BCC2010/SAS/1

ALA MIDWINTER conference report
Boston, Jan. 15-18, 2010
Report from the ALCTS-CCS Subject Analysis Committee (SAC)
the SAC Genre/Form Implementation Subcommittee
and other subject-related news

Subject Analysis Committee and Subcommittee on Genre-Form Implementation

Several MARBI proposals for new fields dealing with encoding of work/expression identification passed.  This is an interesting development for subject access in that two of the approved fields are for form (MARC 380) and medium of performance (MARC 382).  While the current use would be more for uniform titles, the new fields raise questions about where genre/form and especially medium of performance information might be put in MARC records.

While the music genre/form project is facing a very real need for faceted information (i.e. where the facet medium of performance will most accurately fit into records), SAC and the SAC-Subcommittee on Genre-Form Implementation (SGFI) are just beginning to investigate the idea of facets.  The SAC-SGFI is putting together a statement about including geography, language and ethnicity as facets within the context of the genre/form projects.  SAC is beginning to research the nature of facets and how they have been used.

LC is planning for the genre/form thesaurus to be a separate product, with no links between it and LCSH.  A heated discussion arose over the need for a new subfield code for the genre/form thesaurus.  If the thesaurus is separate from LCSH, it seems a new code would be needed, though argument arose over whether new codes for each potential new thesaurus would complicate matters more than necessary.

Two items which may be of interest for the music genre/form project include the Sears list, which created an online thesaurus model, and the law genre project, which is beginning to look at legacy data and the possibility of global update functionality for genre/form terms.

The development phase of OCLC’s FAST project has been completed and the focus has shifted to maintenance and enhancement.  The book FAST: Faceted Application of Subject Terminology, Principles and Application by Ed O’Neill and Lois Chan is being published this spring.

LC Subject and Genre/Form News

LC announced two decisions that have been made regarding the music genre/form project: genre/form terms will not be qualified by language, and medium of performance terms will not be in the genre/form thesaurus.  Issues that are currently being discussed by the LC genre/form group include subdivisions, headings for psalms, and sacred music headings.  As of midwinter, the LC and MLA music genre/form groups have agreed on over 1000 headings for the music portion of the thesaurus.

In response to recommendations made in the paper “Library of Congress Subject Headings Pre- vs. Post-Coordination and Related Issues”, LC is working to take advantage of new technologies and to ehnance the subject authority file to use those technologies.  LC continues to create subject validation authority records, with over 50,000 created so far.  LC is also adding classification numbers (MARC authority 053) and Subject Headings Manual instruction sheet numbers (MARC authority 072) to records.  One benefit of these enhancements will be the ability to generate lists of headings for particular disciplines.

PSD is currently requesting comments on a proposal to revise the hierarchies of the moving image genre/form headings.  The proposal suggests that each heading be placed into one of four groups:  fiction, nonfiction, fiction and nonfiction, or motion pictures/television programs/video recordings (for forms, not genres).  The proposal can be found on LC’s genre/form website: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/movingimagehierarchies.pdf

OLAC Genre/Form Best Practices Task Force

The draft of the best practices document is basically finished, and the task force is looking at ways to make it public.  Some revision may be necessary, depending on the outcome of LC’s fiction/nonfiction proposal and a possible LC paper on performance headings.

Submitted by Beth Iseminger, MLA-BCC Subject Access Subcommittee Chair