Bo-Gay Tong FROM THE CHAIR
In this issue you will also find a ballot put forth for approval of several revisions to the OLAC By-Laws. Please read the accompanying article for further explanation and mail in your votes by March 20.
You may still submit nominations for the offices of Vice-Chair/ Chair-Elect and Secretary of OLAC. You may nominate yourself or another member of OLAC in writing to Verna Urbanski, Chair of the Nominating Committee (address: University of North Florida, P.O. Box 17605, Jacksonville, FL 32245-7605. Nominations will also be accepted from the floor during the OLAC Business Meeting on Jan. 25 at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio.
For those of you who will be traveling to San Antonio for ALA Midwinter, I hope that you will attend one or more of our meetings. Please come and participate--see you there!
FROM THE TREASURER
Bobby Ferguson
Reporting period:
July 15, 1991 through November 29, 1991
Account balance July 15, 1991 $10,031.84
INCOME
Interest 24.88
Memberships 3,948.50
-----------
TOTAL INCOME 3,963.35
TOTAL $13,095.19
EXPENSES
Newsletter v. 11, no. 3 (advance) 900.00
Foreign check charge 2.00
OLAC plaque 69.23
Postage and expenses 37.26
Stipend 100.00
Index, v. 1 -10 2,044.76
OLAC 92 Conference advance 1,200.00
Printing checks and deposit slips 18.75
ALA meeting room, summer 91 conference 120.00
-----------
TOTAL EXPENSES 4,492.00
Account balance November 29, 1991 $2,154.40
CD at 7.20% matures 7/94 10,000.00
Ready assets trust 699.88
TOTAL OLAC ASSETS $12,850.28
Current membership = 674
Return to Table of Contents
Bo-Gay Tong REVISIONS TO THE BY-LAWS
The first two revisions entail changing the title of the offices of Chair and Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect to President and Vice-President/President- Elect, respectively. Customarily, most organizations distinguish between the head of the organization and the heads of its committees by calling the head of the organization, "President", and the head of a committee within the organization, "Chair". Thus, the Executive Board feels that these changes are appropriate to bring OLAC in line with the titles normally used for officers of most other organizations.
The third revision proposes to appoint the Chair of the Cataloging Policy Committee (CAPC) to the Executive Board by making the Chair of CAPC an officer of OLAC. The Board recognizes that, unlike the other officers of OLAC, the Chair of this standing committee is an appointed, not an elected position. However, it believes that CAPC deals with issues which are at the heart of OLAC's purposes and objectives; that is, it is the primary body which directly addresses cataloging issues and concerns of AV catalogers. Because of the critical nature of this committee, it is felt that having the Chair of CAPC on the Board will ensure closer contact and provide better coordination between the activities of the Board and those of CAPC.
Please consider these issues and exercise your vote by mailing in the ballot inserted in this issue. All personal members of OLAC are eligible to vote. We will be discussing these revisions at the OLAC Business Meeting on January 25th at ALA Midwinter, so you are welcome to attend and comment on these proposals.
Your ballot must be postmarked no later than March 20, 1992. Please vote!
Diane Boehr (301-986-8560) and OLAC CONFERENCE 1992
QUALITY VS. QUANTITY : ARE THEY
COMPATIBLE?
Meredith Horan (301-496-5497), Conference
Co-Chairs
Room rates at the hotel are $72.00 per night for all rooms for reservations made prior to September 7. Information-nation regarding hotel registration will appear in the June OLAC Newsletter.
The hotel is located directly across the street from a Metro subway stop, and many restaurants, shops, and other amusements are within walking distance. Conference registration fees will include one luncheon. Registration forms will be mailed to all OLAC members in the June newsletter.
At this time we are looking for people to help us, particularly with publicity mailings, and in identifying and contacting potential corporate sponsors. If you can help please contact:
PUBLISHER NUMBERS FOR VIDEORECORDINGS
Nancy B. Olson
I have received questions from LC about using publisher numbers from videorecordings in our cataloging. Is anyone interested in inputting (and retrieving) on these numbers?
There are several kinds of numbers. One is a publisher's number such as "MV600167" from the label of the MGM/UA videocassette of Show Boat. Another is the number 66190083 stamped in the area surrounding the label on the MGM/UA videodisc of Brigadoon. The 50th anniversary limited edition videodisc of the Wizard of Oz has the number ML101656 on the disc label. Many (most) commercial feature films, cartoons, etc., carry a barcode on the container.
Would you like to access by these numbers? Write me with your comments, please.
Anne Salter, Column Editor BOOK REVIEWS
I was especially happy to find answers to some of my questions about cataloging locally produced videos, the main thrust of the collection with which I work. Providing both the Dewey and the Library of Congress classification numbers in the examples was also helpful, and should broaden the book's appeal.
Libraries with the 1981 work should purchase this revised work to take advantage of updates following the 1988 revision of AACR2. It is especially useful for those with limited AV cataloging experience and an excellent teaching tool for library interns. Highly recommended.
Verna Urbanski, Column Editor QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
QUESTION: I've received a format to catalog that I haven't seen before. It is a FORTRAN compiler for the NeXT computer, and it's on an optical disk. The disk is in a plastic cartridges case that is 6 x 5 1/4 in. It looks like a giant version of a 3 1/2 in. Macintosh disk. A label in the container says "NeXT 256 Megabyte Optical Disk."
I'm trying to determine the correct way to describe this in the physical description of the catalog record. "Optical disk" seems to refer to CD-type files such as the periodical databases. I came up with:
but, I am not sure that is correct. I couldn't find any OCLC record for similar items.
ANSWER:If the disk is removable and it is the disk, not the case, that is inserted, then it would be described following AACR2R rule 9.5DIa as:
If, on the other hand, the case is inserted, then it would be described following 9.5Dlb as you've done. However, the size of a cartridge is described by giving "the length of the side of the cartridge that is to be inserted into the machine." --- Ann Fox, Library of Congress
QUESTION: Our laserdisc player does not freeze-frame. Consequently, gathering cataloging information is very tedious and time consuming--read a little, pause (blank screen), write, back up, read some more, pause (blank screen), write. When equipment doesn't freeze-frame, how on earth do you gather information from the disc? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
ANSWER: I have only recently launched into laserdisc cataloging myself, but I will pass along a couple of observations. Laserdisc players without freeze-frame do make things less efficient. Pausing (actually stopping the machine) to transcribe information quickly becomes a major pain. Our laserdisc player (Pioneer CLD 1070) came with a remote control. Although the "still/step" buttons have no effect, I have found the scan forward/backward buttons to be very helpful in letting me repeat the data on the screen endlessly until I get the information I want. If you can find a remote for your machine, or if it came with a remote control, I recommend using it. The main saving grace of this is that you need not stop the machine and wait for it to get back up to speed.---VU
QUESTION: I am cataloging a group of laser disks. They are all 12 inch and either science topics or copies of popular movies. I am having trouble deciding what order to put the notes in. Our library always puts the format as the first note, but after that I am unsure where to put things like "closed captioned for the hearing impaired." Partly, I am just unsure of myself because it is my first experience with a new format. Could you address the order of notes?
ANSWER: Examine AACR2R at 7.7 Note Area. For the notes that give you the most trouble, match as closely as possible the type of note you need to add to the categories listed. That may not be as easy as it sounds. For instance, the closed captioned note could be thought of as a language note (7.7B2). Or, it could be considered a physical description (7.7B 10). Treated one way, it comes very early in the record, treated another, quite far down. I resolved this to my own satisfaction by thinking: "If I needed this information, where would I want to find it?" My answer was earlier rather than later, in the record. However, treated as a language note, it would precede a title note if one were needed. I wasn't comfortable with that, so I usually insert this note after title notes and before statements of responsibility notes.
The "originally released (or broadcast)" and "based on" notes can also be headaches. These can frequently combine to create a note such as: Videodisc release of the 1962 motion picture, based on the story "The war lover" by John Hersey. Occasionally, even the edition/history information combine nicely with publication/date information, such as: Originally broadcast as an episode of the television program Nova. Contents cl975 by WGBH; c 1983 by Peace River. In this instance it was impossible to tell why Peace River had copyrighted the program again in 1983, so I opted to just record that as a fact. (The laserdisc version was issued in 1989).
Many modem movies include trailers for other productions available from the distributor. AACR2R doesn't supply a clean, well-lighted place to store this information. I position it on the record as a form of contents note (7.7B 18) even though there may not otherwise be an explicit need for a contents note: Preceded by a trailer for ... Code it 500 not 505. In many instances it is not even necessary to include information on trailers for modem movies.
As a general reminder, a cast note precedes a credits note, even though the MARC format numbers for these fields would indicate otherwise. I notice that lots of catalog records list producers and directors in the credits notes instead of being listed in the area of responsibility.
I have a 3x5 card on the cork board above my desk that lists the notes I use most frequently. Eraser marks reveal that I do change my mind sometimes! Here's what my cheat sheet says:
QUESTION: I am cataloging something I will call a "folder," pam-bound, actually, containing 180 stamp-like miniatures of commercial and non-commercial posters from the 1920's and 1930's, mounted on 18 leaves in a scrap-book like format. Do these go in the Books format or AV format? I think they could be shoe-homed into either. Do you have any suggestions for notes? There is no title page.
ANSWER: Your question is a toughy. Without seeing the item, I would say that it is an AV candidate. If there is text with the stamp sized miniatures, I would be inclined to go with the books format, thinking of it in the same way we do books of art reproductions. As an AV item, you would probably want to treat it as 180 individual stamps mounted on pages. GMD of art reproduction seems appropriate if the object of the content of each miniature is to reproduce a form of art (posters). I think the physical description would be: 180 stamps : col., (and b&w ?) ; the size of the individual stamp (or a range of sizes if appropriate). A 500 note could say: "Mounted for viewing on 18 leaves and bound." It probably makes a more useful record done as an AV. What about a title for it? Something like: Poster art of the 1920's and 1930's or Poster miniatures from the 1920's and 1930's?---VU
Return to Table of Contents
Top
Last modified: December 1997
URL: http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/cts/olac/newsletters/...
HTML version created by Brenda Battleson (
blb@acsu.buffalo.edu)
Return to OLAC Newsletter index