Bibliographic Control Committee Business Meeting Report

MLA, Philadelphia, Feb. 2011

Kathy Glennan, University of Maryland, Chair

Members: Voting: Kathy Glennan (Chair), Michael Colby, Bruce Evans, Damian Iseminger, Jenn Riley, Mark Scharff, Hermine Vermeij, Sue Vita (LC representative), Mickey Koth (MCB editor – absent); Non-voting: Jay Weitz (OCLC), Rya Martin (Webmaster/Recording Secretary)

The Bibliographic Control Committee (BCC) held two business meetings and sponsored four programs in Philadelphia: Technical Metadata for Music; Sheet Music Consortium: Metadata Tools and Participation; BCC Town Hall (current topics in cataloging); and RDA: Kicking the Tires. All of the program sessions were well attended. For details on these programs, please see the separate reports published elsewhere in the MLA Newsletter.

The BCC business meetings included subcommittee and task force updates, as well as new topics. For details on the subcommittee meetings, please see their separate reports. BCC discussed administrative matters, including: the possibility of a change to BCC’s name to better reflect its scope of responsibilities; minor updates to some charges; and revision of the BCC Procedures Manual.

The committee spent time on RDA-related issues, including the implications of living in a multi-code environment and how to approach the development and dissemination of RDA music guidelines. For the latter, MLA and music cataloging specialists at the Library of Congress need to be in a position to work cooperatively in creating the needed documentation. We considered a few options about where to start: best practices guidelines; MLA workflows for scores and sound recordings in the RDA Toolkit; and “how to” documents. BCC will charge a task force to advise BCC about the needed content and how to proceed; this task force must include music catalogers experienced with creating RDA records.

We explored another RDA-related issue: best practices in relation to indexing and display of the new MARC 37X and 38X fields. BCC will contact the Emerging Technologies & Services Committee to offer our expertise in this area. The final document should be outcomes-based rather than being modeled on the past MLA guidelines for integrated library systems.

Beth Iseminger reported on the latest developments with the MLA-BCC Genre/Form Task Force, which will work toward identifying a technology that will enable the group to get a syndetic structure for visualization of the hierarchy of the agreed-upon terms. They will use this structure to identify gaps and propose new headings.

BCC brainstormed about potential programs for 2012, including: a program folding metadata into other initiatives (such as the RDA element set or digital preservation), development and implementation of the new music genre/form headings, and something related to RDA (perhaps bringing in the public service perspective).

Finally, Rya Martin completed her four-year term as BCC Recording Secretary/Webmaster. BCC thanked her for her service. We welcomed Jennifer Matthews as Rya’s successor.