Our second joint seminar with NAG on the e4libraries subject headings scheme was held at CILIP yesterday and was a well-attended and stimulating event. Maggie Sumner, the retired librarian - and ex-chair of NAG - who devised the scheme for us a couple of years ago, made an impassioned plea for using the scheme as the basis for online search of library catalogues, and Ian Manson of Infor showed some impressive examples from Dutch and French libraries of how that could work in practice. Carl McInerney of Peters Bookselling Services, whilst making the point that library suppliers had benefited in the past from the variations in library servicing requirements, persuasively argued that now was the time for a 'step change' towards greater standardisation.
Clearly the library sector is entering a period of extreme stress where all options for cost-saving will have to be considered. BIC has long promoted technical excellence and standardisation as being key to a more efficient service; and attempting to establish the e4libraries scheme as a national standard is one part of that process.
Our next step is to produce a revised and updated version of the scheme in the spring - bringing it into line with the new version 2.1 of the main BIC scheme which we have just published - and, at the same time, set up proper governance procedures and a steering committee to provide a formal structure for change requests and implementation support.
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