----------------------------Original message---------------------------- For those of you who aren't WAML members (thats Western Association of Map Libraries) I thought I would share a piece of good news. Lucinda Hall recently posted three? (four Linda?) issues of the WAML News & Notes to the WAML list, and in one of them was the news that UC-Berkeley completed a retrospective conversion of map catalog records in July! This is great news because it means that there is more copy available on OCLC for those maps (and atlases?) that are unique to the six collections holding maps at UC-Berkeley, which if any of the rest of us ever get copies, even facsimiles, we will not have to do original cataloging for them. From the newsletter article, "Copy was found for about 20 percent of the titles. The rest were in most cases given original cataloging using the existing [card] catalog record as a starting point. Most maps had to be reclassified from the UCB map classification system to the Library of Congress G Schedule. The grant-funded records for California were full MARC records; others were a combination of brief and full." Copy found for only 20 percent seems awfully low, but also points out that any collection can have quite a number of maps that are unique to that collection, or, if copies of them are held elsewhere they have not been cataloged on one of the bibliographic utilities to date. The article goes on to state "Although records now appear in the UC Berkeley's online catalogs, the task is not yet completely finished. About 9,600 records need to be upgraded before they can be exported to the utilities. These are records for which no copy was found and which were converted from old, substandard catalog records without the piece in hand. This process will likely take several years". The article also says that 33,000 records were converted during 1980-1997 and of the 33,000 all but 9,600 appear in UCB's online catalogs, MELVYL, RLIN, and OCLC. Congratulations to the seventeen individuals listed in the article that worked on this project and for a job well done! (two names which I recognized are Phil Hoehn and Claire Englander) I know there seem to be a number of libraries out there that are contemplating or have launched conversion projects for their map collections of various sizes, including Johnnie's at the University of Georgia (go Paula!), Portland State, Western Wash. Univ.? (my alma mater!), etc. I wish all of these projects complete success and know that anyone working with one can contact me with cataloging questions at any time. Paige Andrew Map Cataloger Penn State Univ. Libraries P.S. The Maps Team here at PSU is working hard at cataloging our combined map collections of nearly 400,000 items. The Earth & Mineral Sciences collection, which had very little of its 25,000+ titles cataloged when I came in 1995 is more than half-way done. The Maps Collection we are plugging away at and know that it will take several years to complete. The good thing is that a couple of projects were done to create minimal-level map records for our in-house online catalog (formerly called LIAS, now THE CAT) over the years, and those records were uploaded to RLIN. The quality of those records leaves something to be desired however. The positive side is that OCLC began accepting uploads of our cataloging records early this year, so, besides the original titles that I do directly in OCLC other records that the Maps Team is creating others (particularly different editions of various city maps) that can also be found in OCLC. If you see the OCLC organization symbol "UPM" in the 040 field, thats us!