BCC98/SAS/2
ALA MIDWINTER 1998
SUBJECT ANALYSIS COMMITTEE MEETING NOTES
submitted by Harriette Hemmasi
Rutgers University
Chair (past), MLA Subject Access Subcommittee
2/27/98
The ALCTS CCS Subject Analysis Committee had two meetings (1/11/98 and
1/12/98) at the ALA Midwinter Conference in New Orleans. The following notes on
discussions from these meetings have been selectively edited to represent areas of
particular interest to MLA members.
1. MARBI report (see Karen Little's report for full analysis): discussion paper #104
"Defining Field 007 (Physical description fixed field) for tactile materials in the
USMARC bibliographic and holdings formats" was discussed by MARBI on 1/11/98. The
paper discussed the request to aid in retrieval and limiting of material, particularly the
braille music format.
2. 16th edition of SEARS List of subject headings will be available in 4/98.
3. LC report (excerpts taken from printed report provided by Lynn El-Hoshy, CPSO)
Looking toward 2000 celebration: "Libraries--Creativity--Liberty;" primary goal of bicentennial is "to inspire creativity in the century ahead by stimulating greater use of the Library of Congress and libraries everywhere;" variety of national, state, and local projects are being developed under the broad concept of "Gifts to the Nation;" the idea is that such gifts are reciprocal; as plans develop, you can watch for announcements and further information on the Library's bicentennial home page: http://lcweb.loc.gov/bicentennial/ .
For FY 1998, LC received funding to increase its book budget and to proceed with the procurement of an integrated library system (ILS) to replace its current stand-alone systems; an RFP was issued in 7/97 and responses are now being evaluated; LC expects to award a contract in the spring; it is estimated that between 500-1000 staff members will be involved to some extent by serving on approximately 50 project teams dealing with issues related to the new ILS; the new system is expected to be in place by 10/1/99.
Director of cataloging, Beacher Wiggins, also served as Acting Director for Acquisitions and Support Services, from 9/97-12/97; in October the acquisitions units were reorganized along geographic lines; the former divisions had been by function and method of acquisition.
In August Barbara Tillett (CPSO head) was named ILS program director; Tom Yee is serving as Acting Chief of the Cataloging Policy and Support Office (CPSO) during Barbara's three year appointment; Barbara continues to represent LC on national and international cataloging policy issues as LC's representative to CC:DA and the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR; Kay Guiles of CPSO replaced Barbara as the LC representative to the Standing Committee on Standards of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC); in September David Reser joined CPSO as a cataloging policy specialist; David served as an instruction at the SAC-sponsored preconference institute last June on "Demystifying Subject Cataloging of Electronic Resources: and is focusing on descriptive and subject policy issues regarding the cataloging of electronic resources in CPSO.
Arrearage reduction remains a top priority; in December Associate Librarian Winston Tabb announced that half of LC's 1989 backlog of 40 million unprocessed materials would be cleared by the end of 1997; Tabb acknowledged that the Library will have to revise and make more realistic its 21st century arrearage reduction goals, which were to finish processing the entire backlog of printed materials by the end of 2000 and to have 80 percent of all special materials under bibliographic control by the end of 2005; it is clear that LC cannot devote its full staff resources to arrearage reduction while also implementing the ILS.
PCC participants will focus on the strategic and action plans that will guide the newly consolidated Program for Cooperative Cataloging for the next five years.
NACO celebrated its 20th anniversary in November; NACO is now aconsortium of 239 institutions that has produced over one million authority records.
Over 70 libraries around the world contribute subject heading and classification proposals through SACO; in 1997 they contributed 2088 new subject headings, 530 subject heading changes, 685 new class numbers and 46 class number changes.
On Friday 6/26 , during the upcoming ALA annual meeting in Washington, DC LC plans to sponsor a repeat of the basic workshop on making proposals through SACO.
CPSO has a new email account and a shorter address: cpso@loc.gov; please send queries regarding cataloging policy and cataloging discrepancy reports there; announcements are available through the CPSO home page: http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/.
During the last six months competing priorities for staff resources continue to limit LC's ability to plan and implement form/genre access; however, CPSO continues to work with automation staff on implementing some of the additional data elements approved by MARBI for name and subject authority records; currently CPSO expects that the new data elements for subject authority records (155 fields for form/genre headings; 18X fields for subdivisions; subfield $v for form subdivisions; and 78X linking fields) will be implemented no earlier than this summer with name authority records to follow; effective implementation of subfield $v in authorities is dependent upon indexing that subfield in bibliographic files; availability of indexing changes will impact the schedule for form/genre implementation; CPSO is working closely with CDS to analyze the changes necessary to incorporate form/genre elements in CDS products, including such issues as where subject subdivisions will print in LCSH, how 155 form headings will be labeled, and how heading/form subdivision combinations will sort in product displays. In December it was decided that a list of the planned subdivision authority records would be printed in a separate section of LCSH.
10th edition of Free-Floating Subdivision and the 21st edition of LCSH (in five volumes) are being prepared; approximately 49 percent of the headings in LCSH21 have references that are coded as evaluated, while less than 24 percent are coded as not evaluated.
Online conversion of class M provided the opportunity for the first complete reassessment of that schedule since 1978; a review of the revised version was completed in November; changes that resulted from that review will be input, to be followed by proofreading and publication later this year.
4. SAC Subcommittee on the Revision of the Guidelines on Subject Access to
Individual Works of Fiction plans to complete its manuscript of subject terms by the end
of March.
5. SAC Subcommittee to Review [the IFLA document] "Principles Underlying Subject
Headings Languages" has concluded its work and proposed disbanding the subcommittee.
6. SAC Subcommittees on Metadata and Subject Analysis and Subcommittee on Metadata and
Classification had their first meetings. Both meetings were primarily spent in defining
metadata and identifying major issues surrounding its use in subject analysis and
classification of digital resources. Topics such as who creates metadata, need for subject
analysis or classification, what elements in the Dublin Core reflect information relevant
to subject analysis and classification, how do search engine use metadata, what tools are
needed to map terms and classification were discussed and will be pursued with additional
review and discussion.
7. SAC Subcommittee on Form Headings/Subdivision Implementation: heard update from Tom Yee
regarding LC's implementation of form/genre headings and subdivisions (see separate
report, below); discussed implication of paper on LCSH form data on works of fiction
prepared by Andrew MacEwan from the British Library: "the paper reviews the
application of form and genre headings from the Library of Congress Subject Headings to
works of fiction; the purpose of this study is to highlight the issues arising from the
planned implementation of the new 655 field and $v subfield for form data on the LCSH file
in the specific context of one major literary genre;" in addition to LC terminology,
the British Library has experience with terms from the Guidelines of Subject Access to
Works of Fiction, Drama, etc. used by the OCLC/LC project; this experience has generated a
number of unresolved questions concerning the relationship between LCSH and GSAFD which
provided the stimulus for writing this paper.
8. IFLA Section on Classification and Indexing: IFLA conference papers are available on
IFLANET <http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ifla/>
9. Dewey Decimal Classification update: 1st update of Dewey for Windows is available from
OCLC Forest Press; Dewey for Windows Guide will be published in print in early 1998; Dewey
home page is available at: http://www.oclc.org/ft/.
10. The SAC Subcommittee on Subject Access to Computer Files submitted its final report to
SAC; "the overwhelming challenge for this subcommittee was the constant, dynamic, and
exploding nature of change in the area of computer files cataloging; since the work of the
subcommittee began, the focus of computer files moved from mainframe to personal computer
to Internet to metadata; each time the subcommittee met the discourse and discussion
necessitated major shifts; it has become apparent that the charge of the subcommittee is
much too narrow for today's reality of electronic resources and metadata; however, the
work and insights of the subcommittee will be incorporated into the broader universe of
electronic resources cataloging."
11. SAC Subcommittee to Promote Subject Relationships/Reference Structures: this
subcommittee continues the work of its predecessor; its primary objectives are to
encourage the online display of broader and narrower term relationships; subcommittee
members will review library catalogs to determine which have subject referencing available
and how they differ
12. The SAC annual program is entitled:
One-size-fits-all subject access systems: Tailoring general schemes to meet the needs of
specific communities of searchers.
The program will be held on Sat, June 27, 2-4 pm. For more details, see the preliminary
website:
http://www.pitt.edu/~cypst2/program.html.
ALA MIDWINTER 1998
SAC SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORM HEADINGS/SUBDIVISIONS IMPLEMENTATION MEETING NOTES
submitted by Harriette Hemmasi
Rutgers University
Subcommittee member and
Chair (past), MLA Subject Access Subcommittee
2/27/98
The SAC Subcommittee on Form Headings/Subdivisions Implementation met at
ALA midwinter on 1/9/98. The agenda for the meeting included:
1. Update on LC's Working Group on Form/Genre (excerpts taken from written report
submitted by Tom Yee, CPSO):
competing priorities for LC staff resources continue to limit LC's ability to plan and implement form/genre subject access; these competing priorities include the push to eliminate LC's monograph arrearage by the year 2000, planning for an integrated library system, digitization efforts, developing guidelines for catalog electronic resources and the need to edit the online LC class schedules
On 8/25/97 Tom Yee, chair of the Working Group on Form/Genre, began
serving as acting chief of CPSO during Barbara Tillett's three-year appointment as ILS
Program Director
New data elements for subject authority records will be implemented no earlier than summer 1998 (with changes to name authorities to follow); the changes for tags and subfield codes for form/genre terms and subject subdivision records are only part of a larger package.
System changes are not limited to the authority application of
implementing subfield $v; indexing of $v in bibliographic records is another system change
required; LC Systems staff are beginning to review and analyze the changes needed for
indexing the $v in bibliographic files; LC is unable to estimate when these indexing
changes will be in production until after this review and analysis completed; the
effective implementation of the authorities $v subfield is dependent upon indexing that
subfield in bibliographic files.
CPSO is working closely with the Cataloging Distribution Service to analyze the changes necessary to successfully incorporate form/genre elements into CDS products, including such issues as where subject subdivisions will print in LCSH, how 155 form headings will be labeled in LCSH, how heading/form subdivision combinations will sort in printed products and other issues.
In the new 155 form/genre world, it will be common for a 150 topical heading to have the same character string as a 155 form heading and/or 18X subdivision heading; in view of this, CPSO has asked the Network Development/MARC Standards Office at LC to reassess normalization and validation conventions .
LC has created authority records for approximately 3,000 free-floating form and topical subdivisions; initially LC may have to create skeleton, stub authority records that will be built upon in the future; LC plans to add references and scope notes to these records and information abut usage with headings; LC has decided that a printed list of these subdivision authority records will be available in a separate section of LCSH.
There have been several meetings to discuss the recommendations made in
the British Library Fiction Indexing Group's paper: "The Application of Form Data to
Works of Fiction;" focus of these meetings has been the relationship between GSAFD
and LC fiction cataloging practice; in general, CPSO is in agreement with principles
contained in the recommendations as they relate to LCSH.
At the beginning of 10/97 LC Motion Picture/Broadcasting/Recorded Sound Division began using the Moving Image Genre-Form Guide; the guide includes some 150 moving image genre and form terms which have been applied to approximately 2000 cataloging and inventory level records; the Moving Image Genre-Form Guide is intended to be applicable to most library and archival collections and is easy to use; the Guide will be placed on the LC web site and will later be published in paper form.
The LC Geography & Map Division will be experimenting with the use of one term from a list of form/genre terms that is under study; when cataloging digital cartographic material, G&M staff will be using field 653 to bring out the form of material; the 653 is a temporary collocating device until formal decisions about form/genre access to cartographic materials are finalized.
2. NLM is re-issuing older records affected by the implementation of 655
and $v; these records will be available to licensed users.
3. OCLC is reindexing WorldCat for keyword searching (to be completed by the end of 1998);
the reindexing will include access to form/genre indexes.
4. Andrew MacEwan, of the British Library, presented a discussion paper on LCSH form data
on works of fiction; contents of this paper include: identification of the principal
background parameters on which the analysis is based; description of current LCSH practice
for assigning form data to works of fiction; identification of the principles for
constructing and assigning form headings for fiction and recommendations based on these
principles (this is a critical section in which the author attempts to re-think the nature
of indexing by form in order to exploit the full potential of 655 and $v); recommendations
which draw heavily on recent work of the GSAFD Subcommittee on the theme of disentangling
form data from subject data; consideration of how other non-fiction form data fits into
the application of fiction form headings, focusing in particular on pictorial works and
readers; conclusion with a summary of the recommendations made, divided into those
affecting the LCSH file and those affecting policies for application of form data.
5. Review of Subcommittee projects in progress: statistical gathering on form
questionnaire; OPAC display work.
6. Plan of action: list and review online catalogs that provide form/genre indexing and
access.
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