BCC2002/Auth/6

Authorities Subcommittee

2002 Annual Report

Members: Terry Simpkins (Chair), Anita Breckbill, Marlena Frackowski, Robert Freeborn, Lucas Graves, Margaret Kaus, Ralph Papakhian, David Sommerfield (LC Representative), Jeanette Thompson

The annual business meeting of the Authorities Subcommittee was held on Feb. 19, 2002 in Las Vegas, Nev. The open meeting was held the next day with approximately 60 attendees.

This past year, the Subcommittee investigated each term and citation in the Types of Compositions for Use in Music Uniform Titles (available at: http://www.library.yale/edu cataloging/music/types.htm) document. We submitted our findings to Mickey Koth, who corrected the minor errors we identified and reserved major inconsistencies for further discussion and, if necessary, referral to the Library of Congress. Mickey also gave a report on terms added to the list in the past year and terms still in the queue. We also decided that a small group of 2-3 interested Subcommittee members would work with Mickey throughout the year via email to discuss individual terms as people submitted them for inclusion in the document. Particularly difficult decisions would be forwarded to the entire Subcommittee for discussion, either by email or at our annual meeting.

The Subcommittee also discussed the Interim Report of the PCC SCS Task Group on the Function of the Authority File (available at: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/tgauthrpt.html). The report advocates expanding the maintenance role of the national authority file, and suggests ways to do this. The Subcommittee discussed some of the proposals in the report, and tried to identify potential problems with respect to music headings. We decided to prepare a response to the PCC SCS Task Group detailing our concerns. This was done and submitted to the Task Group in late March, 2002.

For the open meeting at the 2004 MLA Annual Conference, the Subcommittee is pursuing the idea of a program on how authority control is being used (or not) in various metadata schemes, especially the problem of linking names to titles for musical works. Other, related, topics might include how various digital sheet music collections currently on the Web handle authority control.

Finally, Terry Simpkins attended the ALA Annual and Midwinter meetings in his role as liaison to the ALCTS Media Resources Committee and LITA/ALCTS Authority Control in the Online Environment Interest Group.

Submitted by Terry Simpkins

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Last updated November 12, 2002