FROM THE TREASURER

ALA ANNUAL CONFERENCE MEETINGS

OLAC CONFERENCE 1992 CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS

MUSIC OCLC USERS' GROUP REPORT

BOOK REVIEWS

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

       Reporting period:
       January 25, 1991 through April 29, 1991

       Account Balance January 25, 1991                      $8,289.35

       INCOME
          Interest                                              115.53
          Memberships                                         1,583.00
          CD Interest                                           368.55
          Mailing list                                          100.00
                                                           ------------
       TOTAL INCOME                                           2,167.08

       TOTAL                                                $10,456.43

       EXPENSES
          Newsletter v. 11, no. 1 (advance)                     900.00
          Bulk mail fee                                          75.00
                                                            ------------  
       TOTAL EXPENSES                                           975.00

       Account balance April 29, 1991                        $9,481.43
       CD at 8.10% matures 3/91                               6,000.00

       TOTAL OLAC ASSETS                                    $15,481.43

       Current membership = 606

OLAC

CATALOGING POLICY COMMITTEE
Friday June 28th, 8-10 pm, WESTIN TOWER 17

OLAC BUSINESS MEETING
Saturday June 29th, 8-10 pm, MARRIOTT/TRINIDAD

OLAC EXECUTIVE BOARD
Sunday June 30th, 8-10 pm, HYATT/SPANISH

TASK FORCE ON MULTIPLE VERSIONS
Friday June 28th, 2-5:30, Georgia World Congress Center/362W

MEETING
Saturday June 29th, 2-4, Georgia World Congress Center/369W

MEETING
Monday July 1st, 9:30-12:30, Hilton/Grand Salon D

JOINT ALCTS AV AND OLAC CAPC MEETING
Sunday June 30th, 8-9 am, Georgia World Congress
Center/165W

MEETING
Tuesday July 2nd, 2-5:30, Georgia World Congress Center/165W

AV STANDARDS SUBCOMMITTEE
Sunday June 30th, 2-5:30, Westin/Place
Monday July 1, 2-5:30, Marriott/McKenzie

PRODUCER/DISTRIBUTOR LIBRARY RELATIONS
SUBCOMMITTEE
Tuesday July 2nd, 8-9 am, Georgia World Congress Center/155W

MEETING
Sunday June 30th, 9:30-12:30, Westin/Park

MEETING, Saturday June 29th, 9:30-12:30, Marriott/Sydney

MEETING, Sunday June 30th, 2-4, Georgia World Congress
Center/305E

MEETING, Monday July 1st, 2-5:30, Georgia World Congress
Center/256W

MEETING, Tuesday July 2nd, 8-11 am, Georgia World Congress
Center/161W

MEETING
Saturday June 29th, 2-4, Georgia World Congress Center/368W

MEETING
Sunday June 30th, 2-5:30, Georgia World Congress Center/369W

MEETING
Monday July 1st, 9:30-12:30, Hilton/Grand Salon C

SAC SUBCOMMITTEE ON AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS
Saturday June. 29th, 9:30-11, Hilton/Cabinet

Saturday June 29th, 9-12:30, Georgia World Congress
Center/267W

PRACTICAL PRACTICA: GRADUATE LIBRARY SCHOOL
STUDENTS IN THE CATALOG DEPARTMENT
Saturday June 29, 9-11, Georgia World Congress Center/215E

DEWEY DISCOVERED: THE NEW ABRIDGED EDITION
Sunday June 30th, 9-11, Georgia World Congress Center/217E

RETHINKING THE SUBJECT CATALOG: TIME FOR A
PARADIGM SHIFT
Monday July 1st, 2-4, Georgia World Congress Center/201E

VIDEO COLLECTIONS: COPYRIGHT AND PUBLIC
PERFORMANCE
Saturday June 29th, 9:30-12:30, Georgia World Congress
Center/202E

Our next OLAC Conference will be held at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, Rockville, Maryland, on October 1-3, 1992. The site is just north of Washington, D.C.; a short twenty-minute subway ride.

Diane Boehr, co-chairman for local arrangements, will be present at ALA and the OLAC Business Meeting to answer questions and seek suggestions on program topics.

To date, volunteers helping to organize the 1992 OLAC Conference include Lowell Ashley, music liaison for program planning; Cynthia Allen, registration and database manager; Kathy Winzer and Shakuntala Doshi, planning; and Ellie Wackerman, tours.

We are looking for a volunteer to be program chairman and someone to help with publicity. If you would like to assist in these areas, please call Meredith Horan at 301/496-5497.

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The University of California at San Diego is engaged in a special project to enter records for certain uniform titles for which @C authority records are not normally prepared under current Library of Congress guidelines. They have completed a series of records for works by Prokofiev and are now going to enter records for works by Beethoven.

A NACO Music Project Advisory Committee is now in place which will monitor all aspects of procedures and recommend future directions for the project.

A fourth edition of The Best of MOUG, a list of uniform titles for Bach, Mozart, and others, is expected to be available in early summer.

A MOUG membership directory was published as a special issue of the MOUG Newsletter in October, 1990.

The official MOUG archives was established in 1990 at the University of Maryland at College Park, which is also the repository for the archives of the Music Library Association.

The program of the MOUG annual meeting, held in Indianapolis, Indiana, on February 12-13, 1991, included an in-depth review of OCLC's EPIC Service by Robert Acker of DePaul University. A report of this presentation appears in the MOUG Newsletter, no. 47, April 1991.

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Jay Weitz's book is a comprehensive guide to tagging musical materials (as well as non-musical sound recordings) which serves as a companion to Soldier Creek's other titles on music cataloging. Rather than providing guidance on the content of a catalog record for a score or sound recording, which is covered in Richard Smiraglia's Cataloging Music and Perry Brachter and Jennifer Smith's Music Subject Headings, Weitz focuses, as his title suggests, on the accurate tagging, or content designation, of these materials.

Weitz is well-known to the music cataloging community through his position as Quality Control Librarian at OCLC, as well as through his informative column in the MOUG (Music OCLC Users Group) Newsletter. With this book, he has again demonstrated his commitment to improving the quality of music cataloging. Rather than focus only on tagging practices in OCLC, Weitz offers comparisons of the MARC format as used by OCLC, RLIN, WLN, and by the Library of Congress which will be increasingly useful to those of us who now routinely encounter bibliographic records from other utilities through tape-loaded records in our own utilities or through our local networks.

Music Coding and Tagging includes many well-chosen examples of individual tags as well as complete catalog records from the three utilities, a bibliography, and an index to allow the book to be used for quick references. Weitz also provides in-depth explanations of perpetual music tagging problems such as the tagging of the control fields: 007 (physical description), 024 (standard recording number), 028 (publisher's numbers) and 010 (LC Control number). As such, the book will serve not only as an excellent aid to the beginning or "infrequent" music/sound recordings cataloger, but as an important sourcebook for veteran catalogers as well.

While Weitz's intent is clearly to focus upon the tagging of new cataloging using AACR2R, he also provides a list of obsolete and pre-AACR2 fields. A further expansion of this feature to include mention of such former practices as the use of the 260 subfield 'd" to record plate numbers for scores could have further increased the value of the book for retrospective conversion, perhaps without adding considerably to the book's length. The relatively small (but clear) type font and unobtrusive mid-page headings somewhat hinder quickly locating information within a page, but this is an acceptable convenience if it contributed to keeping the book at a reasonable price!

Music and sound recordings catalogers working in an automated environment will want to have access to this book as a valuable supplement to the documentation available from any individual online system.

Subject Analysis in Online Catalogs. Rao Aluri, D. Alasdair Kemp, and John J. Boll. Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1991. 303 pp. ISBN 0-87287-670-5 $37.50.

This is an ambitious book. In just over 300 pages, the authors present a thought-provoking synthesis of every major aspect of subject access in online catalogs, covering topics as diverse as MARC formats, linguistic concepts, principles of indexing and abstracting, subject heading and classification systems, keyword searching and citation indexing, users' considerations, and techniques for evaluating subject access in online catalogs. While some of these topics are given more space than others, most of the various treatments are about the right length for the book's intended audience of library school students, catalogers who work with or are planning for online catalogs, and librarians of all kinds who are interested in the topic of subject access. For those who want more, there are extensive references, which the authors have thoughtfully placed at the end of chapters.

After a brief introductory chapter stressing the importance of subject access in the online environment, Chapter 2 presents an overview of the structure of a typical database. The structure of MARC bibliographic files, both fixed and variable fields, is discussed, as are authority and inverted files. This discussion is hardly exhaustive, and most catalogers who work with automated systems are probably already familiar with this information from other sources. Nevertheless, this chapter would make a good introduction for the would-be cataloger or noncataloger who needs a concise explanation of MARC formats.

Chapter 3 attempts to apply linguistic concepts to the process of subject retrieval. Concepts defined and discussed within the context of information retrieval include semantics, syntax, controlled and uncontrolled vocabularies, and pre- and post-coordination systems. Unfortunately, as this chapter demonstrates, linguistics is a particularly jargon-laden discipline, and only here do the authors sacrifice clarity for thoroughness. At least this reviewer still feels more confused than enlightened, even after several readings.

Chapter 4 looks at the similarities between subject cataloging and indexing and abstracting. The authors outline in detail four factors affecting indexing quality- accuracy, consistency, exhaustivity, and specificity. They contrast the summative cataloging found in public access catalogs with the comprehensive indexing policies of database services and conclude that the former is outdated and woefully inadequate for the online environment.

Chapter 5 examines the structure of subject heading systems. Much of the chapter is spent enumerating the more frequently cited problems that catalogers and users encounter when using Library of Congress Subject Headings. The authors divide these problems into two major groups: those problems rooted in the philosophy of assigning subject headings and those problems associated with the practical formulation of headings. The former, through a brief historical overview, are traced back to Cutter's Rules for a Dictionary Catalog, while the latter are seen as more endemic to all subject heading lists. Various correctives are prescribed.

Chapter 6 discusses derived subject headings. The major concepts of keyword access and citation index are defined using practical examples. The advantages and disadvantages of keyword access are listed. In their discussion of citation indexing, abstracts, back-of-the-book indexes, and tables of contents, the authors explain why such access is not currently practical for online catalogs and why such access would be advantageous; they also caution as to the kinds of problems that such access would create.

Chapter 7 details the nature and purpose of classification schemes, with an emphasis on their implications for automated subject retrieval. Specific kinds of classification systems--natural versus artificial enumerative versus synthetic--are defined, and classifications systems in general are differentiated from subject heading arrangements. Features and processes associated with classifications systems, including division, linearity, inversion, symbols, and notations, are also explained. Command and menu approaches to searching are compared and contrasted. Chapter 8 elaborates on many of the ideas introduced in Chapter 7, drawing specifically on Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress Classification for examples. Of particular interest to librarians planning for automation is the section titled "Desirable Features of Online Classed Retrieval Systems."

Chapter 9 stresses the importance of considering user needs in designing information systems. The internal processes involved in formulating information requests and the factors affecting the user's ability to formulate such requests and to manipulate the online catalog are explored. Chapter 10 focuses more closely on the dialog between user and system. The concept of user-friendliness is outlined in depth. The objectives of subject access and the different search modes--menu, command, combination menu-command, search key, and natural language--are highlighted. A discussion of hardware considerations and ergonomics round out the chapter.

Chapter 11 surveys the more common techniques for measuring database performance. Measurement of recall and precision, user effort, and response time are discussed. The focus is on rive methods of evaluation--transaction log analyses, interview and observation, focus group interviews, questionnaires, and simulation--and their relative merits and disadvantages. Although a few mathematical formulas are given, the emphasis here is more "why" than "how to." The authors summarize their conclusions in Chapter 12.

Catalogers who do not yet work with online catalogs should not be put off by the title. Only those librarians who are exceptionally well-read in the literature of subject analysis will not find this book stimulating.

Issues in Online Database Searching. Carol Tenopir. Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited, 1989. (Database Searching Series, no. 1) 188 pp. ISBN: 087287-7094 $26.50.

For this book, Tenopir has compiled short articles she has written over the last ten years. They represent her personal perspective on many of the major issues that are important to the professional online searcher in the library environment. The focus is online searching as an issue for intermediaries and its impact on the information industry. Topics covered are intermediary searchers, end users and systems for end users, microcomputers for online searching, software for in-house databases, CD-ROM, full text databases, evaluating databases and systems, database structure and search strategy, user aids, and the database industry -- past, present, and future. As she notes, several of these topics will be covered in depth in later volumes by other experts who have agreed to write original contributions for this series.

Most of the articles were originally published in Tenopir's "Online Databases' column in Library Journal which she began writing in February 1983. Some articles are from other journals including Information Technology and Libraries, Microcomputers for Information Management Online, and Online Review. Tenopir states that she has tried to bring time-sensitive information as up to date as possible. As a result, several of the articles are not just reprints, but are updated versions of the original articles. The primary audience for all of the articles is the professional intermediary.

The choice of topics is a good one and the book is probably most useful for its overview of the important issues related to each topic. However, it is somewhat confusing to separate the outdated material from what has been currently updated. The beginning of each chapter notes what has been updated, but it would be easier for the reader if this information had been stated at the beginning of each individual article. Because it is not always easy for the reader to know what material is out of date and what material is current, reading this book becomes a frustrating experience, particularly since some of the articles were written as long ago as 1983 and 1984.

Most useful, and not subject to being out of date, were the chapters on evaluating databases and systems, and database structure and search strategy. The book has an index, copious bibliographical references, and a complete list of Tenopir's publications through 1988. It is recommended for larger collections on online database searching.

For beginners looking for a basic text about online searching, a 'how do to it' manual that presents in linear fashion the issues of online searching, this would not be the best choice. A better choice would be Online Reference and Information Retrieval, 2d ed., by Roger C. Palmer (1987), or, Online Retrieval: Analysis and Strategy, by Peter J. Vigil (1988). For managers of online search services, Online Searching: the Basics, Settings, and Management 2d ed., edited by Joann H. Lee is a good choice. (Also in the Database Searching Series, no. 3).

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QUESTION: I often find Date Type/Dates Fixed Field errors in OLUC. Is there any way to encourage people to code them correctly, especially since incorrect data can hinder access to items?

ANSWER: Those fixed field elements are among the most confusing in the MARC format. The situation is not helped by compact discs that carry only the date of their original recording or release while giving no hint of the date of release in the CD format .... Consider all the dates found on the item, whether on the CD itself, the container, or the accompanying material, keeping in mind that the disc and label are the chief source of information. Remember also that CDs became commercially available in Japan in October 1982, in Europe in February 1983, and in the U.S. in March 1983. Use AACR2R 1.4F and 6.4F and their rule interpretations to determine the most reasonable date or set of dates. For CDs, it's useful to recall that 'c' copyright dates will usually refer to the printed material or artwork accompanying the disc; this date may be used to help estimate a publication or release date. A phonogram or "p" date is the copyright date of the recorded sound; if it predates the commercial availability dates of CDs, it obviously cannot be the publication or release date of the CD. In such cases, an approximate release date must be formulated using one of the various options outlined in 1.4F.
--Jay Weitz (OCLC)

Solinet Memorandum 1991-92 contained another interesting answer by Jay. It is especially useful since it provides some explanations that are helpful for those or us who are not music catalogers.

QUESTION: If the SPARS code on a compact disc is DAD, is the capture and storage technique (field 007 $n) considered to be digital or analog? We have a difference of opinion about whether a ... tape [that] is recorded [digitally] but [mixed using] analog mixing and editing [techniques] constitutes digital capture (yes) and storage (maybe not).

ANSWER: Frankly, I've never seen or heard of a recording coded DAD or anything other than the three standard combinations that are sometimes listed [on] CDs: DDD, ADD, and AAD. The three letters refer to the equipment used during [a recording] session (original recording, mixing and/or editing, and mastering (transcription)), respectively. In coding 007 $n, only the first letter of the code need be regarded, as it is the only one to indicate the original capture and storage technique. Any recording enhancements involving the subsequent mixing or editing (the second letter of the code) or mastering (the third letter), can be ignored here. The apparent illogic of using analog equipment for mixing and editing, but digital equipment for everything else make me wonder if the 'DAD" is simply an abbreviation for "digital audio disc," as is (sort of) suggested by Carole Franklin Vidali on p. 28 of The Acquisition and Cataloging of Music and Sound Recordings: A Glossary, by Suzanne E. Thorin and Vidali (MIA Technical Report no. 11.)
--Jay Weitz (OCLC)

QUESTION: Is it possible for a series to be a corporate body and vice versa? 'My question is in reference to Columbia University Seminars on Media and Society. It seems that the Seminar does function as a producer, yet, I think it would be appropriate to consider the seminar as a series. The programs are meant to stand alone much like a National Geographic Special.

ANSWER: LCRI 1.6 contains a section titled 'Series titles consisting solely of a corporate body's name' which demonstrates that a corporate body's name can be treated as a series when it is used with a number. The online authority file treats Media and Society Seminars as a corporate body. When cataloging their "Ethics in America" set recently, I treated Media and Society Seminars as a corporate added entry with the full form of the name in the area of responsibility, as below:

Ethics in America $h videorecording / $c [a production of]
Columbia University Seminars on Media & Society (in
association with) @T/New York ; producers, Betsy
Miller, Martha Elliott ; director, David Deutsch.

It can be confusing to look for help on OCLC member records, because we do find a variety of treatments for the same corporate body. Usually, it is best to check to see how the information is presented on the item itself, how the name is treated on the LC authority record, and then how other OCLC members have treated the name. There is a caveat when using OCLC member copy as sample cataloging to help decide questions like this. Keep in mind that not all catalogers actually view the item to transcribe production details from the piece. Information presented on accompanying material and the cassette case can be pretty ambiguous until the credits are consulted. It is also possible to discover 'false patterns of usage." This is when you can tell, after viewing the credits, that a number of cataloging records are following a pattern established without consulting the credits. Usually this is within the cataloging of one institution, but you also see other institutions copying the pattern set by another.
--VU

QUESTION: Does one trace Conference XYZ as a subject when cataloging the proceedings of Conference XYZ? Might it be argued that the Conference is the "subject" of its own proceedings?

ANSWER: No. The proceedings of a conference are the formal content of what happened during the time the conference was in session. Subject analysis tries to reflect what items are about. The proceedings are not "about' the conference but are the conference. It is an old cataloging battle to keep "are-ness" and 'about-ness" straight (which is one reason the Library of Congress subject heading manuals are so very useful).
--VU

QUESTION: I notice that the Dat tp explanation for the subfield p has changed in the latest revision (rev.9102) of the OCLC audiovisual format (MED FF:8). Does this mean that we will be seeing a lot more Dat tp p codes and a lot fewer Dat tp r and s?

ANSWER: Yes, that is what it means and purely because this explanation will help clear the way for proper application. The addition says:

If a work with identical content but in a different medium has a later release date than the original work (e.g., a videorecording release of a motion picture), Dat tp contains code p. DATE 1 contains the year of release.
DATE 2 contains the year of production.

       Imprint                           Dat tp           Dates
       New York: MGM/CBS                 p                1981,1964
       Home Video

       Note
       Originally produced as a motion picture in 1964.

--VU

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