The Effectiveness of Copy Cataloging at Eliminating Typographical Errors in

opy cataloging, the process of copying bibliographic records from a sourcedatabase such as OCLC WorldCat, has increased librarians’ efficiency byeliminating duplication of effort. One library creates a bibliographic record foran item such as a book and many other libraries can copy or migrate the data intotheir local online catalogs, thus saving each individual library the work of cata-loging the item and entering the data into the system. However, the ability to copy data from other libraries potentially candetract from the value it adds to the cataloging process. Libraries that copy datafrom a bibliographic record in the source database can also copy typographicalerrors made in the record. Libraries differ in the amount of quality control they perform during thecopy cataloging process. Several factors relating to the source of the biblio-graphic records (such as records created by the Library of Congress) may affectthe amount of editing or quality control an individual record receives. Thispaper describes a study that sought to answer the question, “How successful arecopy catalogers at finding and correcting typographical errors found in biblio-graphic records imported from OCLC WorldCat?”