Bibliographic Control Committee
Music Library Association Conference – Los Angeles
Open Meeting minutes
3/19/99
11:00 a.m.
Present on platform: Linda Barnhart, Michael Colby, Dennis Davies-Wilson, Kathy Glennan, Harriette Hemmasi, Mark Scharff, Phil Schreur, Sue Vita, Jay Weitz, Matt Wise.
1. Introductions and overview of BCC functions
Linda Barnhart began the meeting by reading the charge of the BCC followed by describing the makeup of the BCC. RLG and WLN representatives are no longer on the BCC. Linda talked about the change of format in the open meeting from a “reporting out” by the subcommittee members previewing what will take place at the respective subcommittee meetings to a presentation format on a particular topic or issue, which this year will be “Form/Genre.” OCLC and LC reports traditionally read at the BCC Open Meeting are available to be read on the BCC website.
Linda reported that no progress has been made on publishing the Sheet Music Cataloging Guidelines for this year; however, the guidelines have been submitted for publication.
Linda announced that each of the four subcommittees have at least one opening for new members effective at the end of this conference. Interested individuals should submit letters of interest to the respective subcommittee chairs for consideration.
2. Form/Genre presentation – Harriette Hemmasi
Harriette Hemmasi was introduced by chair, Linda Barnhart. Harriette gave an overview of Form/Genre headings and $v implementation and usage. A general explanation was provided differentiating $v and $x. Subfield $v generally refers to what the physical form of the item is, for example dictionaries or scores and parts, where $x generally refers to the aboutness of the item, for example History and Interpretation. There are also some grey areas that could fall under both categories such as periodicals or statistics.
Harriette touched on the work accomplished and currently underway by the Form/Genre Working Group and how these things will be implemented by LC. A recently created Subject Authority Record was projected onto the screen as an example.
Harriette went through various special form
subdivisions for music that are used with three major areas, forms of composition, musical
instruments, and persons, corporate bodies and groups.
Exercises previously distributed to attendees were gone through determining whether a given subdivision is $v or $x. The audience participated in this exercise as a group. Discussion occurred as necessary where there was a question or where a case could have been made for either $v or $x.
Harriette then talked about impact of implementation with regard to systems, indexing, search and retrieval, cataloging, whether or not to convert all the headings. With these challenges it is necessary to communicate the differences between “subject” and “object.” Harriette covered at length the contents of the handout entitled “Implementation of $v: Implication for Indexing – Searching – Retrieving. She showed an example of an actual search (operas and dictionaries) illustrating the type of search, number of records retrieved, and then looked at an actual record to illustrate what fields were actually searched using the respective search strategy and how this relates to the end user (i.e. will they understand what their search produced and why?)
3.
Panel reaction and broad group discussion
Questions chosen by BCC members to address regarding the impact of implementing $v were gone over. Audience members were invited to join in on the discussion. The questions addressed were as follows:
1. What are user education issues for separate indexes? Matt Wise addressed this question by approaching it from an ideal point of view of hypothetically being in the perfect bibliographic instruction environment. Matt discussed a number of scenarios regarding converted headings/unconverted headings and having newly created indexes or not. Whatever the situation, it will be necessary to educate patrons in the various ways of searching the OPAC based on how many of the possible outlined scenarios exist in the local database.
Kathy Glennan expressed a few thoughts regarding this question as well from the perspective of not being in an ideal bibliographic instruction environment. If $v is indexed in an OPAC, as long as patrons are performing subject keyword searches, it probably is not all that necessary to educate the patrons on this difference. Catalogers would of course need to be educated.
A number of audience members shared what their institutions are or are not doing regarding implementation of $v.
Mark Scharff added that it is going to be crucial to educate the reference personnel as well.
2. With the newly valid $v, what are the advantages to doing retrospective cleanup to legacy records?
Sue Vita addressed this question by saying that LC is not going to change existing records, but will implement $v in new records only. LC began using $v in February. LC has traditionally followed the philosophy of creating new records and not spending too much time fixing old records.
Jay Weitz added that the authority control software used by OCLC is in the process of being changed to allow $v and likely combinations of double subfields. It is uncertain at this point what will happen with the Bibliographic database. There’s been some talk about dividing the WorldCat database into partitions and running the most recent partitions against the authority control software. No decisions have been made as to what will actually happen. If updates regarding $v have not been made to the online version of the BFS, Jay will ensure that they are made ASAP.
Phil Schreur added that there are implications of cleaning up copy catalog records brought into the local database to make everything consistent if your library is going to retrospectively cleanup existing records.
3. How could a local system make use of subject subdivision authority records? Michael Colby addressed this question by saying that it is information that could be made use of. Some patrons find it very useful, others don’t care and just want to get to the sources they’re looking for. Mark Scharff elaborated further, explaining that the presence or not of scope notes in the authority records can make a world of difference as to the usefulness of the authority record to the patron.
Harriette wrapped up the session by listing what is needed in order to fully implement the use of $v, including full implementation of 655’s and $v and increased options for searching and indexing, among others.
The audience was polled and it was unanimously decided that future Open BCC meetings will continue in the style of this new format. No one in the audience objected to not having OCLC and LC reports read out loud at the Open BCC meeting. Linda asked for any ideas for topics to cover next year at the Open Meeting. Linda mentioned a few options that have come up, including:
-Options to traditional MARC cataloging
-OCLC Project Re-use
-Interest in case based rules extracted from AACR2
-Bill Walker suggested a session about MARC update #3
The meeting was adjourned at 12:30 p.m.
Submitted by Dennis Davies-Wilson, BCC Recording Secretary
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Last updated April 17, 2000