BCC2003/SDC/3

Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access

ALA Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, June 21 and 23, 2003

Reported by Matthew Wise, Chair, Bibliographic Control Committee

The Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) met in two sessions during the joint conference of the Canadian and American Library Associations in Toronto. Highlights of interest to the music library community are given below.

Report from the Chair: Kristin Lindlan
Due to concerns about the spread of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), as well as for other unrelated reasons, attendance at the annual meeting was low. Thus, the Chair reported that many CC:DA members would be absent and/or replaced by substitutes, as was the case with the MLA representative, Nancy Lorimer. Matthew Wise acted in her stead.

Report from Library of Congress Representative: Ann Della Porta (for Barbara Tillett)
The Library of Congress regretfully reported that it would not be having an exhibit booth or representatives at the ALA Placement Center during the Toronto conference. It was announced that Dr. Deanna Marcum was recently named the new Associate Librarian for Library Services. Also, the Cataloging Directorate has nearly completed the process of hiring 50 new catalogers and Dewey classifiers, including three new catalogers for music and sound recordings. LC has virtually completed a project to catalog its 78-rpm sound recordings, totaling nearly 40,000 discs. Finding aids have been created for ten significant archival collections, including those of Irving Fine and Nicholas Slonimsky. And work has begun to process the arrearage of nearly 140,000 compact discs.

Report from the ALA Representative to the Joint Steering Committee: Matthew Beacom
Proposals from the Canadian Committee on Cataloging and a counter proposal from the Music Library Association to replace current SMD's in Chapters 6, 7, and 9 with “terms in common use” were discussed. Although there continues to be confusion about the source and ambiguity of such terms, the Committee agreed that a very short list of generic, controlled terms is preferred. Matthew Wise noted that the current SMD's function dually to identify the “objectness” of a carrier (i.e., page, disc, tape, cassette, etc.), as well as its “mode of infixation” (i.e., alpha-numeric text, musical notation, two-dimensional graphic, moving-image, three-dimensional, sound, etc.). In many cases the proposed “terms in common use” would not fulfill the second function, such as the term “compact disc” which does not differentiate to the average user between a sound recording and a computer program. It was noted by the Committee, however, that the Chapter 6 proposal from MLA was the more thorough and should be used as a model for any SMD revisions, if any, to Chapters 7 and 9. Discussion on the topic will continue.

Rule Change Proposals
John Hostage (for Charles Croissant) presented a proposal to align the AACR2 Appendix A capitalization rules for German with the new orthographic rules officially accepted by the governments of German-speaking countries in 1998. Although CC:DA was in favor of making such changes, it was noted that the proposal did not take into account the potential need to revise examples throughout the rules. And so, the proposal was sent back for further development.

Selina Lin (for She Deng) outlined a proposal to delete the Turkish word “Bir” from the Appendix E list of initial articles, claiming that many communities of grammarians and librarians do not consider it to be insignificant. However, it was noted that several communities had not been consulted during the development of the proposal. Also, the rules had not been scanned for occurrences of the word in examples. The proposal was returned pending further revision and comment.

Adam Schiff introduced a proposal to simplify rule 12.1E1 regarding when to transcribe or supply other title information for serials and integrating resources. After much discussion by the Committee about their discomfort with a particular use of the word “always,” the proposal was approved as amended.

John Attig proposed a change to the definition of “coloured illustration” in AACR2, which currently states that it must consist of “two or more colours -- neither black nor white is a colour.” This results in the fact that an illustration in black and red on white paper is not to be considered “coloured.” The Committee voted to approve the proposed change to rule 2.5C3, as well as to the Appendix D glossary definition.

Report from the Task Force on Rule 21.0D: Jennifer Bowen (for Ann Caldwell)
The Task Force on Rule 21.0D has been charged to examine this optional rule and its related LCRI on the designation of function in headings (e.g., comp., ed., ill, tr., etc.), as well as the equivalent MARC $4 relator codes. The Task Force has already identified several advantages to providing such relator terms, namely for better OPAC display arrangement, web-list generation, and automated record “FRBRization.” However, there remain several difficult issues that will need to be resolved before the Task Force can make any recommendations. For example, how should one designate the multiple functions of a single entity (e.g., Leonard Bernstein as composer and conductor -- multiple headings/single term or single heading/multiple terms?). And how should one designate an entity's relationship to only some, but not all analytics (e.g., David Shifrin playing on only one track). Metadata relator terms will also be examined.

Report from the Task Force on an Appendix of Major/Minor Changes: Cynthia Whitacre
Originally conceived as an appendix to AACR2, in order to assist catalogers in deciding whether certain differences between items were significant enough to prompt the creation of a new bibliographic record, the “Appendix” was approved by the Committee for separate ALA publication. The Task Force also recommended that the document should appear simultaneously on the web. But then why would anyone want to buy it?

Report of the Task Force on the Reconceptualization of Chapter 9: Michael Chopey
The Task Force continues to analyze the effect of moving the rules for the description of electronic resources out of Chapter 9 and into the appropriate content chapters. They are considering the renaming of Chapter 2 to just “Texts,” so that the rules for electronic texts might be included there. Other preliminary rule revisions include the rewriting of chapter scope statements, the rules for the choice of sources of information, and complex types of physical description statements (e.g., 12 scores on 1 CD-ROM). If the reconceptualization were successful, Chapter 9 would remain to describe only computer software, numeric data, computer-oriented multimedia, and online systems and services.

Report of the Task Force on Consistency across Part I of AACR2: John Attig
The Task Force has been working with an alpha-prototype of the reorganized Part I to delete those rules in the latter chapters that are consistent with those in Chapter 1. So far, they have de-duped Area 2 (Edition Statement), Area 3 (Material or Type of Publication Specific Details), Area 4 (Publication, Distribution Statement), and Area 6 (Series Statement). Once complete, the expected result would be a more significant Chapter 1 (with more examples in all formats) and a set of slimmer remaining chapters for “special” rules.

Report from the CC:DA Webmaster: John Attig
The Webmaster reported that ALA's new website design and content management system have been causing havoc with the structure and usefulness of the Committee's pages. Currently, only a minimal page of CC:DA links exists on the ALCTS site. So until such issues are resolved, full CC:DA documentation will only reside on the “non-public” Penn State server at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/personal/jca/ccda/ccda.html.

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Last updated August 5, 2003