Library of Congress Expanding CIP (Cataloging in Process) Program To Include Ebooks

From an LC News Release:

Starting in July, the Library’s Cataloging in Publication (CIP) Program will expand its scope to include electronic books. This moves into production a pilot project begun in October 2011, whereby the Library has provided pre-publication CIP metadata for titles that are published simultaneously in print and electronic format to four participating publishers (RAND Corporation, the University Press of Mississippi, Wiley—including Wiley imprint Jossey-Bass—and the World Bank).

After the launch in July, the Cataloging in Publication Program will invite additional publishers to participate.

This new initiative enables the Library of Congress to provide quality metadata for use by the international library community for the growing number of electronic books that are published simultaneously with the print book.

Since July 1971, the Library’s CIP program has served the nation’s libraries by cataloging, in advance of publication, books widely acquired by the nation’s libraries. Instead of individual libraries cataloging the same work repeatedly, the work is cataloged once, and thousands of libraries benefit. As CIP moves into the world of e-books, libraries throughout the United States will benefit from being able to use high-quality records that have been created according to the highest cataloging standards.