ALCTS Media Resources Committee
Meetings, ALA Midwinter Meeting
San Antonio, Feb. 16, 18, 2000

The Sunday meeting included a report on planning for the ACLTS-MRC-sponsored tour during ALA in Chicago; tour site is expected to be the Museum of Broadcast Communications, housed in the Chicago Cultural Center, and will take place on Friday, July 7, 2 p.m.  Dave Reser (LC) reported on a new policy in NACO for creation of series authority records for A/V materials, which allows NACO participants to create such records for all categories of A/V, including those cataloged to archival standards, even when they contradict LC’s policy on treating such series.  The “Are you media-savvy” brochures, whose publication status is up in the air, don’t seem to have enough support for continuing to pursue publication through ALCTS; however, if actual copies can be located, OLAC may be approached to host them at their Web site, to which ALCTS-MRC can link.  Finally, chair Diane Boehr (NLM) revisited the purpose of the one-hour Sunday meeting; hearing no strong support, she proposed to bid for a three-hour slot on Sunday morning, thereby eliminating the Tuesday meeting.

Tuesday’s meeting resumed the meeting-time discussion of Sunday, with a firm proposal to bid for a 9:30-12:30 slot on Sunday.  If successful, the new schedule would begin at Midwinter 2001.  Next came liaison reports from representatives of various organizations and from liaisons to other ALA committees.  Some that might not be reported elsewhere:

** National Library of Medicine – in addition to the series announcement reported above, NLM has delayed implementing MeSH 2000 [it has since been issued].  As announced before, MeSH headings in NLM’s catalog are now “deconstructed” to harmonize with the indexing practices of other NLM databases.  The headings are recombined in records distributed to licensees (e.g. OCLC).

** ALCTS/MRC Standards Subcommittee – NISO has rejected a proposed standard for packaging and labeling of A/V materials, but left the door open for resubmission if evidence could be provided that producers would actually adhere to it (NISO does not want to be associated with standards that are ignored).

Finally, the committee looked at ideas for a program for 2001.  Several ideas were put forth – licensing and copyright issues associated with sound/image files and their delivery, E-book cataloging, and ANSI standards for holdings.  The licensing/copyright idea seems to have carried the day, and planning will proceed on that basis.

Submitted by Mark Scharff

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Last updated April 17, 2000