BCC2003/C/2

Bibliographic Control Committee
Report from the 2003 Austin Conference

The open meeting of the Bibliographic Control Committee was held on Friday morning, February 14th, to a packed house. The Chair began by introducing the current members of the Committee, then announced several vacancies on the subcommittees. Mention was also made of the two joint subcommittee meetings, which were scheduled for later that day.

Jerry McBride, Chair of the Task Force to Advise the Music Thesaurus Project, offered a brief report on the group's progress. Nearly all of the Library of Congress music-related subject headings have been deconstructed and categorized. Only a few “troublesome” headings remain. In response to a question from the audience, Harriette Hemmasi, Director of the Project, responded that she foresees the thesaurus being employed as part of a front-end application to aid users in the identification of appropriate subject-search terminology.

Ms. Hemmasi then delivered the centerpiece presentation of the meeting, in which she described the Variations2 Project at Indiana University. Referring to the V2 data model, which relates the entities of “work,” “instantiation,” “container,” “media object,” and “contributor,” see discussed the role of metadata in the development of a digital music library. Comparisons were also made with the IFLA model, as outlined in the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records report (FRBR). The Variations2 homepage may be found at http://variations2.indiana.edu, while the FRBR homepage is at http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/wgfrbr/wgfrbr.htm.

During its two business meetings, the Committee discussed on-going budgetary concerns, the Association's role in setting metadata standards for music materials, as well as potential program topics for 2004.

Four of the BCC liaisons attended the annual ALA meeting in Atlanta, while due to budget constraints only two attended the midwinter meeting in Philadelphia. Each communicated the music community's perspective on various issues within the broader cataloging environment. Written reports of the meetings, including those of the Authority Control in the Online Environment Interest Group (ACIG), Media Resources Committee (MRC), Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA), Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information (MARBI), and Subject Analysis Committee (SAC), are available on the BCC website at http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/BCC/bcc.html, along with annual reports from the Library of Congress and OCLC representatives.

There was only one BCC personnel change this year, as Terri Simpkins (Middlebury College) resigned his position as Chair of the Authorities Subcommittees. The Committee wishes him well in all of his future pursuits.

Submitted by Matthew Wise
Chair, Bibliographic Control Committee

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Last updated June 7, 2003