Present:
Sue Neumeister, Chair Rick McRae (Music)
Lara Bushallow-Wilbur (UGL) Ellen McGrath (Law)
Gayle Hardy-Davis (LML) Diane Ward (CTS)
Judith Hopkins (CTS) Lori Widzinski (HSL)
Absent:
R. Ellen Greenblatt (CTS) Linette Koren (SEL)
Don Hartman (LML)
MINUTESThe minutes of the 1st meeting (14 March) were approved as distributed.
NEW BUSINESS
Lori Widzinski reported that HSL had received notices that some publications will no longer be issued in hard copy but instead will be available hereafter only on the Internet. She said that HSL plans to add a note to that effect to the bibliographic records involved, but wondered if the appropriate treatment of such situations was something this committee could deal with. Sue Neumeister agreed that it was.
REVIEW POLICY FOR MATERIALS CATALOGED (CHANGES IN URLs, ETC.)
Gayle Hardy-Davis expressed concern about material disappearing and being changed after we had prepared catalog records for them. She said that Loss Glazier has agreements with the Electronic Poetry Center contributors that everyone who places material there must agree to let him know if they move their files.
Ellen McGrath quoted Diane Hillman (Cornell Law Library) as saying that the fact that things move is no reason not to catalog them. Print materials get lost too. We will identify such materials just as we do disappearing print materials, by someone who has looked for them and not been able to find them notifying a librarian.
Sue suggested that we add a note to all test records we create for this project in BISON telling people to send a message to UBCIRG-L if they are unable to find an electronic document.
Rick McRae suggested creating a standard access point to be used for all Internet resources that we catalog. Judith Hopkins said that CTS uses the 730 field to provide such access to various categories of material.
SELECTION PROCESS TO IDENTIFY SOURCE RECORDS
The committee members reported on the results of their attempts to identify candidate records to catalog by an examination of the WINGS menus of various UB academic departments and research centers. The consensus was that very few suitable materials were available. Many of the menus were still being constructed. What materials were found were often either not local, were serials, or so brief as to be not worth cataloging.
Many departments did have descriptions of academic courses offered, faculty rosters, and summaries of faculty research interests. The Dept. of Mechanical Engineering had posted its annual report. Rick reported that the Center for Stochastic and Computational Mechanics had a number of important documents.
Ellen McGrath called attention to the newsletter-like LATIS (Law And Technology ISsues report), and to LegalList, a list of law-related resources on the Internet and elsewhere. Whenever its compiler updates it he notifies the LegalList subscribers of the online availability of the new edition.
Diane Ward mentioned some serial-like e-publications from the Faculty of Arts and Letters: a Puerto-Rican list that is loaded locally, the Buffalo Americanists' Digest, and Monist (its editor is a member of the Philosophy Department).
Rick McRae described material relating to the 228 electronic discussion lists, known as LISTSERVs, hosted by UB.
The most productive result came from the message that Sue had posted on the WINGS IP (Information Providers) list asking for suggestions of documents to catalog. She had received four responses, including mention of the Electronic Poetry Center (maintained by Loss Glazier), bibliographies provided by members of the Anthropology Dept., documents from UB's Counseling Center, and the UB Guide to Green computing document.
It was agreed that Sue would assign each committee member 3 items to catalog, with each item assigned to 3 people. She would also provide a workform with descriptive labels as well as MARC tags.
The question was raised as to whether call or class numbers should be assigned to the items cataloged. Some held that multiple class numbers could be assigned to an item since none would represent physical location. Others thought that class or call numbers for items without physical location would be confusing to the catalog users. It was decided NOT to include either call numbers or class numbers.
NEXT MEETING: The next meeting was scheduled for Monday, 15 May, at 2:30 pm in 223 Lockwood. That site is now confirmed.
Minutes prepared by Judith Hopkins.