LIANZA registration tips

For those of you considering LIANZA professional registration, the transition arrangements cease on 30 June 2009 which is only a couple of months away!

From 1 July 2009 only those people with a graduate qualification will be eligible for professional registration. The transition arrangements are designed to enable those people already working in professional roles in the library and information profession to become professionally registered.

Details and application forms are available on the LIANZA website. There are four types of registrations, so if you need clarification of which one applies to you, contact Jayne Gutry, professional development adviser on xtn 7351.

• T1 Transition Registration - if you have a New Zealand library or information studies degree or library diploma or certificate and whether or not you are currently working in a library.
• T2 Transition Registration - if you have a non-library or information studies qualification at bachelor's level or above, and have been working in a professional role in the library and information sector for more than five years.
• T3 Transition Registration - if you do not have tertiary library or information studies qualifications or other degrees but have worked in a professional role in the library and information profession for more than 10 years.
• T4 Transition Registration - if you have an overseas library or information studies degree, at bachelor’s level or above, and are currently working in a library.

Templates
To help you get started on your application all you need to do is to complete a brief summary in a letter accompanying the applications forms and your cv. Following is an example of a cv that you can use.

• CV template on LIANZA site
• Example of a completed CV

Reimbursement process

Once you professional registration has been approved (RLIANZA) you will be required to pay an annual registration fee. You are entitled to apply for reimbursement each year for the annual registration fee ($112.50 incl GST). Note the first year's annual reimbursement fee may be reduced to a pro-rata rate to be in line with when your membership is due.

The following outlines the reimbursement process:

• complete an ACL profession reimbursement cheque requisition form. Note that a signature is required both from yourself and your manager;
• attach a copy of the invoice paid to LIANZA;
• forward a hard copy to professional development advisor.
  

Note: if this is the first time you have applied for reimbursement, you will also need to complete a new vendor form and enclose a deposit slip.

12th Australasian Congress on Genealogy & Heraldry

Marie Hickey, Karen Kalopulu, Paul Veart & Bridget Simpsom from Auckland Research Centre attended the Australasian Congress on Genealogy and Heraldry from 16 – 20 January 2009.

Attendees tended to be from Australia or New Zealand but there were also a few from further afield. These congresses occur every three years with the next being held in Adelaide, Australia so if you have an interest in family history this may be an event worth considering saving up for and perhaps combining it with a holiday.

The basis of the congress was a series of talks and workshops presented by an array of international and national speakers. We had a stall and promoted Auckland City Libraries collections to family historians from all over New Zealand, Australia, some from England and the States. This was invaluable for the Auckland Research Centre as it gave us a chance to dispel the myth that material held relates just to Auckland. As a result of this and arranged visits to the library a number of attendees came in to ARC and had an enjoyable day/s. Also we made time to speak to stall holders about their wares, websites and archives material.

A copy of papers presented at most of the sessions are published in the Proceedings book and can be found in the Auckland Research Centre. Book is called Preserving the past for the future : proceedings of the 12th Australasian Congress on Genealogy and Heraldry held at King's College Otahuhu, Auckland 16th-19th January 2009, hosted by The New Zealand Society of Genealogists for the Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations / editor, Vivienne M. Parker.

Excerpt from Marie Hickey
I found attendance well worthwhile as I was able to see and hear about some of the innovative ideas of what is happening in the world of family history as well as what will be available in the near future. Another plus for me was catching up with old friends but the downside was that we were very well fed so I’m sure most of us put on a little weight over the weekend.

John Grenham spoke about Irish census substitutes and the Irish Loan Fund records otherwise known as the Reproductive Loan Fund (not what it sounds). Some of the records for the latter have been digitised and can be found on the following website http://www.movinghere.org.uk/ Click on “search our catalogue”, enter the surname in the “search for” box and tick Catalogue of digitised records which is to the right of this. This will bring up the results list and click on the link to be taken to the digitised image. [These instructions are not included in the paper]. A very useful source if your family are found.

Other talks included David Hey discussing apprenticeship records, Sherry Irvine - land records in Scotland, Cathy Pilgrim and the digitisation project of Australian newspapers. The presentation everyone talked about and were impressed by was Elaine Collins’ talking about the 1911 census by satellite.

Excerpt from Paul Veart:
Dick Eastman was a plenary speaker and investigated the rapid development of technology in family history.

Ever since he started using a mainframe computer in the 1970s to organise his genealogical data, Dick Eastman has been at the forefront of technology in family history. At Congress he was particularly interested in the increasing transfer of data from the world of microfilm to digital, proclaiming the death of the microfilm reader.

However Mr Eastman did not have everything his own way. Clark Stiles, a curator at New Zealand’s National Library, talked about Papers Past, a website of digitised New Zealand newspapers. He pointed out that to digitise newspapers they first needed to be microfilmed, making the seemingly old technology increasingly vital in a digital world. However despite this ideological dispute, or perhaps because of it, Congress was a real hub for the latest developments in family history, from the new 1911 UK Census to the use of DNA tests in genealogy.

Excerpt from Bridget Simpson
Two of the talks I went to were by Christopher Watts. The first, on emigration and immigration, was called Every journey has two ends. Watts discussed the importance of departure and arrival records in a search for family members and cited useful websites such as ancestorsonboard.com, Ships to New Zealand(some of the ships having links to passenger lists), Archives NZ for passenger lists, Inward Passenger Lists, Victoria (PRO Victoria database online), the NSW passenger lists (available through Ancestry), castlegarden.org (for U.S. immigration) Border Crossings from Canada to US, 1895-1956 (on Ancestry), and so on.

His second talk was called Is there a Tommy Atkins in your tree? Here he talked about the inconsistencies when searching British Army WWI records. He mentioned ways of accessing particular records through Ancestry’s Pension Records thru the National Archives in the UK and the Military-genealogy website for military and family genealogists.

Using indexes session: tips & traps, was on the potential pitfalls when searching indexes. Judy Webster pointed out the dangers of name variations, the benefits of using wild cards when searching and the importance of keeping records of your searches. Jennifer Harrison called her talk on recording your story, Days of Our Lives: preserving our own life stories. We ran a successful series of workshops on Telling your Story over November 2008 and have had one follow-up meeting with another planned for next week for the participants to share what they have started to put down. This talk by Harrison reiterated points that we had discussed in our workshops but she also talked in detail about the different methods of recording your story and variations on the order you tell it in.

RDA (Resource Description and Access) Workshop

Cataloguers Letitia Nicolescu, Julie Beganovic, Yueqian Dobbs and Alison Davis attended a presentation by Chris Todd, Charlotte Stretton and Dan Dorner on 1 April 2009 at the AUT City Campus Conference Centre.

Introducing RDA: the new kid on the block
RDA replaces AACR2. Built on foundations established by the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), RDA will provide a comprehensive set of guidelines and instructions on resource description and access covering all types of content and media. The new standard is being developed for use primarily in libraries, but consultations are being undertaken with other communities (archives, museums, publishers, etc.) in an effort to attain an effective level of alignment between RDA and the metadata standards used in those communities.
We now have the final draft (as of November 2008) and the final version is due to be published late 2009.

Why do we need RDA?

• The current rules are outdated
• The resources themselves are far more varied than in the past
• Technology has improved considerably since 1978
• Our users have different expectations of what a library catalogue is and can do
• There are multiple metadata standards that are attempting to define the various new formats and resources (MARC, Dublin Core, ISBD, EAD, MARCXML, etc)
  AACR was perceived to have a strong Anglo-American bias (despite being translated into many other languages)
• There are some basic problems with the current rules – as can be seen by the regular revisions, existence of the Library of Congress Rule Interpretations.
  Desire for a principle-based set of guidelines.

The influences on RDA

• AACR and the traditions behind it
• International cataloguing principles IME ICC (IFLA Meeting of Experts on the International Cataloguing Code) – replacing the Paris Principles of 1961
• FRBR (the functional requirements of bibliographic records)
• FRAD (the functional requirements for authority data)

FRBR and FRAD
This is the major change underpinning RDA, and indeed, one of the major conceptual changes in the way we think about the bibliographic universe. This means, it deals with the way we think about publications that end up in our collections.

Coming to grips with FRBR
So, what exactly does this conceptual model say and what does it cover? It focuses on three aspects: entities, attributes and relationships, and apply them to the bibliographic universe.

• An entity is a “being”, or a “thing with a distinct existence
• An attribute is a quality, something that describes an entity
• A relationship is the link between different entities.
  

So, how will RDA affect us?
We need to learn how to use the new rules.
We need to learn to think using the new terminology, and try not to mentally convert to the old each time.
We need to understand FRBR – at least the basics.
Vendors need to buy-in to the new rules – or at least manage their approach.
There will be costs, both financial and personal. We need to purchase access to the RDA tool – and as yet, pricing has not been determined.

• Training of both cataloguers and other staff
• Systems may need to be updated, altered, rejigged
• Bibliographic networks will have changes to make, both behind the scenes, and in terms of public interfaces

There will be some changes to MARC, although there are unlikely to be very many.

A bit more about RDA itself
RDA provides a flexible and extensible framework for the description of resources produced and disseminated using state of the art digital technologies, while also serving the needs of agencies organizing resources produced in non-digital formats’.

RDA is not tied to one communication standard (e.g. MARC), but is explicitly designed to work with any standard, including XML, MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema) and DCMI (the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative), etc.

RDA is an online tool, created for dealing with (in particular) digital resources, and in a digital, online environment. It is not designed to be read or used in print, and its structure and the way it will be used means that a printed copy of it will be notable for its repetition.
RDA still provides us with cataloguing rules, but these are now based on concepts (FRBR etc), and thus centred on principles, not on practices.

This is the first release of RDA. It is incomplete, and will be updated, just as AACR has been updated.

FrrrrBrrrr: A Scottish Play
Shakespeare created the play Macbeth which is the work. The Expression is the text in English. The Manifestation is the Firstfolios of 1623 and the Item is one of those Firstfolios. Volunteers from the audience became works, expressions, manifestations and items to demonstrate how they relate to each other.

Some differences between AACR2/MARC and RDA/MARC records.

• No GMD (General Material Designation) appearing after the title proper, e.g. Titanic [DVD videorecording]. Replaced by new MARC Tags 336-338
• Fewer abbreviations, e.g. Department, January and illustrations instead of Dept., Jan. and ill. Abbreviations were used to fit the information onto a catalogue card
• [S.l.] and [s.n.] replaced by [Place of publication not identified] and [publisher not identified]
• Statements of responsibility may include more than 3 authors or may give the first author plus e.g. [and six others]
• Relationship designators such as author, editor and translator appear after the author’s name. This will enhance search limiting.

Implementation factors

• Publication of RDA
• International evaluation
• Changes in MARC
• Implementation in library systems