BCC2006/SDC/3

Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access
ALA Annual Conference, New Orleans, LA, June 23, 24 and 26, 2006
Reported by Kathy Glennan, Chair, Subcommittee on Descriptive Cataloging

The Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) met in three sessions during the ALA Annual meeting in New Orleans. The Chair, Mary Larsgaard (University of California, Santa Barbara), led the discussions.

This report focuses on items of interest to the music library community. For more information about the meeting and for reports about activities mentioned below, please see the CC:DA web page at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/index.html

Reports

Library of Congress (Barbara Tillett, LC liaison to CC:DA). For a detailed report of LC initiatives, visit: http://www.loc.gov/ala/ala-neworleans-update-2006.html

Barbara Tillett reviewed highlights from her report. Issues of particular interest to the music community include:

• The Library of Congress User Survey, at: http://www.loc.gov/library/survey.html
• The Calhoun Report, at: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-final.pdf
• Implementation of the LC series decision, with details at: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/series.html, http://www.loc.gov/catdir/delay.html, and http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/series.html; exception for music classed in M2 and M3 (see http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcri13_3.pdf)
• Changes to LCRIs: 22.1B, Determining the name by which a person is commonly known; 22.13, Manuscripts and manuscript groups; and 22.17, Adding death dates to personal name headings with open dates.
• Unicode implementation at LC; they expect to conduct legacy data cleanup as necessary.
• Planning for implementation of form/genre headings with moving images and music; the latter in cooperation with OCLC and MLA.
• Daily updates made in Classification Web.
• Progress in processing the Bronislawa Nijinska Collection (manuscripts relating to Russian dance materials)
• Revision of CD cataloging workflow at LC; investigation of purchasing metadata to populate sound recording bibliographic records.
• National Library of Russia Project, a microfilming/digitization project providing access to manuscript material: by the nationalist group of Russian composers called the Mighty Handful, early liturgical chant, and early Stravinsky, among other special holdings in the National Library of Russia. LC will share some of its collections in microfilm or digital form as well, including works by American composers and the Schatz Collection of Opera Librettos.
• The move collections from the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division to Culpeper.

ALA Publishing Services (Don Chatham, Associate Executive Director)

ALA Publishing continues to work with a database developer on the RDA prototype. See the demo at http://www.rdaonline.org, and complete the survey at the end. The publishers expect that RDA Online will cost no more than the current electronic version of AACR2; however, that will depend on the number of features incorporated. They will likely implement several different pricing structures. The publishers envision RDA as a suite of products, including a print version.

Joint Steering Committee (Jennifer Bowen, ALA Representative). For the full report, see http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/docs/jsc0604.pdf

At its April 2006 meeting, the JSC further revised the structure of RDA (Resource Description and Access), incorporating the planned Parts I-II into a single Part A. The planned Part III will become Part B. The RDA prospectus has been updated to reflect this change. While the overall introduction to RDA is not available, the prospectus gives a sense of its content. The JSC has also issued Glossary guidelines for RDA and has updated the RDA Strategic Plan, which specifically addresses long-term goals and what can be accomplished by the 2008 publication date.

The JSC has made the vast majority of the RDA working documents publicly available at http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/working1.html, to provide context for the changes being incorporated into RDA.

The JSC received over 700 specific comments from the constituencies on the (then named) Part I of RDA. They created a triage table to review the comments in context and will assess areas of constituency agreement and disagreement, identifying issues for further discussion. CC:DA needs to review the other constituency comments in this table over the summer.

RDA will include references to other metadata standards; the JSC has asked all constituencies to provide citations for related standards and manuals to include in the introduction.

The JSC decided to label elements as required, required if applicable, or optional. The optional category includes alternative instructions, optional additions, and optional omissions, all clearly labeled. The rules will also identify transcribed vs. non-transcribed elements. The concept of notes will move away from the ISBD understanding; many of these will take the form of additional data elements instead.

Expect the JSC to release a formal document this summer addressing the content/carrier issues in RDA. Instead of the current GMD/SMD construction, the rules will use: media category, type of carrier, and type and form of content.

The JSC decided to form a second working group to look at examples in RDA, which will have some carry-over membership from the first group. They also named a working group to look at the appendices for capitalization, abbreviations, and initial articles.

While the JSC finds the concept of RDA Lite interesting, too much remains undetermined (look, users, content, etc.) to make it available in 2008 along with the full RDA publication. Once ready, it will likely take the form of a high level, conceptual document rather than paralleling the Concise AACR2 in content.

The JSC meets next in October, in Washington, D.C.

RDA Discussion

The bulk of the meetings focused on the draft of chapters 6 and 7 in Part A of RDA, publicly available though a link at: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/rdadraftch6-7.html

Observations and questions about these two chapters included:

• General approval of the reorganization of the rules, combining the original Parts I-II into a single Part A.
• Improved layout of text; numbering extended to subrules; options clearly labeled.
• Need explicit rules about how to proceed when mixed responsibility results in new works and in new expressions.
• FRBR principles and terminology need to be extended to these two chapters.

Chapter 6

• Dissatisfaction with the overall organization and repetitiveness; CC:DA needs to consider a different taxonomy.
• Concern that not all resource-to-resource relationships are addressed here; additional concern that some relationships are at the FRBR expression level with others at the manifestation level. Some paired relationships overlap (component/component vs. issued with). If keeping “special” rules, need to clearly identify the relationships represented and how they differ from rules earlier in the chapter.
• FRBR relationships (work/expression/manifestation/item) not addressed.
• Rules still seem very text-based.
• Confusion in initially interpreting relationship rules; rules for successors address relationships to predecessors, etc. What is the impact on this structure in an online product?
• Are there too many options offered in recording relationships? Should the distinction be between description (a note) and access (a controlled access point)?
• The edition/edition relationship as described is too restrictive (only for simultaneous editions).
• This chapter does not address multiple resource-to-resource relationships; are separate entries/descriptions desired?

Chapter 7

• This chapter does not address works of mixed responsibility; this is a huge omission.
• The rule of three still appears in some rules, while it was eliminated from others.
• Do we still need the concept of primary access point? How would eliminating this concept allow for the identification of works?
• Should the rules offer more flexibility in allowing for primary access under editors, compilers and corporate bodies?
• Need to express the principles behind the rules for primary access point, including the reasons songs are entered under the composer (!).
• Ability to make performers the primary access point is limited to those make a creative contribution.
• Should rules be created for aggregate works, when one party associated with all of the subworks would become the primary access point? If this were extended as a principle, it would allow for more primary access under performers.

RDA Proposals

5JSC/LC/5/Rev, RDA Part I Internationalization
( http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/docs/5lc5rev.pdf)

LC recently revised this document, adjusting the rule numbers to reflect the move from RDA Part I to RDA Part A and introducing changes in entering treaties between more than two parties.

5JSC/LC/7, Breton Initial Articles
( http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/docs/5lc7.pdf)

No discussion.

5JSC/LC/8, Bible Uniform Titles
( http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/docs/5lc8.pdf)

CC:DA believes that the options make these rules difficult to reconcile with the use of an authority file. The group welcomed the removal of the “O.T.” and “N.T.” abbreviations.

CC:DA/MLA/2006/1, Change to Rule 5.5B1, Extent of item for notated music
( http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/docs/mla9.pdf)

CC:DA accepted this proposal, making some minor changes to the first sentence of the proposed Glossary definition of Score. The version going to the JSC will read:

Score. A representation of music in graphical, symbolic, or word-based notation. Do not confuse with Part (Music). See also Chorus score, Close score, Condensed score, Miniature score, Part (Music), piano [violin, etc.] conductor part, Piano score, Short score, Vocal score.

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