Special Libraries Cataloguing

Established in 1979, at the dawn of the digital age of library cataloguing, Special Libraries Cataloguing (SLC) provides remote cataloguing services and Machine-Readable Cataloguing Standards (MARC records) to small, special libraries, electronic publishers and aggregators worldwide.

SLC serves publishers and libraries internationally, originally receiving mailed or couriered photocopies of the front and back of title pages with collation (number of pages or volumes) written on. For nonbook materials, photocopies of the items' container, labels, inserts, or any available accompanying material were used. More detailed instructions for sending material to be catalogued.

Our head office is located in a log home in scenic Metchosin, which is just outside of Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

J. McRee (Mac) Elrod, Richard Violette, Gary Parlee, Mark & Matt Elrod

Mac was our founder. Having discovered the Internet, and in particular the mailing list autocat, Mac has posted on a variety of topics including, classification of internet resources, Cuttering, catalogue construction, the classification of automation (QA 76), requirements of remote cataloguing, and additions to the KF classification (to which Mark made an index).

Michael Gorman and Mac have prepared AACR2 rule interpretations (MRIs), which allow the use of AACR2 to prepare Resource Description and Access (RDA) compatible records, with some AACR2 provisions retained.

Mac has prepared cataloguing "cheat sheets" to assist in training. Cheat sheets exist for monographs, serials, sound recordings, video recordings, electronic resources, and _authority records. There are also directions for mapping the elements of the MARC record to an OPAC and its indexes, and a list of form subdivisions to assist in retrospective changing them to $v from $x.

Mac was asked to speak on practical measures to take to integrate RDA records with AACR legacy records, if RDA is implemented, at an Amigos forum February 4th, 2011. A script, from the presentation is available in portable document format.

Richard J. Violette, SLC cataloguer, specializes in law, cataloguing for over twenty law firms. He has an M.S.L.S from the Catholic University of America and a B.A in International Affairs from George Washington University.

Gary handled our nonbook materials, and operated our Nanaimo branch. He also catalogued directly on such databases as that of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.

Mark was our resident systems analyst and trouble shooter.

Matthew is our president, programmer and database manager and maintains the SLC web site. Please send questions and suggestions about this web site, prices and products to Matt.

SLC has approximately 10 cataloguers working at a distance, submitting their records to SLC for quality control. Increasingly, distance cataloguers prepare and enhance electronic resource records for publishers and aggregators.

SLC supports the concept of OPAC displays which make maximum use of the MARC records they create and use a minimum of space for labels. Martha Yee has written an excellent paper on this topic, available here in portable document format (PDF), 605 Kb.

Michael Gorman has written concerning RDA; his comments are in accord with the reactions of SLC cataloguers to the RDA draft. SLC is committed to the ISBD as an international standard for the selection and order of elements in bibliographic records.

We often receive requests for inter-library loans (ILL).