PROCESSING OF UNION CATALOGUE OF SERIALS DATAUSING~ AN IBM SYSTEM;360 COMPUTER

Describes an experilnent for the compaterise<1preparation of a union catalogue 01 serials of 8000titles in 66 libraries. Gives the card designll, pro-graIns and formats of different file II viz., Main File,Holdings File, Sponsor Index File, Subject Index Fileetc. A system flow chart is also given.

Introduc tion

Union Catalogue (UC) is an indispensablereference tool for librarians as well as forresearchers in finding out the essential detailsof a serial alongwith the holdings informationi, e , , in which libraries it is being receivedand whi.ch vol umej/rrumber s are available inthese libraries. Thus it contains the informa-tion about 'various serials in two or more lib-raries either in a region, country, et c, Reali-sing the importance of this tool, Insdoc tookup the National Union Catalogue Project (NUCP)as far back as 1965 and brought out 12 volumesof Regional Union Catalogues and individuallibrary catalogues by conventional methods.

It has been felt that the various as pe.ctsof this project v iz, , merging, updating~ bring-ing out the hard copy as well as the. broad sub-ject group catalogue, the holdings' list ofindl vidua.l Tlbr-ar ie s , and the ultimate printingof the catalogue could be profitably mechanized,Properly organized and coded entries for dif-fer;;;'nt regions once stored in machine-readabledata base, can be manipulated to generate anydesired file and produce printouts.

In this paper a description of such anexperiment us ing an IBM System/360 Model-44computerts given whose objectives ars: i) togenerate the data base of information of scien-tific serials held in major libraries; ii] to makeuse of the data to produce Regional Cataloguesexpeditiously; iii] to generate subfiles to pro-duce the class if ie d, sponsor, count r v -w iseindexes, individual library holdings,' holdingsof groups of spec ia l ise d libraries etc , , and iv)to update the data base from time to time.

Voi 21 No 3 Sept 1974

1J.') R MurtyPubl icatlons & Information Dlrec:torate(C.S.LR.), New DeJhi-12A M AroraInsdoc , New Delhi-12

The Union Catalogue of Serials (UCOS)for Bombay-Poona containing the information ofabout 8000 serials in 66 libraries, has beenbrought oui: with the help of S/360 Model 44(2540 card Read Punch, 1403 printer, 2311 -Three disk drives, and three 2401 V. tapedrives with 128 K memory), using FortranJVunder the operating sy-steln (OS). This cata-logue consists of a Main Part (MP) supportedby three indexes viz. Classified, Sponsor, andPlace (at pr-e sent place index is not published).

Statistical Information

Testing alld developing the programs havetaken about 20 hours of computer time. About6 hours of computer time were used t o.g et thelisting of data cards for final editing, andanother 25 hours of cornpure r time were re-quired for loading, generatlng the index files,printing of the MP and the mdexe s , About3500 man hours were spent for coding the datato prepare the input for computer processingand-about 4000 man hours for punching andverification of about 1,00,000 punched cards.The break up of computer- time is as follows:

Loading the Main File (MF) 5 hr(about 60000 cards)

Loading the Holdings File (HF) 3 hr(about 30000 cards)

Splitting the MF 1. 30 hr

Sorting and merging the MF 25 mts

Sorting HF' 15 mts

Printing of MP 3 hr

Generation of Spon s or file(SPF). subject file (SBF),and place file (PF)

5. 15 hr

85

MURTY & ARORA

Modifying the SPF, generatingthe subject Dictionary (SD)and sorting SD

Sorting of the above filesPrinting of the three indexes,viz. classified, sponsor andplace

Card Designs

20 mt s

45 rots.

5.15hr.

Keeping in view the objectives of compu-terization of the project, the input has beenprepared according to the following carddesigns (CD):

CARD pESIGN NO. 41

SUMMARY CARD

S1.

No.Item No. of

charactersColumn

no.1 3 42

'Card Design No. 41 2 1- 2

2 Coder's Code

3 Serial No. 4

4 Title code (TC) 7

5 Place code (PC) 3

6 Subject code (SBC) 6

7 Main entry or crossreference entry

Main entry 1CR Entry 2

8 'Whether cross referenceentry is to appear in index

Yes 1No 2

9 Whether sponsor absent/present with title/notpresent with title

Present withtitle

Not presentwith title 2

Ab aent 3

86

3- 4

5- 8

9-15

16-18

19-24

10 If sponsor not presentwit h title, then no. ofsponsors in Main part

One 1Two 2

28

11 1£ sponsor not presentwith title then whethersponsors appearing inMain Part the same ast ho se appearing in Index

Yes 1No 2

29

12 No. of sponsors in indexOne 1Two 2Absent 3

30

13 Whether bibliographicalnote present

Yes 1No 2

31

14 Whether the entry is acurrent one 01' not

Current 1Ceased 2

34

CARD D.E;SIGN NO. 42

TITLE CARD

25

51. Item No. of ColumnNo. characters no.

Card Design No. 42 Z 1- 2

Z Coder's code 2 3- 4

3 Serial No. 4 5- 8

4 Title Code 7 9-15

5 Blank 7 16-22

6 Title Var 23 -50(28+28) 51-78

26

27

7 Serial Number (St. No. )of card if another cardis to follow, otherwise 9

(0-9) 80

Ann Lib Sei Doc

PROCESSING OF' UNION CATALOGUE OF SERIALS

CARD DESIGN NO. 43 CARD DESIGN NO. 48

TITLE OF A CROSS REt'ERENCE (CR) ENTRY IMPRINT

Card Design 43 2 1- 2 Card Design No. 48 2 1- 2

2 Coder's code 2 3- 4 2 Coder's Code 2 3- 4

3 Serial No. .4 5- 8 3 Serial No. 4 5- 8

4 CR Title Code 7 9-15 4 Title Code 7 9-15

5 CR Entry Var 23-50 5 Blank 7 16-22(28+28) 51-78

6 Imprint Var 23-506 51. No. of card if (28+28) 51-78

another card is tofollow, otherwise 9 7 51. No. of card if

(0-9) 80 another card is tofollow, otherwise 9

(0-9) 80

CARD DESIGN NO. 44CARD DESIGN NO. 49

FIRST SPONSOR APPEARING IN M~IN PAR TBIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Card Design No. 44 2 1 - 2Card Design No. 49 2 1- 2

2 Coder's Code 2 3- 42 Coder's Code 2 3- 4

3 Serial No. 4 5- 83 Serial No. 4 5- 8

4 Title Code 7 9-154 Title csa- 7 9-15

5 Sponsor Code (SPC l 6 16-Z 15 Blank 7 16-22

6 Blank 226 Bibliographical Note Var 23-50

7 Sponsor Var 23-50 (28+28) 51-73(28~28) 51-78

7 51. No. of card if8 51. No. of card if another card is to

a-nother card is to follow, otherwise 9follow, otherwise 9 (0-9) 80

(0-9) 80

Card Designs No. 45 for. second sponsor,No. 46 for first sponsor appearing in index,and No. 47 for aecond sponsor appearing inindex are same as that of Card Design 44.

CARD DESIGN NO. 50

HOLDINGS INFORMA TION

Card Design No. 50 2 1- 2

2 Coder's Code 2 3- 4

3 Serial No. 4 5- 8

Vol 21 No 3 Sept 1974 87

MURTY IE ARORA

.• Library Code (LC) 6 9-14

5 Title Code 7 15-21

6 Whether holdings completeor partial

Complete 1Partial 2Stray 3

7 Holdlngs Infozrnat ion 23-4243-62

Var(20+21»

8 si. No. of card ifanother card is tofollow, otherwise 9

(0-9)

CARD DESIGN NO. 52

CROSS REFERENCE TO SPONSORING BODYINDEX

Card Design No. 52 2 1- Z

2 Coder's Code 2 3- 4

3 Serial No. 4 5- 8

•• Code of CR Body 6 9-14

5 Blank 8 15-22

6 Name of CR sponsoringbody together withMain Body Var

(28+28)23-5051-78

7 51.No. of card ifanother card is tofollow, otherwise 9

(0-9)

CARD DESIGN NO. 53

SUBJECT DICTIONARY

6 UDC Class No. togetherwith heading (with a blankin between UOC Class No.and heading) Var

(28+28)23-5051-78.

227 51.No. of card if

another card is tofollow, otherwise 9

(0-9) 80

80

CARD DESIGN NO. 54

PLACE DICTIONARY

Card Design No. 54 2 1- 2

2 Coder's Code 2 3- /4

3 Serial No. 4 5- 8

4 Place Code 3 9-11

5 Blank 11 12-Z2

6 Place Name Var 23-50(Z8+Z8) 51-78

CARD DESIGN NO. 55

CROSS REFERENCE ENTRY TO INDIVIDUALLIBRARY FILE

80

Card Design No. 55 Z 1- 2

Z Coder's Code 2 3- 4

3 Serial No. 4 5- 8

4 Library Code 6 9-14

5 CR Code 7 15-Z1

6 CR-Entry (Code 4) ZZ

Card Design No. 53 Z 1- Z

2 Co de'r Js Code Z 3- 4 Details of Programs

3 Serial No. 4 5- 8 All the programs in this project arewritten in Fortran IV. The files have been

4 Subject Code 6 9-14 created with a fixed length blocked record(FLBR) format. Details of the various pro-

S Blank 8 15-ZZ grams of this project are described below.

88 Ann Lib Sei Doc

PROCESSING OF UNION CATALOGUE OF SERIALS

Program for generation of the Main File(MUeSG)

MUCSG generates the Main File (MF) ontape, the length of each record being 1266bytes with a bloc ks ize of 12660 bytes. TheCard input coded according to the design 41-49is used by this program to create the MF. Itreads the first card of the record, checks forCD41. If the fir st card of the record is not

, CD41 appropriate messages are- printed, inwhich case the whole record is skipped andreading of the cards belonging to t he nextrecord is proceeded; if first card is CD41 itreads the rest of the cards belonging to .thesame record and checks whether all the CDsare pr e sent for that record according to thecontrol inform.ation given in the CD41. If it isnot eo, then error messages are pdnted after

which first card of the next record is read withthe nec e s sar y skipping. The program. alsochecks whether all the cards belonging to thesame- record have the same TC, cards of thesponsor body extending to more than one cardhave the same SPC, and all the cards ofvarious CD are in sequence, failing whicherror messages are given again. The errormessages, enable to find out the possiblediscrepancies in the coding or punching. Allsuch records are added to the MF after suitablecorrection at a later date. For each recordthe program calculates the total length of therecord, the starting addresses and lengths ofcorresponding elements e. g., title, sponsorbody, imprint, bibliographical note etc. Thetape format of the record is shown schematl ••cally below (all lengtha being given in bytes):

Cl ·Z 41 to re pre sentZ 8 CD41

t>OCl~d ~ r----------,------.~ ..~ .::1] ~f 1- 4 z, '-- __8 ...&- _

~ TC• ~ CIIo os.!! L'ength ofZ > "CI the record

Information in CD4lfrom col 25-34 2nd SPC if any

I It t

~[4- S 8 8

PC SBC ...-- 18 ~ 't1st SPC if any

"<"14- )< 112.0

)Iy~ I H IlRecord Directory Relevan.t information

of a serial

Program to Generate the Holdings File (HUeS)

HUCS generates the Hold file (HF) on tapewith a record length of 244 bytes and blockingfactor of 20.

This program reads CD50 and che cks thesque nce ci cards. 1£the record runs to m.orethan two cards, and if the cards are out .ofsequence, appropriate error m.essages areprinted and the next record is read. Otherwise,it reads cards pertaining to one record andwrites on the tape. The special characterscontained in the records of this file e. g, , plussign, left and right parenthesis etc. have beenpunched in the BCD code and were subsequentlyconve rt ed to EBCDIC through this program.

Vol 21 Nc 3 Sept 1974

while loading on the tape. In the data prepara-tion stage, an IBM 024 punching m.achine wasalso used. Also the verification was carriedout on an IBM 056 m.achine. Therefore, thisprocedure of conver sion to EBCDIe is adoptedso as to increase the efficiency in the punching

. and verifying operations. The record formatin this file is as follows:

Length of Code for typethe record of holdings

[£]6 8[~ foLC TC Holding s inform.ation

89

MURTY & ARORA

Program for printing the Main Part of thecatalogue (MUCSP)

MUCSP prints the MP of the catalogue.Prerequisites for running this program are: i)the MF should be sorted on TC and ii ] the HFon TC as the first control field (FCF) and LCas the second control field (SCF).

A record with a particular TC is readfrom the MF and all the holdings recordscorresponding to this TC are searched and theME is printed. If the TC in the MF is notavailable in the HF, then the program prints anerror message and prints the ME withoutholdings.

Print Format

Title code is printed on the first line ofthe ME in positions 22-28 (See Annexure),maximum width of a line being fixed as 30characters. The title is printed ieaving oneline immediately after the TC in positions 1-28.Elements like sponsor, imprint, bibl iographi-cal note of the ME are printed in' positions 3-30giving two indentions. Name of the sponsoringbodies, imprint and bibliographical note arepr iuted making use of the contr 01 information(as described in MUCSG program) of the recordIf any element is not found in the record accord-ing to the control information then errormessages are given. In the case ofa CR entry,obviously the title alone is printed below the TC.One line is skipped before the printing of theholdings information in positions 3-30. If theholding information runs into more than oneline, the subsequent lines are printed in posi-tions 11-30 spreading into as many lines asrequired. Library symbols (LS) are printed inpo s lt ions 3-8 and holdings information in posi-tions 11-30.

Program to generate sponsor file and print theSponsor Index (SUCSGP)

SUCSGP generates the sponsor file fromMF with a record size of 988 bytes and ablocking factor of 10. This file is used to printthe sponsor index (SPI).. The program deve-loped is a combined one (controlled by suitableswitches) to generate the sponsor file from theMF and to print the sponsor index from the filethus generated.

While generating t he-a ponsor file, thisprogram reads the MF, checks whether a

90

sponsor body is present or not. 1£ present,another check is made as to whether it appearsin the sponsor index in the same manner as itappears in the MF. Based on these checks theproper SPC and the sponsor body are writtenon the new file along with the title. 1£ there aretwo sponsor bodies, two separate records aregenerated from the MF record. The format ofthe record in this file is shown below.

Whether CRQ6'O

I 9 1 9 BfJ 0-+. 'TC SPC Length of Length of Title and sponsor

the title the sponsor

Some times the name of a sponsor bodyundergoes a change. In such a case a CR ismade from this old to the new version of thename. The title is given under the latest nameof the sponsor body. Thus the sponsor file con-sists of two types of records. The first type ofthe record is the one generated from the MF asexplained above. The other is a CR sponsorentry added to the file through the CD52 by aseparate program.

The sponsor file is sorted on the SPC asthe FCF and TC as the SCF. The Sponsorindex is pr inted f r orn this file by the sameprogram by using appropr iate switches.

Under the name of one sponsor body, alltitles are printed in the alphabetical order.Title is preceded by two hyphens in the firsttwo positions. 1£ title is running to more thanone line, then the subsequent lines are printedin positions 1-28. The two hyphens given at thebeginning of the title serve to locate the startingposition of the title. Maximum length of a lineis again kept as 30 characters. Between twosponsoring bodies a space of one line is given.

Program to generate subject file and print theSubject Index (CUCSGP)

CUCSGP generates the subject index(SBI) file from MF and also prints it (by meansof switches). The records of this file have alength of 580 bytes with a blocking factor of 10.

It reads MF, extracts, and writes theSBC, TC and the title proper on a new tape.

Ann Lib Sci Doc

PROCESSING OF UNION CATALOGUE OF SERIALS

Tbe fonnat of the record of the subject indexfile is as follows:

< ",0 )

EJ fO1 i I 9

TC SBC Length of Titlethe title

Subject Dictionary

Subject dictionary file is generation on anew tape by a separate program with a recordlength of 372 bytes and a blocking factor of ZOo

CUCSGP, when used for printing subjectindex, reads a record from the subject file andgets the subject heading (SH) along with UDCnumber, from the subject dictionary. Thisprogram has a provision to print the SH alongwith UOC No. in bold (obtained by repeatedprinting on the same line) under which all thetitles pert~ining to it are printed in the alpha-beticalorder. As in the case of the SPI, thestarting "position is preceded by two hyphens.The format 0'£ printing when the title exceeds28 characters is also similar to SPI. In thecase where the SBC of the record could not belocated in the dictionary, the title is printedas usual leaving enough space to incor por at ethis missing SH manually later on.

Program to generate place file and print thePlace Index (PUC$GP)

PUCSGP is a combined program to gene-rate the place file (PF) from MF and to printthe place index (PI). In this file, the recordlength is 616 bytes and the blocking factor is10 having the fol lowlng record format.

600

'ErJ tdTC PC Length of Title

the title

This file is sorted on PC as the FCF andTC as SCF. it reads the sorted place dic-tionary on cards through CD54 and stores it in

Vol 21 No 3 Sept 1974

the memory and prints the PI by suitable mani-pulation of the switches. The PI is brought outexactly in the same manner as that of the SBI.

Program to generate individual library cata-logues (UCSILP)

UCSILP brings out catalogues of indivi-dual libraries printing serials in the alphabe-tical order along with the holdings information.

The HF is modified through CD55 bymeans of a separate program. This file issorted on LC as the FC F and the TC as theSCF. The MF is sorted on TC.

UCSILP reads a given LC from the card,searches the HF for the particular librarycode; after finding the same it picks up the TCand scans the MF for the record having thesame TC and prints the ME along with theholdings information. The format of printingis the same as that of MP. CR entry is printedas it is. In case a record pertaining to a TC isnot found in the MF, appropriate messages aregiven. When the catalogue for a particularlibrary is printed the MF tape is rewound, thenext LC is read from the next card t>epeatingthe whole process as many times as required.

Discussion

Most of the fields of the records of the MFe. g. title, sponsor, bibliographical note et c, ,are of variable length. As the minimum andmaximum lengths range from 50 to 1400 bytes,naturally an attempt was made to generate the sefiles with a variable length record (VLR)format. Initially, the files were generatedunder the Programming System (PS) usingFortran IV. But under P844 of S/360 i) re-cords having more than 360 bytes are split upinto more than one record each containing 360bytes, and ii) IBM Sort/Merge program couldnot be used. In order to overcome these limi-tations all the operations like generation of thefiles, sorting were switched over to the Opera-ting System (OS). Also at the time this projectwas taken up, unfortunately there was sometrouble with the IBM Sort/Merge program withVLR format, as a' result of which the fi l eswere to be generated with a fixed length re-cord (FLR) format anticipating the maximumlength in each file. The records were blockedto save time in generating, subsequent pro-cessing of the files, as well as in sorting. Thusthe computer time mentioned in the estimates

91

MUR TY & ARORA

92

UnionCatologueSlips

Punching &Veriflcotionof C052

Ann Lib Sci Doc

Punching &Verificationof CO 53

Print auf ofSubject Index

SYSTEM FLO'M:HART

Vol 21 No 3 Sept 1974

PROCESSING OF UNION CA TALOGUE OF SERIALS

Punching &Verificationof CD 54

Sorted COS4

C054 Incore storage

93

MURTY &. ARORA

presented earlier includes the time spent inthese various trials under both the operatingsystems and testing of the Sort/Merge programover a number of times under VLR format. Inaddition, lot of time was devoted at the timeof loading with the 2540 card Reader due to offpunching, discrepancy in the size of cardsused etc.

hi the case of sorting, particularly forthe MF, enough work area could not be allottedon disk as the system used had a configurationhaving 3 disk drives and 3 tape units only. Thusthe file is split up into Z parts, sorted separa-tely and then merged into one.

Concluding Comments

o

This experimental project comprising oneregion's data successfully showed that the UC.can be brought out with a computer with theobvious advantage of building up a centralmachine-readable data base that yields theassociated indexes viz., sponsor, subject,place from the MF by means af suitable pro-grams.

Although VLR format can be tried infuture as the data grows for minimizing thetape length, the experience of this projectshows that FLR minimizes the processing aswell as the sorting time.

In this type of project an importantfeature is the provision for updating the MFand HF. The MF needs updating or modifica-tion for i) correcting a record which containssome incorrect information while gene r'at ing it;in when there is a change in the various com-ponents of an entry; and iii) when a serial

94

ceases or changes its title and so on. Thecorresponding changes are to be effected in theholdings file also. In such updating operations,as it is not reliable to rewrite the record inthe ~ame position on the same tape, a freshtape Cile will be created effecting the requiredchanges. This, we feel, is inevitable for tapefiles.

The package programs developed will beused to generate the relevant files and printthe Indi vidual catalogues of different regionsafter which a cumulated data base will beobtained by merging the individual files of theseregions.

An attempt is oemg made to developanother package of programs for searching theHF and MF titlewise, librarywlse; etc. Theywill be ultimately useful for on-line displayabout the availability of a particular serial inthe country or to find out the group of serialsin a specified subject or even more complicatedlogical searches.

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to Shr i S.Parthasarathy, Scientist-in-Charge, Lns doc ,for kindly providing the necessary facilitiesand encouragement throughout the project andfor permission to publish this paper. They arealso grateful to Shri S. N. Dutta and hiscoUeagaes in the Union Catalogue Section fortheir constant guidance and useful discussionsin connection with the project. Their thanksare also due to the staff of the ComputerCent:re, Delhi University for their kind co-operation during the project.

Ann Lib Sci Doc