KL-KWX should be available in the next issue of Classification Plus. Hopefully Class Web will be available in the late fall or early winter.

Jewish law (KBM) is posted on the CPSO homepage http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/ for comment. LC is converting it to the online form. Dr. Goldberg reports that so far the comments have been favorable. After conversion, there will be an in-house trial run. At some point LC would like to add the romanized Hebrew terms. The schedule will eventually be on Class Web. The printed version will take longer. This is a fairly complex schedule and there are also changes being make in BM. Dr. Goldberg did not give us a timetable for publication but it will be in Class Web once that comes up.

Islamic law (KBP) will be ready for review by the Islamic law staff at Harvard Law School in late November or December. At that time it will be posted to the CPSO hompage for comment. The romanized Arabic terms will be added to the schedule eventually.

I would like to remind catalogers that Table KF6 (Table of Form Divisions (1 Nos.)) is modified by Table KF9. The modifications are for state materials between (.A2) Congressional hearings and reports and .A49 Comparative local legislation. The modification instructions appear near the top of Table KF6 and as you scroll down, the note disappears. Consequently, the modification note is forgotten. It would be better if there could be a link next to each caption that would take you to the state modifications.

Catalogers have asked me about reclassing by finding call numbers online and loading them into their local records. You can contract out the call number part of the reclassification project. I will call that machine reclass. Reclassification completely by hand can be expensive and takes many people or many years. There are actually quite a few items in the LC database with K call numbers now. LC did reclassification in the late 1960's and early 1970's. The United States federal materials and the state materials up into the states starting with "New" were done. KDZ, KG-KH has been in use since early 1980's; K since the 1970's; KD since the early 1970's. There are lots of items at LC with call numbers from these schedules. I would suggest that anyone start their reclassification project by finding a way to get the call numbers from LC into their local records. The next step would be to find call numbers from other law libraries. Of course, you have to be careful that you find LC K numbers and not "look alike K" LC call numbers. Some libraries used class letters from old LC tentative lists of country K letters and these lists were withdrawn in the mid 1970's. Libraries have always had their own exceptions regarding certain call numbers.

Before you begin hunting for numbers either by machine or manually, you need to have decisions made regarding "classed together" series, serials continuations, "bound with" books, editions, cuttering practices and shelflisting, changes in LC K form tables, etc. It helps greatly to have a clean database. Most of all you need the support of your public services staff.

Classed together series can be troublesome no matter if you decide to keep together after reclass or if you decide to split during reclass. If you do them by machine, the records will need a careful manual review. How do you tell a machine that these records should all get the same basic call number? If you decide to split, how do you tell the machine not to find call numbers for these records with no. or vol. in the call number field?.

Serials continuations need to be identified so that you can manually review to make sure each title gets the same call number when appropriate. The old practice of binding two titles in one physical volume will cause problems when using the machine reclass method. Manual review may be needed so that each title receives the same call number.

Editions generally have the same call number but different dates. Do you want to keep your editions together? It is something we have always done but when authors and titles change is it worth the effort?

When you bring call numbers from other libraries into your system, you bring in their shelflist and their cutter practices. You can't tell if the other library used the LC cutter table or Cutter-Sanborn table. Do you want to bother getting the reclassed titles in shelflist order? If you decide not to shelflist, what do you do with your newly acquired titles? Do you mind if the authors are not in alphabetical order as long as the classification number is correct?

The introduction of new K form tables changed many of the older form tables throughout the K schedules for civil law countries. You don't want to redo all the form part of the call number or do you?