BCC2009/Auth/4

MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
Bibliographic Control Committee

MLA Liaison Report to BCC from ALA Annual Meeting
Chicago, IL, July 9-14, 2009

LITA/ALCTS—CCS Authority Control Interest Group (ACIG)
Sunday, July 12, 2009,   1:30-4:30PM (ACIG 25^th Anniversary Program)
                                        4:30-5:30PM (ACIG Business Meeting)

Open Meeting

The theme of the ACIG open meeting was “The Future is Now: Global Authority Control”.  There were 7 presentations and all are available as PowerPoint presentations or PDF files at http://connect.ala.org/node/65335.

1. Authority Control 2.0? – by Tim Spalding, founder, LibraryThing

LibraryThing is personal, online book cataloging that uses user-generated descriptions and tags.  Nearly 53 million tags exist on LibraryThing and are used to label author, title, and subject entities.  Mr. Spalding listed some of the common objections to user-generated content (that it is unstructured, personal, and non-hierarchical), however he went on to say that authority control does exist in LibraryThing, using the model popularized by Wikipedia: that anyone can be involved; the use of community-derived rules; self-policing; spontaneous organizations (e.g., those devoted to a certain subject); and that all changes are tracked and reversible.  Several examples were given of users actively participating in combining headings describing the same person and in disambiguating headings describing different concepts.  In addition to this, LibraryThing focuses on areas of bibliographic description that neither libraries nor publishers are well-equipped to handle, such as characters in novels, dedications, awards, first and last words, quotations, book-jacket blurbs, and in-depth personal data.  Rather than seeing LibraryThing as a competitor to traditional library authority control, Mr. Spalding sees it as a complement to what librarians are already doing.

2. Global Authorities in the Local Catalog – by Jeanne Spala, Senior Consultant, Civica

The presentation centered on the maintenance of authority headings in the Civica ILS.

3. Spanish Equivalents for LCSH – by Michael Kreyche, Systems Librarian, Kent State University

Mr. Kreyche has created a database of Spanish equivalents for LCSH terms at www.lcsh-es.org.  The Spanish language terms are drawn from a variety of sources, including the San Francisco Public Library, the Queensborough Public Library, the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the National Library of Spain, Bilindex 1984, and Simon Spereo’s LCSH.  The database is bi-lingual and uses left-anchored and keyword searching.  Mr. Kreyche hopes to expand his project by finding international partners able to provide some level of stable funding with the hope that term contribution can be done in an online and cooperative manner.  He also would like to have a macro for the OCLC Connexion Client that will query the www.lcsh-es.org server for the Spanish equivalents of terms appearing in 6XX _0 fields in the OCLC bibliographic record.

4. Cooperative Identities Hub – Karen Smith-Yoshimura, OCLC Research

The goal of the Cooperative Identities Hub is to gather and provide access to information regarding names and identities.  The Hub concept was the creation of the Networking Names Advisory Group at OCLC.  Specifically, the Hub is envisioned as a framework to concatenate and merge authoritative information located across the online environment and as a gateway to all forms of names without preferring one form over another.  The objectives of the project are to increase the efficiency of metadata creation, to make identification of persons simpler, regardless of language or discipline, to enable contributing agencies to re-use gathered data in local contexts, and to explore the connections between persons beyond their original contexts.  It is hoped that the Hub would be searchable by both people and software applications and would allow for the creation and editing of personal identities.  Data elements to be present in the Hub include varying forms of names, life events, relationships to other entities, works, more robust biographical information, and unique identifiers from sources used in the creation of the Hub record.

5. The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) – Thomas Hickey, OCLC Research

The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF), available at http://viaf.org is a project to link existing national-level authority files (e.g., LC, BNF, DNB, etc.) into one large file through the linking of national-level authority records.  The hope is to expand the concept of universal bibliographic control by allowing national or regional variations in authorized forms to co-exist in one file.  VIAF also hopes to play a role in the emerging Semantic Web.  VIAF currently only consists of personal names, but there are plans to add geographic headings, corporate bodies, titles, families, and events.  VIAF works by processing each participants’ bibliographic and authority file.  From this mined data an enhanced authority record is produced.  The enhanced authority records from each national file are then run against one another to create the VIAF record.  Currently VIAF consists of personal names from 16 international files with 10.4 million names in 8.7 million clusters, all with unique identifiers which can be used in URI strings.  The next steps for the project involve finding more participants, going beyond personal names in authority matching, and moving beyond library authority files (e.g., rights agencies, specialized files, regional files, etc.).

6. Authorities and Vocabularies, LC’s New SKOS-Based Service – Janis L. Young, Cataloging Policy Specialist, PSD, LC

SKOS stands for Simple Knowledge Organization System and is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF).  According to the SKOS Primer, SKOS “provides a model for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, folksonomies, and other similar types of controlled vocabulary.”  LC’s intent for providing its authorities in SKOS is to provide human and programmatic access to commonly found standards and vocabularies developed by LC.  The Library of Congress Subject Headings is the first offering in SKOS and includes subject headings, genre/form headings, children’s subject headings, subdivision records, and validation records.  The records can be accessed at http://id.loc.gov.  Future vocabularies to be put into SKOS include the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM), MARC geographic area codes, MARC language codes, and MARC relator codes.  One of the major benefits of this initiative is that servers can now download the entire LCSH vocabulary in various data formats at no cost.  This will allow for the development of applications that can easily access the LCSH.

7. Registering the RDA Vocabularies – Diane I. Hillmann, Director of Metadata Initiatives, Information Institute of Syracuse; Partner, Metadata Management Associates

The presentation detailed the process of registering the RDA Vocabularies online to allow for their use as part of the Semantic Web.  Registering RDA will provide the basis for migrating from MARC to something that the broader information community can understand and interpret.  The RDA Vocabularies can be viewed at http://metadataregistry.org.

Business Meeting

• Information concerning ACIG can be found in a variety of places on the Web.  Information on current activities of ACIG, including presentations at the 2009 Annual Meeting can be found at ALA Connect (http://connect.ala.org/ node/65335).  In addition to this, ACIG has a wiki, available at http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/ Authority_Control_IG.  Further information about ACIG, including minutes, programs, and presentations of past meetings is also available on the LITA Website at http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/lita/ litamembership/litaigs/authorityalcts/authoritycontrol.cfm.  The group can also be emailed at authority.control.interest.group@gmail.com and at lita-acig@ala.org.  
• The members discussed the 2009 Annual Meeting and were happy with the content presented.  Some members had wished for more question and answer time and suggested that fewer presentations be scheduled for Annual 2010 in Washington, D.C.
• New officers: Lynnette Fields of Southern Illinois University, Vice-Chair; Mark Scharff, Washington University, Secretary.

Submitted by Damian Iseminger, Chair, Authorities Subcommittee

Friday, July 10, 2009, 7:30-9:30PM

 CAPC Membership Changes

 Kelley McGrath, Ball State University, will be stepping down as CPAC chair, to be replaced by Robert Freeborn, Pennsylvania State University.  Carolyn Walden, University of Alabama Birmingham, and Jeannette Ho, Texas A&M, are rotating off the committee.  Susan Wynne, University of Wyoming, and Cyrus Z. Ford, University of Nevada Las Vegas, will be rotating on to the committee.

 Reports and Discussions

 MARBI Report – given by Catherine Gerhart, MARBI Liaison, University of Washington (for details of the MARBI meeting at ALA, please see the report from Jim Alberts, MARC Subcommittee Chair, BCC)

• CC:DA Report – given by Martha M. Yee, University of California Los Angeles for Greta de Groat, CC:DA liaison, Stanford University (for details of the CC:DA meeting at ALA, please see the report from Mark Scharff, Descriptive Cataloging Subcommittee Chair, BCC)
• Genre/Form Headings Report – given by Janis L. Young, LC (for genre/form details, please see the report from Beth Flood, Subject Access Subcommittee Chair, BCC)
• Subcommittee Report on Maintenance for CAPC Resources – given by Kelley McGrath for David Procházka, University of Akron.  The subcommittee completed its work in April 2009 of reviewing the OLAC website, focusing on the CAPC portions of the site.  A list of recommendations has been submitted to CAPC, which include general observations about the layout and organization of the new site.
• Video Language Coding Best Practices Task Force Report – given by Kelley McGrath.  No new news to report.
• Playaways Best Practices Task Force Report – given by Heidi Frank, New York University.  The OLAC CAPC/MLA SDC Joint Task Force completed their charge with the posting of the Playaways and RDA document, available as a PDF at http://www.olacinc.org/drupal/capc_files/PlayawaysAndRDA.pdf.  The Task force stresses that these guidelines are simply suggestions and are not intended as a how-to of Playaways cataloging.  For the most part, it follows the practices outlined in the AACR2 and Playaways document, available as a PDF at http://www.olacinc.org/drupal/capc_files/playawaysPDF.pdf.
• Moving Image Work-Level Records Task Force Report – given by Kelley McGrath.  The Task Force just finished conducting a proof-of-concept exercise in extracting work-level information from existing bibliographic records.  Currently, the Task Force is working on a list of sources that can be used in the creation of a work record.  Some discussion has begun with the OLAC board on an initiative, possibly grant funded, to create work records.  There have also been some initial queries to OCLC into the possibility of using existing bibliographic records in OCLC to extract work record information.
• LC Genre/Form Headings for Moving Images Best Practices Task Force Report – given by Kelley McGrath for Bill Anderson, University of Connecticut.  The Task Force has just begun on a very rough draft of guidelines.  Issues to be addressed include, but are not limited to: character genre headings (e.g., James Bond films, Batman films, etc.), Internet moving images, geographic subdivision of form/genre terms, language/nationality genres, live performances of music and the arts, assigning fiction films and non-fiction films headings, and television and film headings.
• OLAC CAPC/MLA BCC Joint Task Force on SlotMusic Cataloging Best Practices Report – given by Marcia Barrett, University of Alabama.  The Task Force submitted a first draft of the report to Kelley McGrath in late June 2009.  SlotMusic is a sound recordings format for high quality, digital rights management-free MP3 music on microSD cards.  SlotMusic is issued with a container that holds the microSD card, a USB adapter, and a container which holds all of the above, which often contains an accompanying booklet.  Some of the challenges and issues encountered in trying to create a best practices cataloging document included: choosing a chief source of information;  specification of a general material designation (sound recording or electronic resource); creating a specific material designation; whether to describe accompanying material(s) in the physical description or notes area; and notes relating to system details.  The draft report is in the process of being reviewed by CAPC and BCC.

 New Business

MLA and OLAC have been selected as test partners in the testing of RDA.  The participants in the funnel are Bill Anderson (OLAC), University of Connecticut; Marcia Barrett (OLAC), University of Alabama; Linda Blair (MLA), Eastman School of Music; Bobby Bothmann (OLAC), Minnesota State University, Mankato; Mary Bruesch (MLA), University of New Mexico; Sarah Cohen (MLA), Allen Music Library, Florida State University; Grace Fitzgerald (MLA), University of Iowa; Cyrus Ford (OLAC), University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Robert Freeborn (OLAC), Penn State University; Jean Harden (MLA), University of North Texas Music Library; Jeannette Ho (OLAC), Texas A&M University; Mary Huismann (MLA), University of Minnesota; Damian Iseminger (MLA), New England Conservatory of Music; Kelley McGrath (OLAC), Ball State University; Anchalee (Joy) Panigabutra-Roberts (OLAC), University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Karen Peters (MLA), University of California Santa Barbara; Alan Ringwood (MLA), University of Texas at Austin; Hermine Vermeij (MLA), UCLA; and Susan Wynne (OLAC), University of Wyoming.  Acting as consultants for the funnel are Kathy Glennan (MLA), University of Maryland and Mark Scharff (MLA), Washington University.

There is some discussion in OLAC whether or not to create a flash memory devices cataloging best practices document.  These guidelines would be general in nature, instead of describing specific devices.

 Submitted by Damian Iseminger, Chair, Authorities Subcommittee

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Last updated August 18, 2009