another area covered. Much of the content of this policy formalizes practices already adopted. How­