BCC00/Auth/2
2000 ALA Midwinter Meeting
ALCTS CCS SUBJECT ANALYSIS COMMITTEE REPORT
January 16 and 17, 2000
1. Update on MARBI
The MARBI liaison reported on the status of proposals 1998-08, 2000-04, 2000-05 and 2000-6 as well as discussion papers #114, #115, #118 and #120. A new proposal was forthcoming, #121, addressing dates in electronic resources. For details on these please see the report of the MLA MARBI liaison (http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/BCC/MARC/BCC00SMF1.html) It was also announced that AACR2 chapter 12 will be expanded and that ISBD-S (Serials) will become ISBD-CR (Continuing Resources).
2. LC Report (Lynn El-Hoshy)
2000 is the year of the LC Bicentennial. Information can be found at the web site (http://lcweb.loc.gov./bicentenial/). A commemorative stamp will be issued on April 24. Two commemorative coins will also be issued. One coin will be silver and the other bimetallic platinum and gold, the first coin of its type to be issued by the US Mint.
The Digital Futures Task Force at LC has developed a set of programs to employ digital technology to create and promote the use of electronic publications. A funding request for this program was included in LC’s fiscal 2001 budget request to Congress.
LC completed its Integrated Library System implementation within budget and on schedule, with all components “live” as of October 1, 1999. Around 16 million bibliographic and authority records were migrated from the six legacy systems. Preparation is also underway to convert data from the 12 million-card shelflist file and the 900,000-title serials check-in file.
Full MARC 21 authority records (names and subjects) do not display in the LC Online Catalog, although references and scope notes for headings in bibliographic records are available. LC is working with Endeavor to provide full MARC authorities in the web catalog by the end of this year. A list of commercial alternative access to LC authority data for the interim can be found at http://lcweb.loc.gov/cds/cdattac2.html
LC plans to implement the 1998 revision of AACR2 in February or March, having delayed such until the implementation of the ILS. LC has implemented the change in the first indicator value 2 for multiple surnames in X00 fields as of January 1, 2000. Guidelines for the implementation may be found at http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/multsur.html Implementation of the restructuring of LCCNs to accommodate the century change is now planned to take place on January 1, 2001. More information is available at http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/lccn.html
Chinese language romanization conversion planning continues. Information and status reports are posted at http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pinyin/
Regarding the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), SACO work will be integrated into BIBCO training. A special SACO funnel project for subject headings of interest to African Americans included outreach to historically Black colleges and universities and the ALA Black Caucus. Total SACO production in fiscal 1999 saw over 2000 new subject headings and nearly 400 revisions to existing headings.
Work on implementation of subfield $v continues. Since February 1999, form subdivisions which function as forms are being coded $v rather than $x in bibliographic records. Form subdivisions in authority records are also being coded as $v; to date about half of the records have been recoded. Form subdivisions in existing bibliographic records are only being recoded on a case-by-case basis.
LC is conducting an experiment in assigning subject headings to individual works of fiction, using draft guidelines prepared by CPSO. This will provide a means to evaluate the guidelines prior to their inclusion in the Subject Cataloging Manual.
Changes in subject headings and subdivisions included the following:
The headings Organ and Organs were cancelled and consolidated into one heading Organ (Musical instrument).
The subdivision –Psychology under the heading Music was revised to the standard free-floating form of –Psychological aspects.
3. Report of IFLA liaison
Lois Mai Chan reported on the 1999 IFLA Conference. The Open Forum of the Section on Classification and Indexing included a paper by Lois Mai Chan, Xia Lin and Marcia Lei Zeng entitled Structural and Multi-lingual Approaches to Subject Access on the Web. It discussed recent efforts to impose structure on and to improve multilingual access to web resources.
A pre-conference to the 2001 IFLA meeting is being planned. The theme will be “Subject Retrieval in an Automated World” and papers on teaching in classification and indexing, trends in subject analysis and building subject gateways are anticipated.
4. Dewey report
It was reported that there can be a delay of a week before DDC numbers appear in LC records. Dewey for Windows 2.0 has been released; it includes an improved notes feature. Paper publication of DC& has been discontinued and replaced by electronic editions and the web site.
5. Report of the SAC Subcommittee on the Revision of the Fiction Guidelines
The manuscript of the revision of Guidelines on Subject Access to Individual Works of Fiction, Drama, Etc. has been approved and is now at ALA editions. The date of publication was not known at this time. An exploration of electronic distribution of the guidelines, in particular the creation and maintenance of the authority records, was started.
6. Report of the SAC Subcommittee on Form Headings/Subdivisions Implementation
The subcommittee has completed its charge and was disbanded.
7. Report of the SAC Subcommittee on Metadata and Subject Analysis
The subcommittee presented its report, Subject Data in the Metadata Record: Recommendations and Rationale, at a forum earlier in the conference. A discussion forum on the recommendations will be held at the annual meeting in Chicago. The subcommittee is also working on program for the annual meeting in 2001. For the future, the group plans to develop a paper analyzing subject access in a variety of metadata schemes. The following web site tracks metadata schemes in use: http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/research/faculty/wevver1.html
8. Report of the SAC Subcommittee to Promote Subject Relationships/Reference Structures
Chair Gregory reported on the discussion form held earlier and outlined possible topics for future forums.
9. Report of the SAC Task Force on LSCH Subject Heading Revisions Relating to the Poor People’s Policy
Task Force chair Ruth Bogan presented the task force’s thorough report in response to their charge to review and make recommendations on thirty-three proposals for new and revised LCSH relating to poor people, as presented by Sanford Berman. The report was on the agenda for ALA Council the following day, where Council passed it.
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Last updated April 17, 2000