This report focuses on items of interest to the music library community. For more information about the meeting and for reports about activities mentioned below, please see the CC:DA web page at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/index.html. Presentation is more topical than chronological.
Reports
CC:DA Chair. The full report is at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/docs/chair50.pdf . The Chair noted that there were no
electronically-conducted votes requiring confirmation since the Annual
2009
meeting. Myers also
reported that the CC:DA
Task Force for Review of FRSAD (Functional Requirements for Subject
Authority Data) had been reauthorized as a CCS (Cataloging
and
Classification Section) task force because of the overlap with SAC
(Subject
Access Committee). To
a question about
the status of the IFLA response to the document, Glenn Patton (OCLC)
said that
another draft is in preparation. Myers
presented news from the CCS Executive Council about proposed changes to
the
CC:DA leadership structure. The
current
pattern is to appoint one member of CC:DA to be Chair, with an option
for
yearly renewal for the duration of a CC:DA membership (4 years). CCS Exec is proposing a
3-year commitment,
with one year each of service as Chair-Elect, Chair, and Past Chair;
this would
align CC:DA with other committees within CCS. Among
points made in the ensuing discussion:
a. One plus would be providing a gradual
introduction to a difficult job.
b. The current system has a good track record in
outgoing chairs being helpful in handing over the reins to the new
chair.
c. In light of CCS Exec actions last year, is
this more an attempt to provide a structure that would make it easier
to get
rid of a “troublemaker” Chair?
d. What role would the Past Chair play? Since that person would
still be a voting
member, the pool of candidates for Chair-Elect would be even smaller.
e. The three-year appointment doesn’t
correlate
well with the two-year terms of CC:DA members.
f. The Chair would have to provide some
direction for the Chair-Elect and Past Chair, simply adding to an
already-heavy
workload.
g. A Chair trainee could help.
A
straw poll of the committee found unanimous
opinion in favor of keeping the current structure.
Myers will report this to CCS Exec.
Library of Congress (Barbara Tillett, LC liaison to CC:DA). For a detailed report of LC initiatives, visit: http://www.loc.gov/ala/mw-2010-update.html
Barbara Tillett reviewed highlights from her report. Issues of particular interest to the music community include:
ALA Publishing Services (Don Chatham, Associate Executive Director; Troy Linker, Director, Publishing Technology)
Linker gave a demonstration of the RDA product, branded the RDA Toolkit. It is being co-published by ALA, the Canadian Library Association, and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), and is available only from one of those entities. The pricing will be a subscription model, with no plans at this time for a one-time purchase. The base price for a single subscriber for a year is $325; additional licenses for 2-9 concurrent users are $55 each, $50 each for 10-19 users, and $45 each for each user beyond that. He emphasized that the single subscription can support multiple non-concurrent users; that is, an unlimited number of individual profiles can be established. He expects some discounting for library-school educators and for training situations where a short-term increase in concurrent users is needed. Linker foresaw that there would be “some interactivity” with LC’s Cataloger’s Desktop, but stressed that the two are separate products, with separate subscriptions. He said that there is a budget for regular updating and for tech support. Conversations are taking place for providing translations of the text, which would probably be incorporated into the toolkit itself. An entire chapter can be printed as a PDF. He expected a February Webinar to give a broader preview of the product, and invited people to write to rdatoolkit@ala.org or visit the Web site at www.rdaonline.org for more information.
Among the questions and comments from the committee and audience:
What happens if a user drops the subscription? One answer was that user annotations, which will reside on the publisher’s server, will be retained for a certain period after a subscription has lapsed.
The base price seems high—what was the basis for it? Answer: the price is seen as comparable to other database products; the size of the market had to be a factor; queries suggested that the price seemed reasonable in the community. Will this affect cooperative cataloging?
What sorts of sharing arrangements are available? Answer: consortial deals are possible, but will be negotiated individually. Hesitant to extend such arrangements to networks—too many “$50 users” is not a viable arrangement.
Who gets billed? Answer: that can happen at any level desired (individual library, campus, consortium).
Will there be a print version available? The (perceived by questioner) similarity in format to AACR2 would suggest this would be possible. Answer: Only by printing PDFs of individual chapters, i.e., by having a subscription. License agreements will include some restrictions on the dissemination of print text. ALA Publishing is still convinced of the superiority of the online product, and the Committee of Principals and the JSC have affirmed that decision. Derivative print products are not ruled out. (The response from the questioner was “Is RDA for users, or for the JSC and the Committee of Principals?” a comment that drew some applause from around the room).
Joint Steering Committee (John Attig, ALA Representative)
Attig expressed “cautious optimism” about the projected June publication date for RDA. He summarized JSC actions since Annual—the JSC waited until the rollout of the beta test version in November to review the RDA text. This task has been distributed among the representatives. Proofreading was against the marked-up PDF that was sent to ALA Publishing in June, and was a checking of changes, not of the entire text. Some errors can be fixed; others will be handled with a list of errata. Some things did not move from the PDF to the database correctly. Additional work with the RDA Registries, development of additional workflows, and creation of more full-record examples are also projected.
Attig described the revision process going beyond the initial release as a “black hole.” There is currently no editorial structure in place—material all goes to the software developer, and this is not a sustainable pattern. He hoped that more information about a review process would come from the next meeting of the Committee of Principals.
Attig then led a discussion of a list of unresolved concerns from one or more constituencies that the JSC chose to leave that way for the initial release of RDA. The JSC constituencies had been asked to prioritize items, and some CC:DA constituencies, such as MLA, had submitted their priorities for consideration. This list is available at http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/5sec6rev.pdf
The ensuing discussion identified these items as high-priority for ALA in general: 1) merging the instructions for establishing the names of governmental bodies with those for corporate bodies in general; 2) providing more guidance for what terms name corporate subunits that fall in the categories in RDA 11.2.2.14 (AACR2 24.13A, Types 1 and 2), that is, names that would call for an indirect subheading; 3) clarifying and possibly merging the instructions for naming Heads of State and Heads of Government. Medium-priority issues include: 1) reconsidering omission of initial articles; 2) examining whether the same practice should be followed for persons who change their names as for corporate bodies (i.e. separate headings); 3) resolving inconsistent practices on how to structure names that consist of phrases or additions to a surname; 4) clarifying the choice between found and systematized romanizations for corporate bodies names. Some issues are important, but require the JSC to make some general decisions before moving ahead, particularly issues with elements that are “data about data.” Other issues were seen as best pursued by specific communities (the American Theological Library Association, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Music Library Association, the Online Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC).
Certain CC:DA constituencies then identified priorities for their communities. Mark Scharff presented a list from the Music Library Association. He identified the highest priorities for MLA as being 1) reconsideration of the workflow between RDA 6.14 and 6.27-28, which currently places seemingly artificial strictures on recording data elements for the sake of producing “access-point-ready” data; 2) resolving ambiguities surrounding the status of containers, with the hope that a container can be considered a preferred source of information for a resource when it offers a collective title and other sources do not; 3) revisiting the concepts of “arrangement” and “adaptation” to seek better outcomes for non-Western and folk musics; 4) determining the least disruptive solution to problems surrounding access points for operas and librettos where the composer and librettist are the same person. Scharff identified other priorities; the complete list may be found at http://bcc.musiclibraryassoc.org/PositionPapers/RDA_Revision_Priority_List_2009.pdf
John Hostage, speaking for AALL, identified instructions for treaties and court reports as of most concern. CONSER (Peter Fletcher) sees allowing changes over time for resources to be identified with a data element rather than a note as being most important. The Society of American Archivists cited the JSC’s stated intent to parlay with SAA and others to reconcile RDA with archive and museum practice in areas where they greatly differ.
Application
Profiles—Three Presentations
The committee heard from three presenters. Jon Phipps (Cornell University) defined an application profile as “a set of documents that defines an agreement among developers on a model of how we describe things in the world in the context of the global world of data.” He gave a thickly-layered presentation of the terms and concepts underlying the development of application profiles. Karen Coyle (independent consultant) followed with a description of how an application profile is created. In brief, the task is to define the parameters of what the application profile will describe; determine what elements will be present; identify and codify the vocabulary to be used, being sure that it is consistent, precise, and “portable” (will carry its meaning outside the realm of the application profile); and then find what sorts of allowances and constraints are to be placed on the elements (repeatability, mandatory vs. optional). Diane Hillmann (Metadata Management Associates) then spoke on application profiles within the context of RDA development. She put forth the rationale for doing this work—the need for libraries to emerge from the MARC/AACR2 “cocoon,” to pursue interoperability within the larger data community, and to allow our data to be created and coded such that it can be used in both very general ways and with high levels of specificity (i.e. without having to “dumb down” the data itself). She stressed the need for specialized communities to determine what needs RDA does not satisfy for them, and exploit RDA’s extensibility to provide for their needs.
This is a very sketchy summary. Those interested in the presentations (of which I would say Hillmann’s is the most useful) can go to www.slideshare.net ; this is a site where people can share their presentations. A search on “Hillmann” will bring up the desired show (called “An Introduction to Application Profiles.”)
PCC Guidelines for Multiple
Character Sets (Peter
Fletcher)
Fletcher reported on the work of this task force, emanating from the PCC Committee on Standards. The goal is to move past work with serials and to encourage standardization through creation of a document similar to the CONSER appendices. The entire report may be seen at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/scs/Non-Latin-TF-Prelim-Report-Guidelines.pdf . Among questions and comments:
There
needs to be a
“best-practices” statement for encoding dates in
Hebrew personal names.
It
should be clarified that
“systematic Romanization” is at issue here.
The
practice of treating all
non-Latin access points as variants will be problematic going forward;
one
solution might be to create separate authority records for the Roman
and
non-Roman forms of an authorized name.
CC:DA Webmaster (Patricia Hatch). Things are still in a holding pattern vis-à-vis moving the CC:DA site from Penn State to ALA Connect. Myers commented that this is a problem section- and division-wide. Hatch indicated that she will not be seeking re-appointment as Webmaster when her term expires in June 2010. Her report is at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/docs/webmaster7.pdf
RDA Implementation Task Force
Several
events happened at Annual 2009--a
preconference on FRBR/FRAD from a conceptual point of view; the RDA Update Forum on Saturday afternoon The American Association of
School Librarians
and various state library associations were approached and in some
cases agreed
to presentations. At
this Midwinter,
there was a well-attended RDA
Update
Forum, and a meeting for RDA
testers;
a planned meeting with vendors was cancelled for lack of interest. Annual 2010 will feature a
preconference on
applying RDA, starting with a
review
of FRBR concepts, identifying similarities and differences between RDA and AACR2
and offering hands-on experience with using RDA
to catalog. Outreach
efforts outside ALA will
continue. A more
extensive forum for RDA testers is
expected for Midwinter
2011.
CCS Executive Committee
Myers
reported that ALA Council has declared
2010 the Year of Cataloging Research.
He
was asked the committee’s meeting at Midwinter had involved
any discussion of
the process for leadership succession (see “CC:DA
Chair” above). Myers
responded that he had delivered CC:DA’s
feedback to the group; though no vote was taken during the meeting, he
surmised
that something might happen in executive session, i.e. wait and see. Myers noted that his term
as Chair is over;
those interested in taking on the position should contact him, use the
ALCTS
volunteer form, and/or contact Shelby Harkin, the incoming chair of CCS.
The
next meetings of CC:DA are scheduled for
June 26 and June 28, 2010, in Washington, D.C.
Submitted
by Mark Scharff, MLA Liaison to
CC:DA
Return
to the 2010 Documents Menu
Return
to BCC Historical Documents Menu
Return
to BCC Home Page
Last updated February 19, 2010