The presentations are available on the
ACIG page on ALA Connect (
http://connect.ala.org/node/107447)
1. LC Update to the Authority Control
Interest Group – by Janis L. Young, Policy and Standards Division
(PSD), Library of Congress (LC)
General Information
• In August 2010, LC requested comments on the
proposal to change Dept. in headings to Department. The change
was generally well-received, but there was no clear mandate to make the
change, so Dept. will remain in headings in its current form.
• The romanization table for the language Vai was
approved and is available online at the ALA-LC Romanization tables
homepage (
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/
cpso.roman.html). It will be published in Cataloging Service
Bulletin no. 128. Proposals for the revision of the Thai table
will also be published in this issue.
• The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) now
has names from 18 national libraries and research institutions, with
test records under review from 3 other libraries. In August 2010,
corporate name data from some institutions was added to VIAF.
• Bob Hiatt of PSD has retired, after serving for 42
years at LC, with 19 of them in PSD.
Subject Authorities
• The Annotated Card program for more in-depth
treatment of juvenile subjects and assignment of headings has been
renamed the Children's and Young Adults Cataloging Program. The
use of juvenile headings has remained unchanged.
• Cookery/Cooking: In June 2010, the word Cookery in
LCSH was changed to Cooking. Instruction sheet H1475 of the
Subject Headings Manual (SHM) was
revised to reflect the change. 788 subject authority records were
updated and over 40,000 bibliographic records were revised, with 60,000
bibliographic records to go. Each heading is being revised
manually. Additionally, the new genre/form term Cookbooks has
been added to the
Library of
Congress Genre/Form Thesaurus (LCGFT).
• Validation records have been created for over
80,000 subject heading strings, based on if the string in question
appeared over 20 times in the LC bibliographic file. A second
pass through the file will hopefully create more validation records.
• 072 pilot project: PSD will add a 072 field to
existing subject heading records in the first half of 2011. It
will contain the instruction sheet number in the SHM governing the
usage of the term in pattern and free-floating subdivisions. The
field is intended to be reciprocal with the 073 field present in
subdivision authority records, which indicates the instruction sheet
governing the usage of the subdivision. It is hoped that this
will provide a way of validating subject strings, so that if the same
instruction number is present in both the subject heading record and
the subdivision record, the string will be validated. It is also
hoped that a computer would be able to provide subdivision suggestions,
based on the subject heading chosen. One of the main obstacles
which must be overcome in this project is that the SHM was written for
humans, not computers. There are subdivisions which would
obviously not be used with certain subject headings, even though they
are in the same instruction sheet (Ms. Young used as an example the
subdivision Aerial operations which obviously not apply to the heading
for the Thirty Year's War). There are also exceptions to the
general rules within the instruction sheets. Another obstacle
would be the manpower needed to code tens of thousands of existing
subject authority records.
• The Authorities and Vocabularies Service is a
SKOS-based system which provides access to code lists, subject
headings, and other terminologies. The service is exploring links
to translations of LCSH. The general population may also suggest
terms to be changed or added to Authorities and Vocabularies by going
to
http://id.loc.gov.
• LC will be implementing a new heading proposal
system in the first half of 2011 which will allow for the proposal of
headings for LCSH, LCGFT, and
Children's
Subject Headings. It will based on the model currently in
place for the Classification Proposal System, with the usernames and
passwords to be the same in each system.
Genre/Form Authorities
• Genre/form terms will now be in the
Library of Congress Genre/Form Thesaurus
(LCGFT), a separate product from LCSH. A new MARC source code
(lcgft) has been created and authority records for LCGFT terms will
have a LCCN with the prefix "gf". The revised authority records
with the new LCCN prefix will be issued no earlier than March 2011
• Cartography genre/form headings were implemented in
September 2010. SACO proposals for new terms are being accepted.
• In early 2011 LC will implement genre/form terms
for law. Approximately 80 terms were approved on November 3, 2010
in partnership with the American Association of Law Libraries
(AALL). PSD is seeking partners to develop genre/form terms for
religious law
• The music genre/form project in partnership with
MLA is still underway. Over 800 terms have been approved.
As the project continues, one of the large issues concerns where medium
of performance terms should reside (LCSH or LCGFT) and how they should
be coded in MARC bibliographic records.
• PSD is collaborating with the American Theological
Library Association (ATLA) in developing religious genre/form terms
2. The U.S. RDA Test: Status and Next
Steps – by Beacher Wiggins, Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic
Access, LC
The Library of Congress, the National Agricultural Library (NAL), and
the National Library of Medicine (NLM), along with 24 other
institutions, including the MLA-OLAC funnel, has completed the second
phase of the National Libraries' RDA Test. This phase, which
began on October 1, 2010, involved the creation by each institution of
25 common records using both AACR2 and RDA and the creation of an extra
set of records of materials commonly collected by each institution,
using only RDA. Copy cataloging using RDA was also tested by some
of the institutions. Authority records were also created for both
the common and extra set, if authority work was part of an individual
cataloger's workflow.
For the test, LC in consultation with the PCC, reviewed the
Library of Congress Rule Interpretations
(LCRIs). Of the 500 LCRIs which existed prior to the test, only
200 were kept and renamed
Library of
Congress Policy Statements (LCPS) and were incorporated into the
RDA Toolkit, the online ALA
product for accessing RDA.
In developing the parameters of the test, a conscious decision was made
to conduct the test in a real environment, even though inevitable
complications would ensue, especially as it concerned RDA records being
present in the OCLC database and the creation of new authority records
using RDA and the modification of existing AACR2 authority
records. If an existing AACR2 authority record needed
modification, all changes were made in a 7XX field, leaving the
existing heading alone. If a new heading was needed, the
authority record was created from scratch, even if the resultant
heading "disagreed" with other similar headings.
The RDA test ended on December 31, 2010. The 27 participants
created over 9,000 original MARC bibliographic records and over 13,000
authority records, all using RDA. Survey instruments detailing
the experiences of the testers were filled out for each record and will
be used in conjunction with the records created to evaluate the results
of the test. As of this time LC, NAL, and NLM will cease creating
records in RDA until a decision on implementation has been reached,
although 5 of the test participants have determined that they will
continue to create bibliographic records in RDA. LC and the other
national libraries will continue to accept RDA records as part of their
copy-cataloging workflow. OCLC will also allow libraries to
submit cataloging in RDA to the Worldcat database, but will not allow
parallel AACR2 and RDA records to exist for the same resource.
PCC libraries may also create RDA cataloging, but must use AACR2
headings. LC copy-catalogers that use RDA records will continue
to use AACR2 headings in RDA records if authority records for them
exist, but will create RDA authority records for headings if no AACR2
authority record is available. The NLM and NAL will keep any RDA
records they encounter in "pure" RDA and will not use AACR2 constructed
headings.
To assist in tabulating the results of the test, the national libraries
may contract with on outside vendor. After the tabulation, a
report will be made to LC/NAL/NLM senior management by March 31,
2011. A decision on implementation will be made by the June 2011
ALA Annual Meeting. The possible decisions include: no
implementation of RDA, postpone the implementation until changes are
made to RDA, implement RDA as is, or implement with specific changes
and/or policy decisions. If implementation is the decision,
guidelines for the transition will be issued, especially as regards the
disposition of RDA headings in the 7XX fields of authority records and
what AACR2 authority records will be considered RDA-compatible.
In any case, even if the national libraries do not implement RDA,
libraries will be operating in a mixed bibliographic environment for
the foreseeable future.
Business Meeting
• ACIG will hold elections for new officers at ALA
Annual 2011. Positions to be elected include Chair-Elect (3-year
term), Secretary (2-year term), and Members-at-large for subjects,
series, and names (2-year terms), plus a one-year term to fill the
vacancy caused by the resignation of the Member-at-large for
form/genre. Information about the positions will be posted on ALA
Connect.
• The position of ACIG Web Coordinator will be a
two-year term position, appointed by the ACIG Chair. Attendance
at ALA is not required, but membership in either ALCTS or LITA will be
mandatory.
• Discussion occurred about the content of the next
ACIG Meeting at ALA Annual 2011 in New Orleans. Ideas included:
the ethics of authority control, especially as it concerns privacy;
retrospective assignment of genre/form headings; the impact of RDA on
authority control; the impact of RDA and Worldcat Local on cooperative
authority control; and the future of NACO
• Business Meeting adjourned at 3:25PM
Submitted by Damian Iseminger, Chair, Authorities Subcommittee
Online Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC)
Cataloging Policy Committee (CAPC) Meeting
Friday, January 7, 2011, 7:30-9:00PM
Reports and Discussions
• MARBI Report – given by Catherine Gerhart, MARBI
Liaison, University of Washington. For details of the MARBI
meeting at ALA Midwinter, please see the report from Bruce Evans, MARC
Subcommittee Chair, BCC.
• CC:DA Report – given by Kelley McGrath, CC:DA
liaison, University of Oregon. CC:DA is beginning to consider
proposals for revisions of RDA, but there is nothing in the works that
would affect the cataloging of AV materials. For details of the
CC:DA meeting at ALA, please see the report from Mark Scharff,
Descriptive Cataloging Subcommittee Chair, BCC.
• Video Language Coding Best Practices Task Force
Report – given by Kelley McGrath. The final proposal of the Task
Force concerning the explicit coding of the original language in
subfield h of the 041 is on the MARBI agenda as a proposal. MARBI
wants more work done on the proposals in Discussion Paper No. 2010-DP05
to change the definitions for coding languages for moving image
materials, especially as it relates to the coding of sign language and
intermediate translations. Once the above issues are worked out,
a final edition of the Task Force report should be able to be issued.
• LC Genre/Form Headings for Moving Images Best
Practices Task Force Report – given by Susan Wynne, University of
Wyoming for Scott Dutkiewicz, Clemson University. A new draft of
the report has been issued, reorganized and updated based on comments
received. An outstanding issue remains with terms for Internet
moving images and the task force is undecided as to which terms to
use. There are three terms to consider: Internet videos,
Podcasts, and Webisodes. The original approach of the Task Force
was a "piece-in-hand" approach for this type of content. For
example, if a DVD was being cataloged that contained content originally
released on the Internet, no genre/form term indicating Internet
content would be used. The concept of Webisodes has thrown this
approach into turmoil, because there is an argument to be made that a
user could reasonably search for content as Webisodes that might now be
on DVD or some other format. The discussion that followed liked
the usefulness of Podcasts and Webisodes as original format terms and
because they can function at the work or expression level. The
discussion concerning the term Internet videos touched on themes of
whether the term is really a genre/form term or is a distribution term,
the potential confusion to users that see the term Internet videos used
on a bibliographic record of a DVD containing videos originally found
online (the user may think the record is a link to online content), and
the need to be consistent versus the pragmatic needs of catalogers and
users. After the discussion, the terms Podcasts and Webisodes
were considered to be valid terms by the group for describing original
content irrespective of the manifestations on which the content has
appeared and the the term Internet videos should still be governed by a
"piece-in-hand" approach, recognizing that this is an exception to
current practice. Further discussion will be needed for
additional terms that can describe born-digital content.
• Audiovisual Materials Glossary Update Task Force –
report to be emailed by Heidi Frank, New York University Libraries to
CAPC.
• RDA Testing – given by Kelley McGrath. The
OLAC-MLA funnel has completed its work for the National Libraries' RDA
test. 22 individuals participated in creating 25 common set
records using both RDA and AACR2, with an additional 80 records created
for music and AV materials using RDA. The next three months will
be a data analysis period, after which an announcement on
implementation will be given by the national libraries in June
2011. The funnel is generally in favor of moving forward with
implementing RDA, despite issues surrounding the cost, time, and effort
of transitioning to RDA, problems with individual rules as it concerns
AV materials, and the compatibility of MARC21 with RDA.
Discussion of the test at the meeting focused on the concept of
expression access points, specifically on the lack of guidance in
construction and whether expression access points should be for
specific or types of expressions.
• Genre/Form Headings Report – given by Janis L.
Young, Library of Congress. For genre/form details, please see
the report from Hermine Vermeij, Subject Access Subcommittee Chair, BCC.
Old Business
• BIBCO Standard Records for Projected Visual
Materials, Non-Projected Graphic Materials, and Electronic Materials –
given by Walter Walker, Loyola Marymount University. The BSRs for these
group of materials were approved by the PCC and implemented on October
1, 2010. They are available on the BIBCO Website, along with the
final report of the Task Force. The group this past summer also
worked on supplemental guidelines for e-monographs. Review of the
document will be complete by January 17, 2011.
• Moving Image Work Grant – given by Kelley
McGrath. The OLAC Board agreed to fund a prototype discovery
interface based on FRBR for moving images. The prototype is
available at
http://blazing-sunset-24.heroku.com/
and comments are welcome.
Submitted by Damian Iseminger, Chair, Authorities Subcommittee