BCC2009/SDC/3
MUSIC LIBRARY
ASSOCIATION
Bibliographic Control
Committee
Descriptive Cataloging SUBCOMMITTEE
ANNUAL
REPORT
July 2008-June 2009
Members: Mark Scharff, chair (2008); Joseph Bartl (LC
Representative), Don Brown (2009), Candice Feldt (2009), David Guion (2008),
Jean Harden (2008), Steve Henry (2005), Mark McKnight (2008), Patricia Thomson
(2006).
The summer and early autumn of 2008 were quiet
times for the subcommittee. A flurry of activity had
surrounded the May 16 meeting of music experts from the North American JSC
constituencies at the Library of Congress. Participants were
seeking consensus on proposals from the Library of Congress (known as “LC/12”)
to amend the portions of Resource Description and Access Chapter 6 that
involved naming and creating access points for musical works.
The MLA representatives (Kathy Glennan, Steve Henry, Mark Scharff) had
expected that the constituencies would spend the summer working on issues not
resolved in the May meeting or in a subsequent teleconference; this work would
be based on an LC-issued follow-up document that would reflect areas of
agreement among the “May Group.” Vacations, conferences, and
the like put things in a holding pattern. There was also the
wait for the issuance of the complete draft of RDA.
Events moved in rapid sequence after Halloween.
The follow-up document (named hereafter “LC/12/follow-up”) appeared at
the very end of October, and the Subcommittee began evaluation soon thereafter
using the BCC wiki, trying to navigate a document with many inaccuracies in rule
numbering and “blind references” to the yet-unissued full draft.
The complete draft of RDA appeared in mid-November—not only
enormous at over 900 pages, but issued in poorly-edited PDF files.
Its sheer heft forced me to provide a very selective review and to
comment in the CC:DA wiki rather than preparing a formal MLA
response. Then in early December, LC issued a second
follow-up document to LC/12 (known hereafter as
“LC/12/follow-up/2”). This document contained reworkings of
LC/12 proposals that had not been accepted by the other JSC constituencies,
including changes to sections of LC/12/follow-up. The
Subcommittee also used the wiki to comment on this document.
With BCC “pre-approval,” I drafted responses to LC/12/follow-up and its
cousin and submitted them to CC:DA on Jan. 14. These
documents formed the core of the ALA response
to these documents, drafted by John Attig, ALA representative to the Joint Steering
Committee for the Development of RDA (JSC). John,
Kathy and I had informal discussions at ALA Midwinter about how to
proceed. We decided that Kathy and I would attend a session
of the JSC’s March meeting in Chicago at which the LC proposals were to be
discussed and decisions made on the final language of the music instructions in
Chapter 6. We would function as resource persons for the
ALA
representative.
Meanwhile, the Subcommittee was preparing for and
conducting our business meeting at the MLA Annual Meeting in Chicago, as well as
contributing ideas for the content of the BCC News Hour and the RDA
Update. Our business meeting was well-attended, with nearly
30 guests. Most of our meeting was focused on issues
surrounding the complete draft of Resource Description and Access
(RDA). As Kathy and I prepared for the JSC meeting, we
realized that the short time allotted to discussing very complicated issues
called for us to prioritize the list; the SDC discussion in Chicago sought to help that
process by getting wider feedback. This was indeed the
outcome. At the end of the meeting, the Subcommittee bid
farewell to Lois Schultz and Steve Henry (who was reappointed for a one-year
term to utilize his familiarity with RDA during this final push toward
issuance); Candice Feldt (Harvard University) and Don Brown (El Camino
Community College) were appointed to the subcommittee subsequently.
The preparation for the JSC meeting also led Kathy and me to
see that ALA’s positions on the LC proposals
were closest to those of the Canadian Committee on Cataloging (CCC); we spent
many hours in wiki work and e-mail with Daniel Paradis, MLA and CCC member, to
produce a set of joint responses to the LC proposals. We had
some contact with LC that promised to clear some of the smaller issues off the
table, but press of time caused them to back off. We went
into the Chicago meeting with a somewhat
shorter list of open issues, but still more than we could expect to resolve in
four hours.
At the meeting in Chicago,
Barbara Tillett of LC led the discussion, as the source of the
proposals. Three of the four hours were spent confirming
points on which the North American constituencies had agreed, then getting
approval from the others around the table (CILIP, the British Library, and the
Australian Committee on Cataloging). The remainder of the
time saw some resolution of a few points of contention, but many items remained
untouched. For those points, the existing RDA draft
would become the text of the first release. Overall, we felt
that the outcome represented an appropriate balance of change and continuity,
though we recognize that major discussions need to take place within the next
few years as the implications of RDA become clearer. A more detailed
accounting of the outcomes of the meeting are available on the BCC
website.
Among the post-Chicago items: Kathy and I had
volunteered to supply new or improved examples for several instructions, which
we did. We also fielded queries from the ALA representative to double-check the incorporation of
the March decisions into the final draft of RDA.
Submitted by Mark Scharff
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Last updated July 17, 2009