BCC2008/C/2

MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
BIBLIOGRAPHIC CONTROL COMMITTEE
ANNUAL REPORT
July 2007-June 2008

Voting members: Kathy Glennan, chair (2008); Margaret Kaus (chair, Authorities Subcommittee), Mark Scharff (chair, Descriptive Cataloging Subcommittee), Jim Alberts (chair, Subcommittee on MARC Formats), Beth Flood (chair, Subject Access Subcommittee), Mickey Koth (editor, Music Cataloging Bulletin), Sue Vita (Library of Congress Representative),

Non-voting members: Jay Weitz (OCLC), Rya Martin (Recording Secretary/Webmaster)

The Bibliographic Control Committee (BCC) had an active year, focusing much of its efforts on initiatives affecting the future of bibliographic control. The four-year rotation process found Kathy Glennan (University of Maryland) succeeding Nancy Lorimer (Stanford University) as BCC chair and Mark Scharff (Washington University in St. Louis) succeeding Kathy as chair of the Descriptive Cataloging Subcommittee. BCC also recommended twelve appointments to fill subcommittee vacancies. I thank all of the committee members for their efforts in the past year as well as for their assistance with the leadership transition, and offer special thanks to Nancy for her four years of service as BCC chair. Finally, in terms of transitions, BCC thanks David Sommerfield (Library of Congress, retired) for his many years of service, most recently as the LC representative to the Authorities Subcommittee.

The ongoing development of RDA has absorbed much of BCC’s work in the past year; we have provided comments on drafts and responses to other constituency proposals. BCC, and Mark Scharff in particular, worked countless hours in preparing a response to the LC document 5JSC/LC/12 (commonly known as LC/12), which proposed significant changes to instructions in RDA dealing with the naming of musical works and constructing the access points for them. For more information on LC/12, including the meeting of music cataloging experts in May 2008, see the Descriptive Cataloging Subcommittee’s Annual Report. BCC also provided comments to the ALA Representative to the Joint Steering Committee on designation of roles, names and definitions of music notation systems, appropriate names for elements regarding sound recording encoding, and whether or not to reference a list of terms for use in medium of performance statements.

Other BCC activities included:

• Developing a planning outline for the proposed joint MLA/LC X55 form/genre project (see the Subject Access Subcommittee Annual Report for more on form/genre)
• Preparing responses to drafts of Functional Requirements for Authority Data, the OLAC CAPC/MLA SCD Joint Task Force on Best Practice Guidelines for Cataloging Playaways, the joint MLA/RBMS Committee on Early Printed Music paper on the use of copyright dates in Area 4, and the MLA Task Force on Committee Structure.
• Creating the BCC Working Group on Work Records for Music, chaired by Jean Harden (University of North Texas).
• Updating and reorganizing the BCC website.

At the Newport meeting, BCC received the final report of the Metadata Working Group, chaired by Stephen Davison (UCLA) and thanked this group for their thoughtful and thorough analysis. As a result of their report, BCC recommended establishing a new Metadata Subcommittee, which the MLA Board approved at its May 2008 meeting. We look forward to creating this subcommittee, which will focus on non-MARC metadata standards and issues as they relate to music.

The four BCC liaisons attended ALA meetings in Philadelphia and Anaheim, where they represented the perspective of the music cataloging community on ALA committees and interest groups related to cataloging (ACIG, OLAC’s CAPC, CC:DA, MARBI, and SAC). The Music Cataloging Bulletin contains reports from these meetings, which are also available on the BCC Web site (http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/ BCC/bcc.html) along with annual reports provided by the Library of Congress and OCLC representatives.

BCC held two business meetings and presented two programs at the Newport conference, one on the current status of RDA, presented by Kathy Glennan and Mark Scharff, and one on current topics in music cataloging. The Subject Access Subcommittee also presented a program on music vocabularies. All the programs were well attended with standing room only crowds in a room that seated 120 people. At the upcoming Chicago conference, BCC will again conduct two business meetings and present two programs, one on RDA in practice and one on current topics in music cataloging.

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Last updated November 19, 2008