BCC2005/Auth/2

Report from the MLA 2005 Vancouver, BC Conference
Submitted by Marlena Frackowski, Chair

Business Meeting

The business meeting of the Authorities Subcommittee was held on Feb. 17, 2005 in Vancouver, British Columbia. In addition to the subcommittee members: Marlena Frackowski (Chair), Ralph Papakhian, Margaret Kaus, Brad Eden, Jean Harden, Michi Hoban, Candice Feldt, Nancy Sack, and LC representative, David Sommerfield, there were also present Mickey Koth and three visitors-observers. Membership issues:

Two members, Margaret Kaus (2002) and Ralph Papakhian (2001) are rotating off from the Subcommittee this year. The Chair acknowledged their contributions and suggested that Ralph Papakhian remains on the subcommittee for one more year to oversee his 680 field proposal going through the process of approval and implementation.

Agenda of the Business Meeting included highlights of ACIG meeting at ALA Annual in Orlando, and Midwinter meeting in Boston, and discussion on issues of current interest, such as:

680 draft proposal on lifting up the LC restrictions on including a public notes in the name authority record that would perform informational role similar to 680 explanatory notes in subject authority records. Ralph Papkhian prepared a draft that has been distributed prior to Vancouver conference among the Authorities Subcommittee members, and BCC members for comments.

Discussion during the business meeting centered on the relative merits of proposing the 678 field versus 680 field, for displaying clarifying information. The consensus was to proceed with the 680 field, in part because it would not require additional layer of changes in MARC format, to unlike 678 field that needs to be transformed into a public note, but will only need a removal of LC instruction “Do not use this field.” It was further decided that the parenthetical phrase “perhaps with a brief indication of a person’s vocation” would stand, and the indication of a vocation will be removed from the Bob Hope examples instead, to illustrate addition of a death date, alone.

(Recommendations were later presented during the BCC business meeting that decided that after some “beefing-up” of the justification for using 680 instead of 678 field for such a purpose, the proposal should be presented to BCC for final approval, and forwarded do CPSO by BCC Chair).

The Subcommittee discussed also its role in cooperating with MARC Formats Subcommittee project on finding a solution, and possibly formulating recommendations for elevating annoying problems of inadequate automatic processing (flipping) of heading containing collective titles. The Subcommittee suggested coding the fixed field of authority record in order to “flag” the record as not suitable for automatic processing. The work in conjunction with the MARC Formats Subcommittee will be carried on after the meeting.

Open meeting

The open meeting was held as part of a joint Authorities/MARC Subcommittee meeting on February 18, 2005. The Authorities portion of the meeting included the Chair’s report on 680 proposal status (see above), liaison report on ACIG (Authority Control Interest Group) activities at ALA 2004 Annual in Orlando, and at the Midwinter 2005 in Boston meetings. The liaison reported also on MRC (Media Resources Committee) dissolution as result of its inability and/or unwillingness to transform itself into an ALCTS Interest Group. In addition, Mickey Koth reported on Types of Composition Document updates, and Joe Bartl, on a progress in 053 LC pilot project implementation.

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Last updated April 30, 2005