Page 134 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Unit 6: Concept of Call Number

Notes
The success rate searching on SUNCAT is very good; if a journal exists it is usual to
find some information on SUNCAT.
2. Provides Cost Effective Solution for Locating Journal Articles: Without SUNCAT,
resources would be greatly reduced with only limited resources such as Copac, and
Internet searches available to check if the item is available to buy or download for
free. It would be necessary to investigate creating a centralised catalogue for the
North West but obviously there would be a considerable cost involved.
“[Not having SUNCAT] would have a big impact. My resources would be cut down…
we may not be able to provide the location search service to our users, as it may not
be cost effective to provide this service without a centralised catalogue.”
3. Provides Bibliographic Information for the Verification of Request Details: “It’s not
just the holdings, but the bib details, which are really valuable.”
What else could SUNCAT do?
Ideally it would be useful to be able to sort results into regions or to just have a view of
North West libraries holdings with the option to expand out to a full search if required.
It would also be useful to be able to sort results by year of holdings as this is key information
for ILL requests.

Separating e-journals from print journals would be helpful as hard copy is often the first
choice for ILL. Many NWLIP subscribers shy away from electronic resources due to
uncertainty regarding different licence restrictions and many libraries have a blanket
policy of not supplying electronic format.

The inclusion of the British Library codes beside the library names in the holdings display
would help more than anything. Each UK library has an identifying code which is used by
a number of ILL systems, so having this detail on SUNCAT would save time checking
codes on the British Library website.
Finally, it would be preferable to have fewer duplicate records for the same title to reduce
the time required to check several records.
Questions
1. What are the benefits of SUNCAT to NWLIP?
2. What do you infer from the case?

Source: http://www.suncat.ac.uk/support/casestudies/nwlip/
6.7 Summary

A call number is a unique code given to each item in the library.
In any library classification system, each book has its own call number — a unique
combination of letters and numbers shown on the spine or on the front of the book.

Items are shelved by call numbers – in both alphabetical and numerical order.
LC Classification was originally designed to sort books at the Library of Congress and
developed specifically with reference to the published literature in each subject area in
that collection.
In using a call number to locate a book on the shelf, consider each component of the call
number in turn before moving on to the next segment.

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