Serials cataloging at MIT

Our mission

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries actively collects a large number of periodicals and serials, on a wide variety of topics of academic interest, in both print and electronic format. In addition, the Libraries have extensive back holdings that reflect the Institute's longstanding commitment to collecting and providing access to scientific and technological publications to the community. The mission of the Serials cataloging section is to ensure that all members of the MIT community can discover, find, and locate or access the totality of MIT's serial collections as conveniently as possible.

Our catalogs

To fulfill its mission Sercat maintains serials-related bibliographic data in multiple places. The primary means of providing bibliographic support is through Barton, MIT's online catalog, which currently has approximately 68,000 serial records. Half of these records reflect periodical publications, and the remaining half represent other serial publications, such as annual reports, conferences, and integrating resources (web sites and databases). In addition, Sercat collaborates closely with MIT's serials acquisitions section to maintain accurate and timely bibliographic data for electronic serial publications in SFX, a product that acts as the cataloging backbone for MIT's electronic journal search solutions Vera and Vera multi-search.

Our future

Our section endeavors to meet the cataloging challenges of the 21st century, in which networked, digital resources have become all-pervasive. At present, one third of MIT's serials collections are available in digital format. Our policy of providing unitary bibliographic descriptions of items that are available in print and digital formats is one way of assisting users in finding the resources that interest them in the format that best suits their needs. We have also begun to examine ways of efficiently providing access to a broader range of digital resources, such as open-access journals and "free to the world" Internet resources.

Our heritage

At the same time, Sercat holds on to the values that have contributed and continue to contribute to the success of the MIT Libraries. Our staff continues to produce high quality bibliographic metadata for MIT's catalog, as well as providing bibliographic expertise to divisional libraries on cataloging and collections-related problems large and small. As a member in good standing with CONSER, the national cooperative serials cataloging program, Sercat both contributes to and derives the benefit from a nationwide field of high-quality bibliographic data. In addition to our efforts to catalog active titles of current interest, Sercat is engaged in a project to retrospective catalog a large and heretofore hidden collection of older serials and journals that were collected by the Institute up to the middle of the 20th century.

Welcome to the Sercat wiki.

Here you will find documents of interest to MIT serials catalogers, as well as those who interact with Sercat. Feel free to explore our section: see a map of SerCat, or a list of current projects and processes. Or meet our staff. Like all wikis, this place is designed to change, so come back, or leave a comment or question of your own.