BCC2009/C/1
Bibliographic Control Committee
Conference Report
MLA 2009, Chicago, Illinois

Submitted by Kathy Glennan, University of Maryland

Members: Voting: Kathy Glennan (Chair), Jim Alberts, Beth Flood, Margaret Kaus, Jenn Riley, Mark Scharff, Sue Vita (LC representative; absent), Mickey Koth (MCB editor); Non-voting: Jay Weitz (OCLC), Rya Martin (Webmaster/Recording Secretary)

The Bibliographic Control Committee (BCC) held two business meetings and presented two programs at the Chicago conference. One session centered on developments with RDA: Resource Description and Access and included sample records; presenters included Mark Scharff, Michelle Koth, Damian Iseminger, Casey Mullin, Daniel Paradis and Steve Yusko. Attendance at this program exceeded 140. The other program addressed current topics in music cataloging, which drew about 70 people. For details on these programs, please see the separate reports published elsewhere in the MLA Newsletter.

The first BCC business meeting included a discussion of the work of four BCC-related groups: the BCC Working Group on Work Records for Music; the MLA/RBMS Joint Committee on Early Printed Music; the joint MLA/OLAC Playaway Cataloging Joint Task Force and the MLA/OLAC Joint Task Force on Best Practice Guidelines for SlotMusic.

Jean Harden described the methodology and summarized the final report of the BCC Working Group on Work Records for Music, which completed its work in July 2008. This short-term group investigated and made recommendations on work records for music, providing a conceptual document based on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) models. The report serves as a foundation for further analysis of music issues in FRBR, FRAD, and RDA, especially as cataloging moves from our current environment to relational or object-oriented databases.  BCC also briefly reviewed the “Areas for further study” included in the report. For more details, see http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/BCC/BCC-Historical/BCC2008/BCC2008WGWRM1.pdf

Nancy Lorimer summarized the latest developments with Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Music), which will be open for official review in March 2009. While the RBMS reviewer will look at clarity and consistency, MLA reviewers will need to assess the content and to provide additional examples.

BCC reviewed the activities of the joint MLA/OLAC Playaway Cataloging Joint Task Force, which completed their best practices guide for use with AACR2; they have nearly completed their work on the second part of their charge: identifying how to describe Playaways using RDA. BCC also received an update on the newly formed MLA/OLAC Joint Task Force on Best Practice Guidelines for SlotMusic, which is just starting their work.

With the recent creation of the Metadata Subcommittee, BCC brainstormed ideas about how to focus the work of this group and how it should interact with other parts of MLA, including other BCC subcommittees.

At its second business meeting, BCC reviewed issues arising from the Authorities Subcommittee (world music issues), the Descriptive Cataloging Subcommittee (RDA-related), the MARC Formats Subcommittee (possible proposals to modify coding for chorus scores and proposing additional subfields for bibliographic field 518), and the Subject Access Subcommittee (genre/form related). For specifics, please see the separate reports from those subcommittees.

The Committee also brainstormed about potential programs for 2010 and beyond, including a hands-on preconference on metadata, and a preconference session on RDA implementation (2011?). Potential programs for 2010 include FRBR/FRAD, RDA update/demo, and the usual breaking issues in music cataloging.

Finally, Margaret Kaus rotated off as chair of the Authorities Subcommittee after four years of service, with our thanks for her hard work. BCC welcomed Damian Iseminger as the incoming chair of this subcommittee.  


Return to 2009 Documents Menu
Return to BCC Historical Documents Menu
Return to BCC Home Page

Last updated Aptil 16, 2009