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literature, for radio and audio productions, and for film. The Subcommittee’s focus on thisedition is on individual works of fiction because of its work with the Fiction Project.
Four types of subject access are recommended: form/genre access, access for charactersor groups of characters, access for setting, and topical access. Scope notes have been addedin this edition and examples are also included. The chapter on form/genre access takes upabout half of the book. The list of headings is compiled mainly from the Library of CongressSubject Headings. The section on character access is quite detailed as to procedures forassigning subject headings for fictitious characters and assigning headings for real personsappearing in works of fiction, drama, etc. Fictitious characters are assigned headings if theyappear prominently in three or more different works and are coded as topical subjectheadings, i.e., 650 in bibliographic records and 150 in authority records.
An extensive bibliography of resources for genre, geographic, topical and characterheadings for works of fiction is appended. These are very useful in establishing headings forfiction. Another appendix lists changes in form/genre headings published in the 1990 edition.
I strongly recommend this volume for catalogers in libraries with large fiction collections.Reference librarians should also read the book to better understand the use of subjectheadings in cataloging fiction.
Ari CohenLong Island University
Brooklyn Campus1 University Plaza
Brooklyn, NY 11201E-mail address: [email protected]
PII: S1464-9055(01)00232-9
Handbook for Digital Projects: A Management Tool for Preservation and AccessMaxine K. Sitts, ed; Andover, MA: Northeast Document Conservation Center, 2000, 179pages, price not reported, hard, ISBN 0963468545
Now that digitization has entered the mainstream of library activities, a number ofpublications have appeared that share experiences and provide advice, for example Kenneyand Reiger’s Moving Theory into Practice: Digital Imaging for Libraries Archives (2000)and Lee’s Digital Imaging: A Practical Handbook (2001). Maxine Sitts’ Handbook forDigital Projects adds another perspective.
The present volume is based on a series of successful “School for Scanning” conferencesheld by the Northeast Document Conservation Center. It aims to take a managerial approachbut is based heavily on practical examples and experience. The material is of value to a rangeof information management institutions, including libraries, museums and archives. Thestructure of the volume reflects its origins as a number of independent papers, but nonethelessthe coverage of the different aspects is well coordinated.
Paul Conway’s overview chapter makes the point that “digital is different”: digitization is
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not the perfect preservation of a document option, but the creation of an alternative form, andpreservation of the original is still important. Institutions should see digitization as part of astrategy of “responsible custody.” Stephen Chapman’s chapter on project management is auseful checklist of questions that should be addressed in any digitization project: who willdo the work, what systems will be used, what technical specifications apply, how much willit cost, and who will own and manage the resulting digital products? Diane Vogt-O’Connordeals with the important question of selection, with a framework based on the three factorsof value, use, and risk. She provides valuable examples of forms and checklists.
Copyright is one of the main factors influencing the development of digitization projects:in most cases ensuring that projects deal with “safe” material that is clearly in the publicdomain. Melissa Smith Levine covers the legal issues, mainly concentrating on copyright.This has a US perspective, and those undertaking digitization projects in other jurisdictionswill need to consult additional sources. Of course, in the global Internet environment it couldbe argued that any digitization project has to be managed with an awareness of the range ofcopyright regimes that apply internationally.
Even a book that professes to take a managerial approach must tackle technical issues, andSteven Puglia does this by covering scanning principles and the standards for resolution, bitdepth, color, etc. This chapter has a clear explanation of the terms and is well illustrated withoverheads from the workshop.
The second section of the book is a series of case studies, each illustrating an area in whichtheoretical concepts have been applied to a specific project. Chapman illustrates the differ-ence between images, text and marked-up text; Frey examines the issues in handlingphotographs; Fenton covers OCR issues; Gertz explains the digitization of maps; Conwayinvestigates outsourcing in the context of digitization of microfilm; and Smith discussescooperative imaging projects.
The book concludes with two chapters on important issues: most significant imagingprojects use an outside contractor, and Gertz discusses relationships with vendors and thedevelopment of RFIs, RFPs and contracts. Howard Besser is well known for his views ondigital preservation, and his chapter discusses the longevity of the medium, along with thetwin solutions of emulation and migration, emphasizing the overall principle of redundancy.Many digitization projects tend to ignore the end user, so it is good to see this book concludewith a perspective from a scholar, Charles Rhyne, who examines the limitations of digitalrepresentations but also highlights the enhanced access that they provide to scholars inspecific areas.
The Handbook for Digital Projects is a valuable resource for any library, museum orarchive that is contemplating a digitization project. While it does not have the depth oftechnical experience provided by Kenney and Rieger and lacks the overall coherence ofLee’s work, Handbook for Digital Projects does an excellent job of bringing together thewide range of experience that has evolved in the comparatively short time that digitizationprojects have been underway.
Alastair SmithSchool of Information Management
Victoria University of Wellington
87Reviews / Libr. Coll. Acq. & Tech. Serv. 26 (2002) 75–95
Wellington, New ZealandE-mail address: [email protected]
PII: S1464-9055(01)00231-7
Making Sense of Standards and Technologies for Serials Management: A Guide toPractice and Future Developments for Librarians, Publishers and SystemsDevelopersEd. by Rosemary Russell; London: Library Association Publishing in association withUKOLN, 2000, £39.95, 177 pages, hard, ISBN 185604338X
In the Introduction (Chapter 1) Rosemary Russell mentions that this book originated outof discussions and reports of the MODELS (Moving to Distributed Environments for LibraryServices) Project of UKOLN (UK Office of Library and Information Networking). Subse-quent chapters cover descriptive standards for serials metadata (Chapter 2), standards forterms of availability (Chapter 3), standards for serials holdings and for serials data in theserials analytic record (Chapter 4), and standards for document requesting in five parts(Chapter 5). Authors of the various chapters and parts are well known in the UK for theircontributions in publishing and systems interface activities.
The chapter on descriptive standards for serials metadata includes terms and definitionsrelated to serials metadata, and also six appendices:
Y Terms of reference for the study: descriptive standards for facilitating the exchange oftitle issue and article metadata
Y MethodologyY Questionnaire to organizations which create or hold serials databasesY Organizations contacted with the questionnaireY SGML metadata created by a journal publisherY Database searches carried out at the De Montfort University
According to the author, the appendices in Chapter 2 are related to the data reported inboth Chapters 2 and 3. Chapters 3 also has one appendix (Terms of reference for the eLibstudy: standards for terms of availability data). Chapters 2 and 3 appear to be summaries ofresearch projects that were part of the MODELS Project. In Chapter 4 Alan Hopkinsonreports on another MODELS Project study.
Chapter 5 has five parts. In Part 1 Rosemary Russell provides an introduction to thechapter. Part 2, by Ruth Moulton, addresses the ISO ILL Protocol and related standardsactivities and includes brief discussions of related projects underway in Europe, UK, USAand Australia. Part 3, by Denis Lynch, addresses document requesting with Z39.50. Part 4(David Martin) provides an excellent overview of EDIFACT, the international standard forEDI—probably the best general description of EDIFACT this reviewer has seen to date.Finally, Part 5 addresses very briefly, in less than two pages, document requesting withHTTP.
The book has a decidedly UK emphasis and orientation, as most of it is drawn from the
88 Reviews / Libr. Coll. Acq. & Tech. Serv. 26 (2002) 75–95
