BCC98/SAS/3

1998 ALA ANNUAL MEETING
ALCTS CCS SUBJECT ANALYSIS COMMITTEE REPORT
June 28 and 29, 1998

Submitted by Harriette Hemmasi

The following report represents selected coverage of topics from the SAC meetings in Washington, DC on June 28 and 29, 1998.

1. Sears List of Subject Headings

16th edition, 1998 update includes 19 new headings, 1100 records revised; 17th edition scheduled for publication in spring of 2000; send comments of questions to Joseph Miller, editor: jmiller@hwwilson.com.

2. LC report (Lynn El-Hoshy)

• New acquisitions significant to American culture; Music Division entered into agreement to purchase archives of dancer Martha Graham, to mount performance at the Library of newly commissioned work by Graham Dance Company, and to create 5-year Legacy Project to document and preserve Graham's works; in May Library staged recreation of Appalachian Spring, created by Graham and Copeland (work premiered at Library in 1944); Bob Hope and family donating personal collection to Library, along with generous gift of stock to support its processing and preservation and creation of Bob Hope Gallery of American Entertainment.

• Theme of bicentennial year of "Libraries -- Creativity -- Liberty," with goal of inspiring creativity in the century ahead by stimulating greater use of LC and libraries everywhere; LC is working with ALA, state libraries, and others to plan themes that may be used through "Local Legacies Project," with the hope that events and projects will be undertaken to document local culture and interests.

• New files will be added to CDS's CD-ROM products later this year; issue 3 of July 1998 of Cataloger's Desktop will contain APPM (Archives, Personal Papers and Manuscripts); issue 4 in November will include AACR2e with amendments cumulated through 1997; AACR2 will work seamlessly through hypertext links with other cataloging tools in the Desktop; issue 3 of Classification Plus will contain new schedules; DS-DX, PQ, the P-PZ tables, and a 1998 edition of KZ; Classification Plus will move to new platform, Folio Views 4.x, which will provide a new screen design, faster search response time, new relevancy ranked search results, and links to current data on the Web.

• In May, LC awarded a contract for an integrated library system to Endeavor Information Systems; this new system will replace many of the Library's older independent automated systems with a single client/server system that will support all standard library operations; a Congressional appropriation of $5.6 millions in fiscal year 1998 will cover the Endeavor software, training, maintenance, and support, in addition to some new system hardware; implementation is expected to involved efforts of 500 to 1000 LC staff members organized in approximately 70 project implementation teams; target date for release is October 1999; Library anticipate possibility of short-term decrease in cataloging production while it install new system and trains staff to use it effectively.

• Core level cataloging record has been established as LC's base level of cataloging; expectation is that all teams in Cataloging Directorate will implement core level by end of fiscal year 1998.

• To date, over 3000 CIP records have been created via the first phase model of the Electronic Cataloging in Publication (ECIP) system; to participate, publishers access an online application form on the Web and after receiving an account number and password, may apply for CIP data for forthcoming books; ECIP requires publishers to transmit full text of their texts in machine-readable form to LC; to facilitate access LC will use Oracle's ConText application which generates an overall summary of a work as well as summaries of secondary themes within the work.
  
• 1,475,000 replacement records for the PREMARC file (records purchased from Carrollton Press that were originally derived from microfilming LC's shelf list) were received from OCLC; a Management Team is now working on various clean-up projects for these records.

• In 9/97 Library announced its intention to convert from Wade-Giels to pinyin for romanization of Chinese; a proposal by Research Libraries Group to convert Chinese-language records in the RLIN files has been accepted; this undertaking will ensure that LC and RLIN files remain compatible; OCLC is being kept abreast of planning process; access points on non-Chinese records will be brought into conformity with headings in the authority file; current plans call for changing as few class and Cutter numbers for persons and places as possible.

• Centennial celebration of LC Subject Headings was held at ALA in the Great Hall; summer of 1898 a new LC dictionary catalog was begun with the integration of alphabetically arranged author, title, and subject entries.
  
• After testing of new data elements in subject authority records for form headings/subdivisions, LC will begin to include subdivision forms of geographic names in 781 linking fields added to new and revised subject authority records for geographic names; LC is grateful to Gary Strawn for supplying a file of geographic subdivision forms that he generated; this data will be used to add linking fields to existing subject authority records; records are expected to be distributed in the fall; for those subdivision that can function as either topical or form subdivision, LC will create two records, one tagged as topic (180) and another as form (185). Subdivision records that include topical and form elements will be tagged for the function that the subdivision in the first subfield performs; additional subfields will be coded for their function.

• LC will undertake a project to record form subdivisions that appear in existing subject authority records from $x to $v; these revised records will also begin to be distributed in the fall; CPSO will draft guidelines and update documentation on form subdivision and application of subfield $v in bibliographic records; guidelines will be included in the 1998 Update 2 to the Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings; LC staff will begin to code form subdivisions as $v in LC bibliographic records on 11/1/98; creation of headings in 155 fields and more widespread assignment of form/genre terms in 655 fields of bibliographic records will occur in future stages of form/genre implementation plan and may be phased in by format or discipline; Library is not yet projecting any specific dates for future stages of implementation.

• As of 6/98 the subdivision --Biography is no longer used under literary authors and biographic works about them; the subdivision --History--To 1500 will be used under topical headings for works that discuss periods prior to the sixteenth century.

• Papers from library conference in Russia, organized by the National Library of Russia and the Cataloging Section of the Russian Library Association to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the All-Russian Research Group for Subject Indexing and Subject Cataloging and to feature current activities in developing and applying subject heading systems at the NLR and other institutions, will be posted to a Web site at http://www.nlr.org.

• The following LC classification schedules have recently been sent for publication: DS-DX, PQ with index, P-PZ tables, KZ; projected for publication by the end of 1998 are: K, KD, KE, KF, KJV-KJW, the K Tables, M, and PR-PS-PZ; CPSO is inviting comments to an initial draft revision of subclass HM for Sociology has been posted to the CPSO Web page.

3. Final document of Subcommittee on the Revision of the Fiction Guidelines
submitted to SAC members for review.

4. Subcommittee on Form Headings/Subdivisions Implementation

• Tom Yee submitted report on LC's form/genre implementation schedule.
  
  • First series of systems testing of the additional data elements approved by MARBI for name and subject authority records as part of updates 1 and 2 have been completed.
  • LC will be using Gary Strawn's authority file as a basis of the approximately 3000 form, topical and chronological free-floating subdivisions; new subdivision authority records (18X) will be distributed in fall 1998.
  • Form subdivision appearing in existing subject authority records will be recoded from $x to $v; to be distributed in fall 1998.
  • LC staff will begin coding form subdivisions as $v in LC subject headings assigned to bib records on 11/1/98.
  • Form subdivisions coded as $v are already appearing in LC bibliographic records in subject headings assigned by the National Library of Medicine from MeSH headings, in form/genre headings assigned from Moving Image Genre-Form Guide to records for moving-image materials, and in non-LCSH headings in some records used for copy cataloging g purposes and distributed by LC.
  • Creation of authority records for form/genre headings in 155 fields and more widespread assignment of form/genre terms in 655 fields of bibliographic records will occur in future stages of form/genre implementation.
  • Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Moving Image Section has been assigning terms from its Moving Image Genre-FORM Guide since 10/97; the guide's 150 genre and form terms have been applied to around 8,000 inventory and cataloging records in the Division; the guide is on the MBRS webpage at: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/mopic/migintro.html.

• OCLC will eventually index form/genre as part of the SU, or subject search; scan GE = genre; scan SB = subdivision; release date uncertain.

• LC will tag headings according to their first element: 150 Climate $v Observations; some form subdivisions act as both form and topic; in such cases, 2 subdivision records will be created: 180 $x Periodicals; 185 $v Periodicals.

• Subcommittee discussed implications of recon and the ambiguity of whether subdivision is form or topic.

• H. Hemmasi and David Miller presented samples of how form/genre is presented in various online catalogs; these examples will be expanded and presented at Mid-Winter.
  
• Status of Subcommittee was reviewed; decided to request permission to extend the Subcommittee at least one more year to see the implementation of 655 and $v; SAC agreed to extend the Subcommittee's charge.

5. Subcommittee on Metadata and Classification

• Subcommittee will look at websites that use classification and will publicize the most effective ones.

• 7 functions of classification identified: hierarchical movement; location; browse function; retrieval; segmenting; identification; profiling.

• Subcommittee will lobby with groups developing metadata standards.

6. IFLA liaison report

• 3 papers will be given during the Sections' Open Program in 1998: "Working with LCSH: the cost of cooperation and the achievement of access, a perspective from the British library," by Andrew MacEwan; "GOO: Dutch National System for Subject Indexing," by GJA Risethuis, University of Amsterdam and R. Storm; "Russian-Language Database of UDC: Creation and Implementation in Library Automation," by Yakov Shraiberg and E. Zaitseva, Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology.

• 2 half-day workshops will be presented: UDC in the Next Millennium and The French Translation of the Dewey Decimal Classification.
  
• Recommendation that a UNIMARC format for classification data be developed was accepted by the Permanent UNIMARC Committee.

7. Dewey Decimal Classification

• Dewey for Windows is now available from OCLC Forest Press; latest issue will run on Windows 3.1; next update to be issued in late 1998.
  
• Beginning with vol. 6, no. 2, Decimal Classification Additions, Notes and Decisions will change to electronic publication only.

• Karen Markey Drabenstott is converting Dewey captions into more natural language for improved public access; will be distributed in early fall 1998.

8. Subcommittee on Metadata and Subject Analysis official minutes available via web site: http://www.govst.edu/users/gddcasey/sac/metadata.htm

9. Subcommittee to Promote Subject Relationships/Reference Structures: SAC approved proposal for program entitled, "Oh Say Can We See: See Also," to demonstrate the need to need to display cross references and broader/narrower term relationships in OPACs.

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Last updated April 18, 2000