What's New in Z39.71-1999

Holdings Standards for Bibliographic Items, Z39.71-1999, was published last year. What changes will result for serials holdings statements? How is 71 different from its predecessors Z39.44 for serials and Z39.57 for non-serials?

History:

The first United States holdings standard Z39.42-1980 American National Standard for Serial Holdings Statements at the Summary Level was developed in the late ’70s. The committee that drafted 42 collected boxes and boxes of printed serials union lists and, based on common practice in those lists, derived principles of what had generally worked well. The aim of 42 was to guide ILL borrowers, not to provide full inventory control of local serials. Users of OCLC’s new interlibrary loan module felt the need to know more for a serial than its location — they needed to know which parts of the serial were held. When OCLC implemented Z39.42 in early 1980, it became, for an ANSI/NISO standard, a bestseller!

42 defined holdings standards for serials at the volume level as "summary holdings" (Level 3). It also allowed a holdings statement with minimal information: the optional Level 2 statement provided no volume information, only coded hints about roughly how much you held, whether you were still receiving the title, and whether you kept all or a limited part of what you received.

Z39.44-1986, Serial Holdings Statements, responded to the need for fully enumerated holdings, and defined both summary level (Level 3) and detailed level (Level 4) holdings for serials. OCLC union listing still allowed only summary-level holdings statements and eventually implemented Z39.44. Automated checkin systems and online public access catalogs were appearing; several systems used Z39.44. A few years, later, Z39.57-1989, Holdings Statements for Non-serial Items, was approved. In approach, it resembled 44, but to treat non-serial extent-of-holdings, it developed new categories: Name of Unit and Extent of Unit.

Because NISO standards must be reviewed after five years, in 1991 NISO [...continued]