The National Library of Medicine cooperates with the Library of Congress in providing prepublication cataloging information for approximately 3,400 English language monographs per year from U.S. publishers. Final publication copies of an estimated 90-95 percent of these monographs are acquired by NLM when they become available from the publishers. NLM's original cataloging records, called Cataloging-in-Publication or CIP, must be updated to reflect the bibliographic data as presented in the final publication. These CIP records cannot be processed through NLM's current online cataloging system, TESS (Technical Services System); rather, they must be processed in the Catalog Maintenance File (MEDCFM). In order to upgrade these records NLM catalogers would be required to master two entirely separate routines--one for cataloging new titles and another for updating CIPs. In addition, resources previously used for the processing of these materials have been shifted over to the expanded cooperative cataloging efforts with the Library of Congress. The outside support for the revising and online maintenance of CIP records is necessary for the following reasons: (1) to allow inhouse resources to continue to be focussed on cooperative cataloging activities and the processing of other high-priority titles; (2) to prevent the need for cataloging staff to learn wholly dissimilar input routines; (3) to reduce the time between receipt of the published CIP title and the availability of an authorized, revised cataloging record to the medical library community.
