Working group on the application of the new Subject cataloging procedure in SBN

Since  June 2007, the National Central Library of Florence has begun to use the new subject cataloguing procedure for documents catalogued in SBN, in the hope that other libraries in the system will adopt it as well.
In order to remove the technical obstacles that hampering  the correct use of this new tool both in the Index and in the dialogue between the Index and hub applications, a series of meetings between officials of the Institute and of the National Library of Florence took place over the course of 2008, whose results were reported in a document that highlighted the main criticalities and problems to face with, in addition to priority goals for interventions concerning both the Index and hub applications. This document was submitted by ICCU to the SBN technical and scientific committee, which proposed  the creation of a Working Group to “analyze the impact of the use of the new subject cataloguing procedure on  the SBN protocol, on the new SBN MARC Index protocol and hub softwares, and on necessary interventions for its correct application”.

The Working Group became active in January 2009 and produced the document Application of the new subject cataloguing procedures in SBN, which was submitted to the technical and scientific committee in June  2009.As a result of the observations held in that document, the technical and scientific committee also entrusted the Working Group with drafting guidelines to redefine the list of hubs allowedto carry out semantic cataloguing in the Index, after a thoroughly verifying the situation of the subject cataloguing in SBN. To this purpose, ICCU shared out a Questionnaire on semantic cataloguing in SBN, drafted together with the National Central Library of Florence, among all hubs in order to “sound out” the availability/possibility of hubs to perform semantic cataloguing in the Index using the new tools. The results of this questionnaire were summarized in the document: Questionnaire results. Subsequently, the Working Group drafted a Table of requisites which, taking as its point of reference the questionnaire and other variables – such as the level of “coverage” of the various hubs with respect to the SBN Index – will provide the tools for identifying which and how many new hubs will be allowed to enter subjects worked out  with the new cataloguing procedure into the SBN Index.