BCC2007/SAS/2
Subject Access Subcommittee
2007 Conference Report
Submitted by Beth Flood (Acting as Chair for Mark McKnight)
Business meeting: Friday, March 2, 2007, 2 p.m. Members present: Stacey Allison-Cassin, Keith Chapman, Beth Flood (chair), Neil Hughes, Lynne Jaffe, Geraldine Ostrove (LC representative), Jenn Riley, Jon Stroop, John Wagstaff. Guests: Ed O’Neill, leader, OCLC FAST research team; 20 visitors.
Chair Beth Flood presented a report from the ALA Midwinter meeting in January, and announced that the ALCTS/CCS/Subject Analysis Committee will present a program at ALA in Washington D.C. on Saturday, June 23, 2007, about form/genre terms. Speakers will be Robert Maxwell, Geraldine Ostrove, and Adam Schiff.
Library of Congress representative Geraldine Ostrove gave a report. She stated that, after the new Class M schedule is completed, work will continue on implementation of form/genre terms and use of 155/655 fields for music.
Ed O’Neill, leader of the FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology) research team, gave a presentation about current developments regarding FAST and music terminology. The FAST team is interested in having feedback from the music library community regarding its terminology.
Catherine Kerst, co-chair of the Ethnographic Thesaurus (ET) Review Board, was present at the business meeting and spoke briefly about the ET. The ET is a comprehensive controlled vocabulary for ethnographic research collections, and it includes music terminology in its M facet. It is informed by LCSH and represents another choice for terminology that could be cited in MARC records. This resource will be freely available on the American Folklore Society’s website beginning summer 2007. More information can be found at: http://www.afsnet.org/thesaurus/
The following are highlights of topics discussed during the business meeting.
Faceted subject headings / Splitting subject heading strings FAST will be keeping in line with LCSH, in terms of retaining the structure of existing subject heading strings. However, there is a sense that a more faceted system is desired to meet the needs of the metadata community. Reasons for retaining the current system of pre-coordinated subject strings include their inherent link to classification, and the idea that strings possibly are more helpful in their guided combination of terms. If subject heading strings are to be split, the FAST environment could provide a controlled, test situation. Authority records for all headings FAST and developments with LCSH have in common the need for authority records to be created for all headings, which would help with validation of headings and consistent application of headings. This is already being done with FAST, and LC could draw upon this work, especially in relation to form/genre implementation. Creation of authority records for existing subject headings could be automated but would still require manual review. SACO The SACO program currently supports submission of new provisional headings, and the subcommittee discussed the possibility of proposing a SACO Music Funnel to facilitate the conversion of form/genre authority records. An advisory/organizing group could be established to make recommendations and set priorities. Some automated conversion of headings could be accomplished, and individuals with considerable subject expertise could participate in review of automatically created headings. A SACO music funnel could and would need to help not just with new headings, but with other changes (changes in scope notes, adding “used for” references, etc.) Beginning the form/genre implementation project Because LCSH lacks the “top term” concept, the first steps should be determining which terms are in the authority file and extracting top terms from this group. A list of more complicated topics requiring extra examination also needs to be made. There are several possible strategies for identifying form terms, and a list of these strategies needs to be made as well. A working group including MLA, LC and FAST representatives will be needed, and can work on gathering headings from Worldcat. Group conversion to 155/655 There is definitely a sense that, because of the broad scope of music form/genre terms, the music library community needs to agree to convert to 655 form/genre coding as a group. Conversion of form/genre authority records to 155 needs to happen first. Implementation of 655 coding is a big consideration, and raises many accessibility issues. Before implementing 655 coding, the music community would need to make sure that library systems can function the same way with form/genre headings coded as topical (650) and as form (655).
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