OUR PROCESS

Cataloging at Backstage

Backstage Library Works catalogers create original, and edit copy, level MARC records that meet the accepted standards, and which are adapted to fit all of your specifications. We can build as simple or as rich a collection of metadata as suits your library’s needs, working from original materials or digitized surrogates. Our projects have varied in scope over the years: a gift collection that simply needed brief records with some local notes ahead of a museum exhibition; regularly accessioned DVDs in Korean and Japanese that arrive at our office a few times a year for full-level cataloging; books that are sent to us straight from the publisher and that receive partial-cataloging and physical processing, shipped to the library ready to hit the shelves.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

A Snapshot of Our Projects

We know that every project is different. The most important part of starting any new cataloging project is, first, to make sure we know you and your collections. It’s important that our records follow your institution’s existing guidelines for MARC and other metadata.

The first step is to reach out to your account representative or our Contact Us form. You’ll be invited to share a little about your upcoming project and then fill out a questionnaire.
The questionnaire will ask you questions about what your project is, whether there’s a deadline, what the project includes (languages, material types, quantities), and what cataloging specifications you’d like our team to use. We’ll also ask you about additional processing that may be required, such as the application of spine labels, or the generation of customized local notes.
Our team will review your questionnaire and cataloging requirements to create a draft contract with an overarching pricing hierarchy: cost per language, type of material, and depth of cataloging required. The more information we have up front, the more accurate this total project estimate will be.
Before work formally begins, we’ll complete a small sample-sized batch to confirm the specifications for cataloging. The project will be able to start after the sample is approved.

The only notable restriction relates to the cost per invoice, which must be a minimum of $150. Otherwise, it’s very common for libraries to set up projects that support only a few titles cataloged per year, sent to Backstage as they’re acquisitioned, in small batches. Libraries sending work in small batches will coordinate with their assigned Backstage Project Manager to provide updates about work-to-be-sent.

For very large collections, we will typically complete the work in batches. Smaller collections, such as those under 300 items, may be completed all at once.

If desired, records can be delivered either in batches or all at once following the conclusion of a project. While work will be invoiced regularly, the frequency that your library receives batches of records and materials back is largely up to you.

The following list, divided by language group, covers all of our primary cataloging language proficiencies. Not seeing what you need? Contact Us and we’ll see if we can track down another option for you.

English
African: Niger-Congo languages
Afro-Asiatic: Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, Tigrinya
Altaic: Mongolian, Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Turkic
Austronesian: Tagalog, Malaysian (Malay), Indonesian, Hawaiian
Baltic: Latvian, Lithuanian
Basque
Celtic: Welsh, Scots, Irish Gaelic, Breton
Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese), Japanese, Korean
Dravidian: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam
Finno-Ugric: Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian
Greek, Albanian, Armenian, Caucasian, Georgian
Indic: Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Urdu
Indo-Iranian: Nepalese, Oriya, Persian (Farsi)
Mayan languages
Romance: French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish (and Bilindex headings), Catalan, Galician, Provençal, Latin
Scandinavian: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese
Sino-Tibetan: Burmese, Tibetan
Slavic: Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Church Slavic, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian
Tai-Kadai: Thai
Vietnamese
Western Germanic: Dutch, German
Yiddish, Ladino

Yes! In fact, there are several solutions available. At Backstage, we refer to this process as ‘cataloging from surrogates.’ We have a guide that outlines the different scans our team would need to catalog a great full-level bibliographic record.

Photocopies: You may send us abbreviated reproduction copies of your materials in lieu of original materials.
Digital Photos/Scans: You may send us abbreviated, or full, reproduction copies digitally. This can be done over FTP, e-mail, DropBox – whatever system and delivery method functions best with your existing library protocols.
On-Site Assistance: Someone from our team can be sent on-site to your institution to make surrogates if you don’t have the time available to do so yourself.

In order to provide cataloging of equivalent quality to that generated with materials in hand, there is a minimum requirement of what pages and information must be collected in a surrogate reproduction. You can download the guide from our blog which describes the process in more detail.

Absolutely! Clear guidelines on how and when local notes should be added, to include desired field and subfield structure, are all that we need to implement local headings or subject terms.

This is going to depend on a lot of factors, including the current cataloging queue and the depth of cataloging or physical processing involved. During the quote process, you can request that we provide a general timeline for your project that includes expectations for when materials arrive at our offices. Certain languages have longer queue times than others.