BCC2005/LC2005
Sound Recording Cataloging
In FY2004 SMCD staff processed and removed from the arrearage 55,070 commercially-available discs and tapes. Highlights include
New Initiatives include the following:
Score and Book Cataloging
Score Cataloging. FY2004 accomplishments: 2,544 scores cataloged originally at the core or full level; 1,539 scores copy-cataloged, and 14 scores received brief-level cataloging.
Book Cataloging. FY2004 accomplishments: 2,176books cataloged originally at the core or full level; 598 books copy-cataloged.
Collection Records. SMCD in cooperation with the Music Division, has created several bibliographic records covering several significant Library collections. Examples of these records include the Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection, the Moldenhauer archives at the Library of Congress. This particular manifestation of the archive (there are other Moldenhauer archives, and, most recently, the 15,000-item Charles Mingus collection.
Authority Work
053 Pilot. SMCD catalogers now input into NARs the class and cutter for persons and bodies represented as the subject of new works being classed in ML410–ML429. Responsibility to input these 053 cannot yet be shared among other NACO Music libraries.
NACO Music. Correspondence and bibliographic file maintenance:
Other Activities
Pazdírek. The Universal-Handbuch der Musikliteratur aller Zeiten und Völker, the reference source for primarily 19th century published music (33 volumes), is being digitized by the Preservation Directorate staff. The bibliographic record for the set includes an 856 field containing the URL to link users to the digitized version on the Library's server. Four volumes have been completed.
CJK Manual. Music-related chapters of a new draft of the CJK Manual compiled by the Technical Processing Committee of the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) were reviewed by Michi Hoban (MSR 1) and Jungja Yoon (MSR 2). The manual is designed as an aid in cataloging instruction by providing illustrative examples of AACR 2 rules; the current revision will include examples for AACR2 chapters 5–6.
Music Division/SMCD Goals Group. Newly-formed this fiscal year, this committee consists of SMCD and Music Division management and staff. Agenda highlights from this inaugural year include score selection policy review, cataloging priority review, and the disposition of score accompanying material (CDs, DVDs, CD-ROMs).
Z39.50 Search Client (zClient). Developed by Dick Thaxter (MBRS), this portal software allows simultaneous database searching (OCLC, RLIN, and LCDB) for CDs, LPs, scores, and books. This software provides easy viewing of utitlity records and pre-processed import of desirable copy into Voyager. This software will be used extensively throughout the MSR teams during the coming year.
Notable Acquisitions
Isaac Stern Collection: original lacquers and tapes.
Morton Gould Collection: lacquer discs of radio programs.
1980s and 1990s techno dance music from the collection of Joel Bevacqua (aka DJ Deadly Buda).
Recordings from the manuscript collection of Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Over 800 published cassettes and CDs containing storytelling.
Joseph Roisman Collection: Budapest String Quartet unpublished recordings.
Robert Hall Lewis Collection: multi-format collection from the American composer.
Thomas Rimer Collection: published classical LP recordings.
Paul Muldavin Collection: children’s recordings on 78s and LPs.
Processing
The MBRS Recorded Sound Processing Unit is cataloging all “playable” formats in the Voyager ILS to provide access via the LC online public catalog. Archival materials requiring preservation are being inventoried on MAVIS, an in-house collections control system. All incoming collections and daily accessions from the US Copyright Office receive acquisitions-level records in MAVIS as well. In preparation for the move of collections in Spring/Summer 2005 to the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, library technicians have been inventorying various unprocessed collections in MAVIS.
Cataloging Digital Audio in MARC. The Recorded Sound Processing Unit has begun cataloging digital audio files in the ILS. The LC Magnetic Laboratory is digitally preserving a collection of unpublished Voice of America analog tapes which feature primarily live music concerts and festivals. After the tapes are inventoried in MAVIS and preserved in the Lab, they are cataloged in the ILS using a new approach that the unit developed with assistance from the Cataloging Policy and Support Office. In this new approach, the digital file is cataloged in the bibliographic record with a 534 field to describe the original analog tape. This approach to cataloging LC’s digital audio files in MARC will most likely be revised to suit different types of formats, retrospective preservation projects, and status of cataloging.
Cataloging Highlights
H.V. Greenough Collection: large collection of classical music recordings including many Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts.
Marlboro Festival concerts.
A.F.R. Lawrence Collection: 78rpm vinyl test pressings from original Columbia masters.
Voice of America: World Music Festival.
Garabedian Collection of radio recordings.
Office of War Information radio recordings: many in Chinese and Japanese.
WRC radio collection: 1955 airchecks from the local Washington, D.C. radio station.
Library of Congress Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature.
Library of Congress concerts, programs and symposia.
Radio Programs of Greek Culture from Fresno Free College Foundation.
Major Technician Processing Projects. In one project, technicians work with cataloger/trainers from SMCD to copy catalog several unprocessed LP collections in the ILS. In another, technicians are using templates and record-cloning to catalog a collection of 16-inch vinyl electrical transcription discs in the ILS.
National Audio-Visual Conservation Center Update
The MBRS Division continues to prepare for the summer 2005 move of all A/V collections to the collection storage building that is nearing completion in Culpeper, Virginia (see also section 6 below). The preparation for the move of nearly 3 million sound recordings will be the focus of the Recorded Sound Section efforts this spring. The LC Conservation Office has provided 7 temporary staff to assist in collection preparation projects, which include cleaning, packing, labeling and inventorying audio collections. In addition, a move coordinator is being hired by M/B/RS to work closely with the moving company once that contract is awarded.
Key 2004 Acquisitions
New Collections
Marc Blitzstein: Small collection of letters from composer Blitzstein to Mina Curtiss (1938–1962); collection of letters to Morris Golde.
David Diamond Collection: Music manuscripts, correspondence, and papers.
Wanda Landowska Collection
Jonathan Larwon Collection: 3000 scripts, recordings, music manuscripts, and other papers.
Alex North Collection: Significant collection of manuscripts of concert music and works for stage. Included are such works as a ballet for Martha Graham.
Tony Walton Collection: Set designs, posters, costume designs for shows such as Anything Goes, Chicago, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Guys and Dolls, Pippin, She Loves Me, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and others.
Additions to Existing Collections
Herman Berlinski: Additions to the collection. Correspondence, programs, and other papers relating to the Washington composer.
Oscar Hammerstein Collection: 6,000 papers and letters relating to lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.
Seeger Collection: Biographical materials relating to Ruth Crawford Seeger, Charles Seeger, and Peggy Seeger.
Additions of Important Single Items
Fred Astaire: Steps in Time. Portions of the first draft. Holograph manuscript.
Samuel Barber: Two holograph music manuscripts (Violin Sonata; Prelude for organ).
Boethius: De Musica. Edited by Glarean (Basel, 1546).
Benjamin Carr: Poor Richard for voice and harp. Holograph music manuscript. Philadelphia, ca. 1799–1805.
David Diamond: Small collection of letters to Morris Golde.
George Gershwin: Holograph piano-vocal score of the song “Of Thee I Sing,” from the show of the same title.
G.F.Handel: Manuscript score containing selections from eight operas; first edition full score of Flavius (London, 1723).
Victor Herbert: Holograph piano-vocal score for The Century Girl (1916); signed contracts for The Wizard of the Nile (1896).
Jerome Kern: Holograph sketch score for Hyson Dance.
Otto and Lotte Klemperer: Collection of letters to Helene and Max Hirshler.
Makanda Ken McIntyre Collection: Music manuscripts, papers, photographs, and recordings of the composer, musician, and educator.
Ned Rorem: Collection of letters to Morris Golde.
I Hear America Singing
Since the January 23, 2004 release of the site (www.loc.gov/ihas), four other releases have been introduced: A Patchwork Quilt: Dolly Parton and the Roots of Country Music (4/14/04); The Transit of Venus March (5/05/04); Gerry Mulligan Collection update (7/16/04); and Civil War Sheet Music (9/30/04).
The I Hear America Singing (IHAS) Web site serves as a portal for visitors and scholars to experience the diversity of American performing arts through the Library of Congress’s unsurpassed collections of scores, sheet music, audio recordings, films, photographs, maps, and other materials. Special presentations on selected topics highlight some of the unique and unusual materials in the Library’s collections. IHAS also allows the Library the opportunity to research and use new Web technologies. The site currently uses METS and MODS digital library standards for the creation and derivation of metadata, XML software and tools, and other open source software such as Cocoon. Reusable digital object models have been created for Web presentation. The design of the Web pages is based on usability testing.
Educational Outreach
The Music Division participated in The National Overture to Education and the Arts, a statewide arts education program in New Mexico. Staff members met with teachers, school administrators, parents, and students, and participated in workshops, panels and presentations of music manuscripts.
This report covers 2003 and 2004.
General
Integrated Library System. The ILS Office continued to expand access and improve service for users of the Library of Congress Online Catalog, http://catalog.loc.gov. In 2004, the Library increased the number of simultaneous OPAC users by almost 25 percent, and saw a resulting decline in the number of customers who could not be accommodated. LC installed a proxy server in March 2004, which functions as a front-end to LC’s Voyager Z39.50 server. This proxy has improved ILS system performance by handling in-bound Z39.50 traffic more efficiently. In 2005, the ILS Office will continue to monitor external use and seek ways to increase access for those users. ILS staff continued to test the Unicode conversion of the LC Database. The ILS Office has tentative plans to upgrade to the Voyager with Unicode Release before the end of calendar year 2005, but has not yet scheduled a date for this upgrade.
ClassWeb Maps. CPSO announced an enhancement to ClassWeb in which maps that are included in the printed edition of the G schedule became available online using digitized color versions of them provided by the Geography & Map Division. The maps were posted to the CPSO Web site and 133 links to them made at appropriate locations throughout the G schedule (G1000, G2200, G2080, G3700, G4060, etc.). CPSO and G&M have received a number of inquiries in the last few years from map and atlas catalogers about the possibility of having these maps available online, and this enhancement was in response to that interest.
Database Improvement. In June 2004 CPSO began a one-year pilot project for a Database Improvement Unit to develop, analyze, and document maintenance procedures for the online catalog. The unit corrects authority, bibliographic, holdings, and item records, and develops procedures and streamlined operations for the maintenance of the bibliographic and authority databases. Staff for the pilot, who are on detail to CPSO, consist of three catalogers and one cataloging technician. To date, the unit has updated over 200,000 records, mainly obsolete subject headings on bibliographic records.
053 Project. In conjunction with the Music and Sound Recordings Teams in the Special Materials Cataloging Division, CPSO began a pilot project to test adding Library of Congress Classification (LCC) numbers for biographies and bio/critical works to name authority records for individuals and corporate bodies in the field of music. Field 053 in MARC 21 authority records carries these numbers. The relevant LCC classes are in the span ML410-ML429, and each 053 field includes the main class number and cuttered subclass for the individual or corporate body written about. The advantages of including 053 fields are that they will save cataloging time, not only for LC catalogers, but for other libraries that capture information from these authority records; they enable LC to resolve problems of duplicate cutters or even duplicate classes that may have been used for a person or group over the more than 100 years that class M has been in existence; and the class numbers can be used as links from the authority record to LC’s online shelflist. In CPSO the work is entirely retrospective, while in SMCD 053 fields are added to newly created as well as pre-existing authority records. Approximately 700 053 fields have been added so far. During period of the pilot, name authority records with these 053 fields are being distributed.
Music Cataloging Advisory Group. The MCAG, with membership from the American Folklife Center, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division (MBRS), Music Division, and Music and Sound Recordings Teams (MSR) from the Special Materials Cataloging Division, continued to meet under the chairmanship of the music policy specialist in CPSO. The major project over the last couple of years has been the merging of the Music Cataloging Decisions (MCD) with the Library of Congress Rule Interpretations (LCRI) so that there will be only one body of commentary on music cataloging under AACR2. Done by a working group chaired by Stephen Yusko, assisted by Richard Hunter (MSR I), George Kipper (MBRS), David Sommerfield (MSR II) and Valerie Weinberg (MSR II), the project has been turned over to the LCRI editor, who will incorporate it as part of LCRI 2005 Update, no. 1, to be published in April or May. The MCAG also reviewed classification issues related to computer sound processing, which can be assigned to TK as well as class M, where two classes have been used. A caption, Computer sound processing, will be added to TK7881.4, Sound systems. Sound recording. Sound reproduction, and revisions to the M schedule will be made, including addition of a class for digital audio editors.
The MCAG also initiated meetings with the Network Development/MARC Standards Office (ND/MSO) that led to two changes in the coding of uniform titles for musical works: 1) data that are normally recorded in subfield $m as part of a statement of medium of performance go in subfield $a or $t when they are part of a collective uniform title for a specific medium of performance (e.g., piano, 4 hands; pianos (2)); and 2) the abbreviations “acc.” and “unacc.” are recorded in subfield $m when they are additions to a statement of medium. The MCAG also urged that discrepancies with regard to subfield $n be resolved, in particular the name of this subfield, which should not contain the phrase “Number of part/section,” but should be changed to “Numbering.” ND/MSO felt this situation needed a MARBI Discussion Paper before it could be adopted, and will prepare that paper in consultation with a representative from one of the MSR teams.
Descriptive Cataloging
2004 Update to AACR2. LC implemented the 2004 Update to AACR2 on September 1, 2004. LC’s implementation plans are available on the CPSO Website.
JSC. The chief of CPSO, Dr. Barbara Tillett, serves as LC’s representative to the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. CPSO policy specialists have been active in reviewing drafts of the various sections of the code revisions as they have been written. While the rules will, to a large extent, be integrated, sections for rules particular to the description of music and sound recordings will continue to be included. Many staff members throughout the Bibliographic Access divisions are participating in the review and are thereby contributing to the official LC responses to the JSC that CPSO has been preparing in the course of the new code’s development. A background paper on AACR3 by Dr. Tillett, “AACR3: Resource Description and Access,” is available on the JSC’s public Website, http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/current.html.
Greek Romanization. In response to reactions CPSO received to the proposed revision of the ALA/LC romanization table for Greek, LC has decided not to make any changes to the Greek table at this time. LC is looking forward to such time as the Library can prepare bibliographic records with the Greek characters included, using Unicode, and can provide the romanization of those characters through computer program.
Subject Cataloging
Implementation of Second Indicator in 655 Fields. With the updating of internal tag tables in LC’s Voyager system in the fall, LC implemented the use of the second indicator “0” to identify form/genre headings from LCSH that are assigned in 655 fields. Use of the indicator replaces assignment of second indicator “7” in combination with “lcsh” in a subfield $2. Instructions sheets in the Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings will be revised to reflect this change with the first update for 2005 to be issued in the spring.
Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings. CPSO added a new instruction sheet, H 1918, Musical Instruments, which consolidated information that was dispersed and introduced a policy to allow the establishment of brand and model number headings for electronic instruments or devices. The headings can be used for general works and for instructional works on the technical features or operation of the electronic instrument or device. The generic name for the electronic instrument must be used in medium of performance headings for music and for instructional works on how to play the instrument. Among other revisions, added to H 250, Music Heading Authority Records, was a list of headings for vocal forms that can be qualified by language. H 1160 Pattern Headings: Musical Compositions, was given a new section on the order of subdivisions for musical works.
Class M. A revised edition of the LCC M schedule is in preparation and will become available online later this year. There will also be a print version.
Subject Headings in the Field of Music
During the latter part of 2004, the American Folklife Center moved its main offices and its Folklife Reading Room to new and improved locations in the Thomas Jefferson Building.
In 2004, the Library of Congress published another in its series of collection guides, “Library of Congress American Folklife Center: An Illustrated Guide.” Written by AFC editor James Hardin, the guide traces the growth of the Library’s folklife collection from its roots in the Archive of American Folk-Song, which was founded at the Library in 1928. The Archive of American Folk-Song was incorporated into the AFC when the Center was created by Congress in 1976 “to preserve and present American folklife.”
Key 2004 Acquisitions
The Alan Lomax Collection was acquired as a result of a cooperative agreement between the AFC and the Association for Cultural Equity, with the generous assistance of an anonymous donor. The collection comprises the unparalleled ethnographic documentation collected by the legendary folklorist Alan Lomax over a period of sixty years, including more than 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of motion picture film, 2,450 videotapes, 2,000 scholarly books and journals, hundreds of photographic prints and negatives, and over 120 linear feet of manuscript material.
Violette Maloney Halpert, of St. John’s, Newfoundland, donated a collection of audio field recordings, photographs, fieldnotes and other documentary materials created by her late husband, folklorist Herbert Halpert. The collection comprises materials representing Halpert’s research work from the 1940s and 1950s, which documented folk music and other aspects of traditional culture in Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, New Jersey, and New York.
Ethnomusicologist Martha Forsyth, of West Newton, Massachusetts, donated a collection of over 275 original field recordings of traditional songs and instrumental music of Bulgaria, which she recorded between 1978 and 2004, along with associated indexes and lists.
Folklorist Don Yoder, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, donated a collection of his field recordings that document aspects of Pennsylvania Dutch culture, particularly folk belief, sermons and religious music, folksong, and harvest festivals. The collection comprises 79 reel-to-reel tape recordings, and was created by Yoder over the course of more than thirty years.
Pete and Toshi Seeger, of Beacon, New York, donated their film collection to the American Folklife Center in 2003. It was accessioned at the Library of Congress in 2004. Beginning in the mid-1950s, the Seegers began to document on film the music, dance, games, and occupational culture of the many places they visited around the world. The Pete and Toshi Seeger Film Collection includes film shot from 1957 to 1965, with footage of such important musicians as Big Bill Broonzy, Odetta, Bob Gibson, and Elizabeth Cotten. The National Folk Festival (1957) and a Texas prison (1965) are also documented, as well as the Seeger family’s ten-month performing tour during 1963 and 1964 which included stops in Japan, Indonesia, India, East and West Africa, Israel, the USSR, and Ireland.
Processing, Cataloging, and Arrearage Reduction
Significant progress was made in the area of arrearage reduction during 2004 while, at the same time, many new collections have continued to arrive. The pace of processing and cataloging work at the Center were accelerated as a result of the hiring of two new staff members, cataloger Margaret Kruesi, and processing technician Sarah Bradley Leighton.
The Save Our Sounds [SOS] Recorded Heritage Preservation Project is currently in its fourth year and progress continues on many SOS collections earmarked for digitization. The goal of SOS is to digitally preserve some of the most endangered sound collections from the Archive of Folk Culture in the American Folklife Center and in the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archive and Collections at the Smithsonian Institution. Initial funding from Save America's Treasures has been supplemented by other grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Grammy Foundation, the Rex Foundation, and other sources.
Significant progress in AFC collections being processed and digitized include:
New National Digital Library Program Presentations
In 2004, two new AFC web presentations were posted on the Library of Congress’s National Digital Library website. “Voices from the Days of Slavery: Former Slaves Tell Their Stories” comprises interviews and songs collected between 1932 and 1975 from people known to have been former slaves. The website is available at http://memory.loc..gov/ammem/collections/voices/.
“Community Roots: Selections from the Local Legacies Project” was also posted. The Local Legacies Project documented local traditions from all fifty states, as well as United States trusts, territories, and the District of Columbia. Members of Congress and individuals across the nation were involved in the celebration of the Library of Congress Bicentennial and America’s richly diverse culture through the Local Legacies Project. The Community Roots presentation of Local Legacies was developed from the materials collected in 1999 and 2000. It can be accessed at http://www.loc.gov/folklife/roots/.
Ethnographic Thesaurus Project
Working in partnership with AFC, the American Folklore Society applied for and received a grant of $484,000 in 2003 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create an Ethnographic Thesaurus (ET). In recognition of the fact that there is no standard for describing traditional culture in an agreed-upon vocabulary, the project will create an online, searchable ethnographic thesaurus that will serve as an authoritative list of subject terms for those working in folklore and ethnomusicology, as well as in the related fields of anthropology, literature, and music, and also for the general community of researchers. During the summer of 2004, the ET Board and Advisory Group hired four contractual staff (lexicographer, database manager, and two subject specialists) to begin work on the project. The American Folklore Society is hosting a website for discussion and dissemination of information about the project. The completed thesaurus will be available for permanent use and revision on the American Folklore Society’s website in 2007.
SERVICE UNIT REALIGNMENT
On July 2, 2004, Associate Librarian for Library Services Deanna Marcum announced new reporting lines for the top levels of management in Library Services. The purpose of the realignment was to emphasize the collections; streamline processes of acquisitions and cataloging; and recognize electronic resources as an increasingly important component of the collections. Most of the fifty-three Library Services divisions are now grouped into five directorates: Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access (ABA); Collections and Services; Partnerships and Outreach Programs; Preservation; and Technology Policy.
The new ABA Directorate merges acquisitions and cataloging functions, recognizing that both functions serve the goal of building the Library’s collections and providing access to information and knowledge. The Instructional Design and Training Division (IDTD, formerly the Technical Processing and Automation Instruction Office) also became part of ABA, but will design and deliver training for all of Library Services.
The new Collections and Services Directorate brings together all divisions with reading rooms or collections management responsibilities. The Partnerships and Outreach Directorate include the Business Enterprises and Retail Marketing units, the Center for the Book, Federal Library and Information Center Committee, Interpretive Programs Office, National Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Office of Scholarly Programs, Publishing Office, Veterans History Project, and Visitor Services Office.
The Technology Policy Directorate consists of the Automation Planning and Liaison Office, the Integrated Library System (ILS) Program Office, and the Network Development and MARC Standards Office. The Preservation Directorate encompasses the Binding and Collections Care, Conservation, Preservation Reformatting, and Preservation Research and Testing divisions; the Mass Deacidification Program; and the National Digital Newspaper/United States Newspaper Program.
The National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and the American Folklife Center report directly to the Associate Librarian. The new organizational structure also includes a Deputy Associate Librarian and an administrative services office. The realignment positions all divisions to work toward greater resource sharing and more efficient work processes to improve service to Congress and other Library users.
NATIONAL AUDIO-VISUAL CONSERVATION CENTER
NAVCC in Culpeper. Construction on the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) continued on schedule throughout 2004. The NAVCC, located in Culpeper, Virginia, is a state-of-the-art complex that will consolidate the activities of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division (MBRS) in one central facility, while also greatly increasing preservation efficiencies and throughput. The 45-acre NAVCC campus is being built with extraordinary private-sector support from the Packard Humanities Institute, and is comprised of four building components totaling 420,000 square feet of space. The first phase of the Center will be completed this May, at which time the Library will begin moving its sound and moving image holdings into the 140,000 square foot Collections Storage Building. The second phase will be completed one year later, in May 2006, at which time the Library will move the MBRS Division staff and preservation laboratories into the newly constructed Conservation Building, and relocate its nitrate film holdings into 124 dedicated nitrate storage vaults.
Preservation of Audio-Visual Collections: Analog and Digital. The MBRS Recording Laboratory in Washington completed the transition to digital audio preservation in 2004. The Laboratory’s audio preservation projects are now reformatted to digital audio files only; ten-inch analog tapes and digital audiotape reference copies are no longer produced. The Recording Lab’s preservation production for 2004 included the creation of 5,638 digital sound files. The Recorded Sound Processing Unit and the Recording Laboratory worked closely to establish new and more efficient workflows facilitate digital preservation and metadata creation.
National Preservation Boards and Foundations. MBRS continued to administer the activities of the National Film and Recording Preservation Boards, and the selection of the titles by the Librarian of Congress to the National Film and Recording registries. During the year, the Library retained the Council on Library and Information Resources to commence the Congressionally mandated study on the state of recorded sound preservation in the United States. In January, a roundtable of audio preservation engineers was convened to identify knowledge gaps in the re-formatting of analog discs and tapes, and to provide recommendations for digital reformatting preservation standards. The Recording Board also commissioned the preparation of two white papers providing legal analysis of the copyright status of (1) pre-1972 sound recordings, and (2) unpublished sound recordings, with a special focus on radio. Another project commissioned through CLIR will conducte a detailed statistical study to determine what percentage of all sound recordings published between the years 1890–1965 are currently still in print.
ACQUISITIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC ACCESS DIRECTORATE
Beacher Wiggins is the director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access and the acting assistant director for Acquisitions. Judith A. Mansfield is the assistant director for Bibliographic Access (BA), with collateral duties as chief of the Arts and Sciences Cataloging Division. Nancy Davenport, the former Director for Acquisitions, retired from the Library in July and is now President of the Council on Library and Information Resources.
Bibliographic Access Divisions
Access-level record. With a realistic understanding that the resources available for cataloging electronic resources are unlikely to increase, and that the volume of requests to catalog such resources will increase, the BA Divisions began investigating ways to provide catalog records that support resource discovery, but at a lower cataloging cost. The concept of an “access level” MARC/AACR catalog record comes from a recent report from an internal LC workgroup operating under the former Cataloging Directorate Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2003/2004 (for the full report, see http://www.loc.gov/catdir/stratplan/goal4wg2report.pdf). This group recommended that a new level of cataloging be defined, emphasizing data elements that allow catalog users to search for and find records, while de-emphasizing data elements that have traditionally been used in full level records to describe and identify the resource but are not as relevant to remote access electronic resources, or do not support resource discovery.
LC’s Office of Strategic Initiatives funded a contract with a noted cataloging consultant, Tom Delsey, during the summer of 2004 to work with an LC team of cataloging and reference librarians to develop a core data set for “access level” records. The core data set was developed by analyzing the specific uses to be supported by the record, taking as the starting point the four generic user tasks (find, identify, select, and obtain) identified in the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA)’s Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records (FRBR). For each of the specific tasks, the attributes and relationships required to support the task were identified and mapped to the corresponding element in AACR and to the data elements defined in the MARC 21 formats. The project team then assigned values of “high” or “low” to each FRBR attribute/relationship, and each AACR and MARC element as the basis for defining the core data set. Delsey also assisted in the development of a draft set of “cataloging guidelines” specifically designed to address problematic cataloging issues.
In order to confirm that the proposed “access level” meets the objectives formulated for the project (functionality, cost-efficiency, and conformity with current standards), the Library of Congress will be testing the application of the proposed data set and draft cataloging guidelines on a subset of remote access electronic resources selected for inclusion in the LC Online Catalog (monographs and integrating resources only). After evaluating the results in the first quarter of 2005, LC will consult widely with stakeholders internal and external to the Library, including our traditional bibliographic partners, related to the evaluation, revision, and possible implementation of this new level of cataloging.
For more information, the project report is available at the following links for review and comment:
Project Report (25 p., including Appendices A-E): http://www.loc.gov/catdir/access/report_final.pdf
Core Data Set (20 p. data set table to accompany Appendix A): http://www.loc.gov/catdir/access/dataset_final.pdf
Note: to print, use legal sized paper with landscape orientation.
The Library welcomes comments, which may be emailed to Dave Reser at dres@loc.gov.
Arrearage Reduction. In October, the associate librarian and the director for ABA determined that the Library had completed its arrearage reduction program for collection materials in nonrare print, maps, rare books, and prints and photographs. Since the original arrearage census of September 30, 1989, the arrearage of nonrare books, microforms, and serials has been reduced from 4,042,526 items to 291,631. Thus nearly 93 percent of the original nonrare print arrearage has been eliminated. The map arrearage stood at 54,475 items as of March 31, 2004. More than ten million pictorial items have been cleared from the arrearage since September 1989—a reduction of 76.6 percent. For rare books, also a special format, the backlog has been reduced from 332,000 in September 1989 to 88,954 at the end of March 2004, a decrease of 73.2 percent. A sound management approach requires that the items remaining to be processed in these formats be handled as work on hand, using the resources that are available for processing current receipts. Accountability for these backlogs is assured through supervisors’ performance plans, individual accountability statistics collected by the BA Divisions and Serial Record Division, and divisions’ annual reports.
Intensive efforts are still underway to meet arrearage reduction goals for manuscripts, moving images, music, and sound recordings. In the area of music and sound recording arrearage reduction, the Special Materials Cataloging Division (SMCD) in fiscal year 2004 (Oct. 1, 2003–Sept. 30, 2004) processed 1,600 discs from the collection of AFRTS (Armed Forces Radio and Television Service) broadcasts, bringing total processing in this project to 120,459 items cleared. Cataloging of the Document Record Collection of more than 800 blues, jazz, boogie-woogie, gospel, and country music titles was completed. A total of 45,397 compact discs was processed. The Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection, which includes approximately 1,700 woodwind instruments as well as thousands of books, prints and photographs, printed music, patents, trade catalogs, autographs, and correspondence from wind instrument manufacturers, was cataloged on collection-level records. The Library of Congress Moldenhauer Archives of 3,600 items related to Western music history and the 15,000-item Charles Mingus Collection also received collection-level cataloging.
Bibliographic Enrichment Projects. The Library’s interdivisional Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT), led by the chief of the Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division, initiates research and development projects to increase the value of cataloging products to library users. The team’s best-known project is the enrichment of online catalog records by providing electronic table of contents data (TOC). In fiscal 2004 BEAT-developed software supported the inclusion of TOC in more than 45,000 records for Electronic Cataloging in Publication titles and enabled links to and from another 8,300 catalog records to D-TOC, or digital tables of contents, residing on a server. Links to TOC were also provided by the BEAT ONIX projects, which link LC catalog records to tables of contents, publisher descriptions, and sample text provided by publishers in ONIX, the standard for communicating book industry product information in electronic form; this fiscal year BEAT introduced links to contributor biographical information, as well as including book jacket illustrations in all of its enhancements. At year’s end there were more than 250,000 links, including links to more than 7,500 sample texts and more than 63,000 publisher descriptions of publications. The Library counted approximately 1.5 million visits this fiscal year to the D-TOC and ONIX records residing on its server; there have been more than four million visits since the project began in 2001.
In fiscal year 2004, BEAT continued its joint venture with H-NET, Humanities and Social Sciences Online, by which cataloging records for selected monographs in the LC collections were linked to H-NET Reviews. New links were made to 1,022 items, keeping within the projected range of 1,000 links to reviews per year.
Another noteworthy BEAT project has continued this year to provide significantly improved access to pre-1970 Congressional hearings, resulting in improved service to the Congress, centralized availability of information now widely dispersed throughout the Library’s collections, modernization and uniformity of catalog formats for the hearings, and addition or inclusion of other information, such as the existence and location of alternate data sources. Approximately 6,500 hearings have been identified and are being processed.
The newest BEAT project is scheduled for launch on February 1: computer-generated contents notes to be added to the 505 field of about 100,000 MARC 21 bibliographic records.
Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS)
Cataloger’s Desktop on the Web (http://www.loc.gov/cds/desktop and http://desktop.loc.gov). Desktop is now in its second year and new resources have been added, including AACR2 Rule Interpretations of the Library and Archives Canada, Canadian Subject Headings, LC Classification Outline, and Web resources from the National Library of Medicine and the National Agricultural Library. The product’s major feature is that it includes extensive linking between AACR2, the LCRIs and the MARC 21 formats.
Classification Web (http://www.loc.gov/cds/classweb and http://classweb.loc.gov). There are now more than 1,500 sites and 8,200 concurrent users for this product, which was introduced in June 2002. Of particular interest to public and foreign libraries, the LC/Dewey correlations have recently been added to the product. Enhanced links into WebDewey will be available in 2005. The product includes the entire Library of Congress Subject Headings and Library of Congress Classification schedules. Plans are currently under consideration to add the LC Name Authorities in the second half of 2005.
New training products (http://www.loc.gov/cds/training.html). The newest CDS training materials are available as economical PDF files: Basic Subject Cataloging Using LCSH (2004) and Basic Creation of Name and Title Authorities (coming September 2005) are both under the “Cooperative Cataloging Training Program” (CCT). Rules & Tools for Cataloging Internet Resources (2004) is the first publication from the “Cataloging for the 21st Century” program; four more are coming over the next two years.
Cataloging in Publication Division (CIP)
In fiscal 2004, the Bibliographic Access Divisions cataloged 53,349 CIP titles, using the same highly trained professionals and applying the same standards as for published books; average throughput time was 12.7 days, with 78 percent of all CIP records completed within fourteen calendar days.
The division continued to encourage publishers to opt for the Electronic Cataloging in Publication program (ECIP); during fiscal 2004 the number of participating ECIP publishers increased twelve percent, to 3,212, and 55 percent of all CIP titles were submitted as ECIP galleys, with the percentage of ECIP galleys climbing to 60 percent in October and 62 percent in November 2004. Since they are submitted electronically, ECIP galleys are cataloged much more quickly—often within a few hours of receipt—and without the expense of mailing and handling paper galleys. Electronic galleys also tend to be more complete than paper galleys, enabling catalogers to perform more thorough subject analysis in advance of publication.
Publisher-supplied summaries. As an enrichment of ECIP records as well as to compensate for the suspension of AC (annotated card) treatment for non-fiction juvenile titles in January 2004, the CIP division developed the CIP Guidelines for Summaries, a set of instructions and examples to assist publishers in creating clear, concise, and objective summaries for inclusion in the CIP record created during the ECIP process. A pilot program was initiated that allowed all ECIP publishers willing to adhere to the guidelines to participate by submitting summaries. For the time period of August 30 through December 3, a total of 349 summaries were received; of this total, 332 were used in CIP records exactly as they were submitted. Seventeen summaries were rejected, most often due to excessive length. Each week additional ECIP publishers request inclusion in the pilot, and the CIP Division has received positive feedback from participating publishers, including one publisher who said they “believe this is a fabulous program not only for publishers, but for libraries and consumers as well and would be a great asset to the reading community.”
In December 2003, the CIP Division's automated operations coordinator, David Bucknum, released a new version of the Text Capture and Electronic Conversion (TCEC) software application that supports ECIP cataloging. One of several significant improvements to the program is its ability to automatically process table of contents data by eliminating chapter and page designations and formatting the information according to proper cataloging practice. As a result, the number of TOCs added to records at the CIP galley stage increased 10 percent, from 33 percent during fiscal 2003 to 36 percent during fiscal 2004. At the end of November 2004, another new feature was added to the application in support of the CIP Publisher Summary project. TCEC will now automatically migrate publisher-supplied summaries into the MARC 21 bibliographic record during the TCEC process. All the cataloger need do is read the summary; if it does not meet LC's criteria, the cataloger can easily delete it, but otherwise the cataloger need do nothing.
Cataloging Policy
(See also section 4 above.)
AACR3: Resource Description and Access. Dr. Barbara Tillett’s background paper on AACR3, “AACR3: Resource Description and Access,” is now available on the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR’s public Website at: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/current.html.
FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology). Information about the FAST project is available at http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/fast. In mid-November a beta version of the FAST authority files was posted at http://fast.oclc.org. The Subject Analysis Committee (SAC) of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) of the American Library Association (ALA) has formed a subcommittee to evaluate the FAST project and provide feedback on it. The subcommittee will hold its first meeting at the Midwinter Meeting of ALA in Boston in January 2005.
LC/Dewey correlations. Through the courtesy of a cooperative agreement between OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) and CDS, LC/Dewey correlations are now available in LC’s subscription service, Classification Web, which provides access to Library of Congress Classification and Library of Congress Subject Headings on the Web. With the new correlations feature, users can enter a Dewey classification number and display a list of matches to LC subject headings or LC classification numbers as they have been applied in LC bibliographic records. Subscribers to OCLC’s WebDewey service can also link between products to obtain the most-up-to-date Dewey classification data. Information on Classification Web and LCC schedules is available at http://www.loc.gov/cds.
Copy cataloging
The Bibliographic Access divisions increased their production of copy cataloging in fiscal 2004 by nineteen percent over fiscal 2003. The divisions began reviewing copy-cataloged records produced in the Library’s field office in Rio de Janeiro. An important factor in increasing production was the use of Z-Processor, a software application that searches both bibliographic utilities, allows the searcher to view and select the best copy found, and merges the best record into the LC ILS. Specialized versions of Z-Processor search the National Library of Canada, the National Library of Australia, or the Deutsche Bibliothek via RLIN; another version is used with cataloging electronic resources. SMCD used a similar application, Z-Client, for simultaneous database searching for compact discs, longplaying sound recordings, scores, and books.
In addition, most copy cataloging in the Bibliographic Access Divisions was done according to “encoding level 7” guidelines that call for authority work to be done only to break conflicts in the catalog or to establish needed subject headings. By setting the copied records’ encoding level to “7,” the divisions signaled that full authority support was not provided and ensured that any fuller records created by other libraries would not be overlaid in the OCLC database. Divisions also made use of Marcadia, the automated copy matching service now owned by Backstage Library Works, Inc., to help process more than 4,400 items in law, the arts, and the social and physical sciences. Match rates for Marcadia searching remained stable at 22 percent in ASCD and 30 percent in the Social Sciences Cataloging Division.
Program for Cooperative Cataloging/Cooperative Cataloging Team
The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) achieved the following in fiscal 2004: Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO) participants contributed 146,645 new name authority records (NARs), 9,453 new series authority records (SARs), and revised 41,019 NARs and SARs. Since the inception of the NACO Program, cooperative libraries have contributed nearly three million name authority records to the authority file. Subject Authority Cooperative Program (SACO) participants contributed 2,558 new subject authority headings, revised 586 subject headings, and successfully proposed 1,724 new classification numbers for inclusion in LCSH and LCC. The Bibliographic Cooperative Program (BIBCO) libraries contributed a total of 71,661 records during the fiscal year.
NACO. NACO training in fiscal 2004 drew on the talents of NACO trainers from many partner institutions and centered mainly on expansion training for existing NACO libraries, with the addition of some new NACO contributors. The trainers took an active role in refining NACO training documents that are offered online.
NACO series activity reached new levels in fiscal 2004 beginning with a Train-the-Series-Trainer course that prepared eleven veteran PCC contributors to deliver series training to PCC libraries. The PCC NACO Series Institute training manuals are available online to be downloaded and used locally as needed by PCC institutions.
SACO. SACO achieved status as a full-fledged component program of the PCC. The PCC secretariat produced a full set of requirements, applications, procedures, and training workshops that will apply to all libraries joining the program. SACO was established to provide a means for libraries to submit subject headings and classification numbers to LC via the PCC. Each SACO-only institution has agreed to an annual numerical contribution goal. To maintain a consistent understanding among SACO participants and to provide formal training sessions, SACO workshops are offered by the PCC either in conjunction with library-related meetings or conferences, or as part of the jointly-developed ALCTS/PCC-Standing Committee on Training subject cataloging workshops available through the Cataloging Distribution Service.
“Basic Subject Cataloging Using LCSH”, a workshop jointly developed by ALCTS/PCC, has been successfully presented at its initial regional venues, including the Southern California Technical Processing Group, Texas A&M University, and the Oregon Library Association’s Technical Services Roundtable. The course provides a solid foundation in the principles and practices of subject cataloging using LCSH, including the application of topical, form, geographic, and chronological subdivisions. The course, designed as a two-day workshop totaling twelve hours, is geared to those individuals who are new to subject cataloging with LCSH but who have some basic knowledge of cataloging and the MARC formats.
Music Cataloging
The Hofmeister XIX Project will convert the Hofmeister series of printed music catalogs (starting in 1829 and largely German) into a searchable, Internet-based database for scholars that will be mounted incrementally. This collaborative venture was funded and scanning was coordinated during fiscal year 2004. Catalogers on the Music and Sound Recordings Teams, SMCD, contributed to the project design.
Strategic Planning for Bibliographic Access
Recognizing that the digital context in which libraries now operate demands additional skills and values, the Bibliographic Access Management Team (BAMT) began “Reflections on the Future,” a series of one-day or half-day educational retreats in support of the BA strategic planning process. The BAMT invited representatives from the Office of Strategic Initiatives, the Acquisitions Divisions, and the other Library Services directorates to attend the Reflections on the Future series.
The “Reflections on the Future” series provided a basis for drafting new Bibliographic Access Strategic Goals and Initiatives for Fiscal Years 2005-2006, issued in November 2004 (fiscal year 2005). The new strategic plan has five goals:
The entire Bibliographic Access Strategic Plan is available online at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/stratplan0506.pdf.
COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT
Fort Meade Offsite Storage Facility. The Library’s offsite collections storage facility at Fort Meade, Maryland, first opened in November 2002. Each new Fort Meade project follows a process approach with three phases for each project: program for design; design; and construction.
Module 1 opened on November 18, 2002. Approximately 1,465,000 items have been transferred to Module 1 from the general collections, Law Library collections, and Area Studies collections. Module 1 capacity is estimated at 1.6 million items. Module 1 is now approximately 92 percent full, and will be filled sometime early in calendar 2005.
More than 15,000 requests have been received for items stored at Ft. Meade. The retrieval success rate remains at 100 percent. The module has excellent environmental conditions for storage of paper-based collections. The year-round environment is maintained at 50 degrees Fahrenheit and 35 percent relative humidity.
Module 2 construction is well underway. Completion is scheduled for March 2005. As is true for Module 1, Module 2 will house primarily book items selected from the general collections, Law Library collections, and Area Studies collection, although there will be a small number of items from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division and Music Division. Module 2 capacity is estimated at 2 million items. Environmental conditions are the same as for Module 1.
In the Modules 3 and 4 program, design has been completed for the construction. Construction of these modules and four cold vaults are designed to address the needs of the special format collections—e.g., maps, prints and photographs, microfilm, manuscripts. The initiative to combine Modules 3 and 4 was decided upon as the appropriate course of action necessary to address crucial crowding in the special format collections. Incorporating four cold vaults (three at 35 degrees Fahrenheit, one at 25 degrees Fahrenheit) is essential to protect media types that need such an environment, for example our 400,000–500,000 reels of microfilm masters, many of which are deteriorating under current storage conditions. Processing space at the facility will allow the Library to acquire special format collections and process them directly into the facility rather than having to ship these back and forth between Ft. Meade and Capitol Hill. An isolation room will permit the Library to ensure that newly acquired collections are free of any insects before the collections are introduced into the storage modules. A security base of operation is also being incorporated into this construction project to protect all Library buildings and grounds on the Ft. Meade campus. Construction and occupancy dates are dependent upon receipt of construction funding. A request for construction funding submitted as part of the fiscal 2005 budget was not approved by Congress.
TECHNOLOGY POLICY DIRECTORATE
Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NDMSO)
METS (http://www.loc.gov/mets/) and Digital Library Standards Prototyping. NDMSO continued to provide design and technical support for the I Hear America Singing Website. I Hear America Singing (http://www.loc.gov/rr/perform/ihas/) makes available materials related to the performing arts from the Library’s collections. Notable additions to the website in 2004 include scores and sound recordings by jazz legend Gerry Mulligan, videos and photographs of dancer, choreographer, and teacher Katherine Dunham, scores and recordings related to the Transit of Venus, photographs of and sound recordings by country music legend Dolly Parton, and over 7,000 pieces of sheet music from the Civil War era. All of the digital documents in I Hear America Singing are expressed as METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) objects and are described using MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema) for bibliographic data. IHAS is a groundbreaking digital library project in that it is the Library’s first implementation of the emerging digital library standards for metadata, as well as the Library’s first XML-based digital library project.
Legislation
Copyright legislation passed at the end of the 108th Congress included two bills that affected the copyright statutory licenses. The Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act of 2004 replaced the existing Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panels with three Copyright Royalty Judges who will determine rates and terms of statutory licenses as well as distribution of royalties collected under the Audio Home Recording Act and the satellite and cable television statutory licenses. The Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act of 2004 extended the satellite television license in section 119 until the end of 2009.
Other copyright-related legislation included the Intellectual Property Protection and Courts Amendments Act of 2004, which enacted new criminal prohibitions against trafficking in counterfeit labels, illicit labels or counterfeit documentation and packaging, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, legislation primarily relating to special education services for children with disabilities. One provision in the legislation amends section 121 of the copyright law to permit publishers of print instructional materials for use in elementary or secondary schools to create and distribute to the National Instructional Materials Access Center copies electronic versions of those print instructional materials, and to expand the definition of “specialized formats” that authorized entities may reproduce and distribute to blind and other persons with disabilities, to include large print formats of elementary and secondary school print instructional materials.
A number of other copyright-related bills were not enacted. Two bills of particular interest, both of which are likely to surface in the 109th Congress, were the Preservation of Orphan Works Act and the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act. The Preservation of Orphan Works Act would correct a problem in section 108 of the copyright law, which permits libraries and archives to reproduce and distribute copies of a work during the last 20 years of the newly-extended copyright term when the work is not subject to normal commercial exploitation or when copies or phonorecords of the work cannot be obtained at a reasonable price. That provision currently does not extend to musical works, pictorial, graphic or sculptural works, or motion pictures or other audiovisual works (other than audiovisual works dealing with news). The proposed legislation would expand the exemption to include such works. The Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act would address secondary liability for copyright infringement, recognizing that one who intentionally induces infringement of a copyrighted work can be liable for that infringement. This legislation was introduced by Senators Hatch, Frist, Daschle and Leahy in response to problems created by peer-to-peer “file-sharing.”
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.
On December 10, the Supreme Court agreed to hear MGM v. Grokster and determine when a provider of peer-to-peer “file-sharing” software used to facilitate massive downloading copyrighted works can be held secondarily liable for copyright infringement. In August, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had affirmed the dismissal of claims of copyright infringement asserted by motion picture studios, record companies, composers and music publishers against such software distributors, concluding that because the defendants’ file-sharing software was capable of substantial noninfringing uses and because the defendants did not have actual knowledge of specific acts of infringement at a time when they were in a position to prevent those specific acts of infringement, the defendants could not be found secondarily liable for the many billions of acts of infringement that constituted the vast majority of activity using their software. The copyright owners contended that the Ninth Circuit’s approach conflicted with the approach taken by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit a year earlier in a lawsuit involving the Aimster file-sharing service, and the Supreme Court agreed to resolve the issue.
Orphan Works
For some time the Copyright Office has been interested in the issue of “orphan works,” that is, copyrighted works whose owners are difficult or even impossible to locate. Concerns have been raised that the uncertainty surrounding ownership of such works might needlessly discourage subsequent creators and users from incorporating such works in new creative efforts or making such works available to the public. Senators Hatch and Leahy and Congressmen Smith and Berman have also been interested in this issue. They have asked the Office to examine the issue and to provide recommended solutions that could effectively address the concerns without conflicting with the legitimate interests of authors and rights holders.
The Office will begin this process by publishing a notice of inquiry regarding orphan works in the Federal Register. The notice will set out the issue and ask for comment on specific questions. Commenters are also invited to frame additional questions or to reframe the questions asked. Hopefully, this notice will be published in the near future, and comments will be received in March. The Office hopes to have recommendations ready for Congress by the end of 2005.
OSI (in cooperation with the Copyright Office) Working Group on Re-examination of Section 108 of the Copyright Law
A working group is being convened to address concerns arising from use of copyrighted works by libraries and archives in a digital environment. As you know, digital technologies are radically and rapidly transforming how copyrighted works are created and disseminated, and also how libraries and archives preserve and make these works available to their constituencies.
The working group will begin its tasks in March, 2005. A balanced approach that weighs the concerns of rights holders in conjunction with the concerns of libraries and archives is essential. The Library is fortunate to have assembled a small number of eminent representatives from the copyright owner and library/user communities who have agreed to serve. The goals are to investigate issues, document findings, suggest solutions, and prepare recommendations for legislative change.
The acting Director for Preservation is Dianne van der Reyden, who has collateral duties as chief of the Conservation Division. Former director Mark Roosa left the Library of Congress in July to become director of libraries at Pepperdine University.
Preservation of Sound Recordings
The second year of a three-year preservation preparation initiative to move select collections to environmentally controlled cool and cold storage resulted in rehousing 502,715 audio/visual items for the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, and 31,753 special collection items for the offsite storage facility at Fort Meade, Maryland, the eventual home for 30 million special format items currently being accessed for preservation needs.
To develop a protocol for preserving sound recordings, a second interagency agreement was signed with the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore Berkeley Laboratory to study the efficacy of digitally imaging sound recording materials, such as wax cylinders and shellac discs, using two- and three-dimensional imaging methods. Issues to be addressed are scanning speed optimizations, measurements of damaged and moldy samples, and comparisons of two- and three-dimensional scans on laterally modulated disc media. If successful, digital imaging techniques will be able to capture many levels of sound from damaged or fragile original materials without further damaging, altering or wearing down the originals.
METS and Digital Library Standards Prototyping
NDMSO continued to provide design and technical support for the I Hear America Singing Website. I Hear America Singing (http://www.loc.gov/rr/perform/ihas/) makes available materials related to the performing arts from the Library’s collections. Notable additions to the website in 2004 include scores and sound recordings by jazz legend Gerry Mulligan, videos and photographs of dancer, choreographer, and teacher Katherine Dunham, scores and recordings related to the Transit of Venus, photographs of and sound recordings by country music legend Dolly Parton, and over 7,000 pieces of sheet music from the Civil War era. All of the digital documents in I Hear America Singing are expressed as METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) objects (see http://www.loc.gov/mets/) and are described using MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema) for bibliographic data. IHAS is a groundbreaking digital library project in that it is the Library’s first implementation of the emerging digital library standards for metadata, as well as the Library’s first XML-based digital library project.
New Publications
A brief publication called Understanding MARC Authority Records, a useful teaching tool for new staff and library schools, was published recently, joining the popular Understanding MARC Bibliographic which is now in its 7th edition. They are both available in individual copies from NDMSO and in bulk from CDS. Bibliographic is on the MARC Website and Authority Records will soon be.
Report prepared by Richard Hunter with the assistance of Joe Bartl (MSR 1), Henry Grossi (Music Division), Catherine Hiebert Kerst (American Folklife Center), Geraldine Ostrove (CPSO), Nancy Seeger (MBRS), and Stephen Yusko (MSR 2).
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Last updated June 4, 2005