CONFERENCE REPORTS
Jan Mayo, Column Editor
** REPORTS FROM THE **
2003 ALA/CLA Annual Conference
Toronto, Canada
ALCTS Media Resources Committee (MRC)
Liaison Report
submitted by Maxine Sherman
Cuyahoga County (OH) Public Library
These notes contain information obtained at the meeting in Toronto as well as subsequent actions taken by the ALCTS Board.
Minutes from Midwinter 2003 were reviewed and approved. Miriam Palm, MRC chair, opened the discussion with her review of the committee for the ALCTS Organization & Bylaws. The ALCTS Board plans to discuss the future of division-wide committees during this conference.
Concern was expressed that those who catalog audiovisual materials and electronic resources need a voice on both CC:DA and MARBI because our formats have become a significant portion of the materials contained in and/or accessible from libraries. These policy-setting groups do not consistently recognize the need for our representation.
George Abbot introduced a possible project for MRC: the compiling of a list, or glossary, differentiating the various types of compact discs (optical discs, data discs, and CD-ROMs) and their system requirements. It was agreed that these are important and are not presently reflected in the rules for descriptive cataloging. This project may be undertaken in conjunction with CAPC, the Cataloging Policy Committee of OLAC. George will begin this project by preparing a draft of patterns for such a glossary by September 1st.
Miriam is setting up a discussion list for MRC to continue our discussion remotely, draft minutes of this meeting, and communicate further about the future of this group after this Conference is over. Discussion will continue about a possible program for the ALA Annual Conference in 2005 on digital rights management and how some vendors are now supplying materials with very strict limitations on their use.
The ALCTS Board did subsequently vote to dissolve seven committees, effective July 1, 2003, with the understanding they may be reconstituted as either discussion groups or interest groups. These seven committees are the Catalog Form & Function, Commercial Technical Services, Legislation, Media Resources, Networked Resources and Metadata, Publisher/Vendor-Library Relations, and Research & Statistics. Committees that are considered "extensions of the Board" will remain; others may be reconstituted as award juries if that is their primary function.
The seven committees listed above will have meeting rooms and time slots reserved for them during ALA Midwinter 2004, so that current members and others can discuss the future of these groups. MRC members and other interested parties are encouraged to talk about this issue on the new MRC discussion list that Miriam is in the process of establishing.
Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information Committee (MARBI)
Liaison Report
submitted by John Attig
Pennsylvania State University
The Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information (MARBI) Committee and the USMARC Advisory Committee met for a single session during the ALA/CLA Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada. The following is a brief summary of the meeting. More information is available on the MARC Advisory Committee Web page at <http://www.loc.gov/marc/marcadvz.html>.
Proposal No. 2002-14/9R: Definition of fields 365 (Trade Price) and 366 (Trade information)
This proposal defines two new fields for book trade information. It was added to the formats as the final part of the harmonization of MARC 21 with UK/MARC. It is expected to be used by British libraries, but should not be widely used in North America. MARBI approved the new fields with minor editorial changes.
Proposal No. 2003-03: Definition of data elements for article level description
This proposal presented two options for encoding article level information such as volume and page numbers. The option approved defines a single subfield ($q) in field 773 for this information. This information is expected to be used by OpenURL software to establish links between descriptions of individual articles in an online catalog and the text of the article in full-text databases.
Proposal No. 2003-04: Definition of field 024 (Other standard identifier) in the Authorities format
This proposal extends the 024 field to the authorities format, for use in cases when the authority record is for a work or expression. The proposal was approved.
Proposal No. 2003-05: Changes in field 352 (Digital graphic representation)
This proposal called for the addition of a new subfield ($q, Format of digital image) in field 352. This field contains the Digital graphic representation statement called for in rule 3.3F in the 2002 revision of AACR. The proposal was approved.
Discussion Paper No. 2003-DP04: Definition of subfield $2 in X55 fields in the Authorities format
This paper suggested that the identification of the thesaurus (typically in subfield $2 in X55 form/genre terms) should be explicitly coded in each heading field so that it could be verified along with the text of the heading. This argument was not accepted by MARBI, who felt that it was unnecessary to code this information at the heading level rather than the record level (field 040 $f).
Report No. 2003-Report01: Update from the JSC Format Variation Working Group
Jennifer Bowen, chair of the Working Group, reported that the group is working in several directions: (a) The Group has presented revisions to Chapter 25, Uniform Titles, in AACR in order to provide for explicit identification of expressions of a work. They are currently revising those proposals. (b) They have begun to discuss the redefinition of the General Material Designation (GMD) as an identification of the mode of expression, moving the identification of the form of the manifestation to the Specific Material Designation (SMD). (c) They continue to work with system vendors on the use of FRBR concepts in system design.
Business meeting
LC has updated the pamphlet Understanding MARC Bibliographic (also available online at <http://www.loc.gov/marc/umb/>). They have just issued a similar pamphlet Understanding MARC Authority Records. These pamphlets make great training documents.
The "Field 856 (Electronic Location and Access) Guidelines" has been revised; it is available at <http://www.loc.gov/marc/856guide.html>.
New "Guidelines for the Non-Sorting Control Character Technique" have been posted at <http://www.loc.gov/marc/nonsorting.html>; this technique has not yet been implemented by any vendors that I am aware of.
LC has posted some basic software that will take a file of MARC records and organize them into the appropriate FRBR work-expression-manifestation hierarchies, with appropriate labels at each level. This basic software is intended for testing and evaluation purposes. A description of the software, with downloading instructions, is available at <http://www.loc.gov/marc/marc-functional-analysis/tool.html>.
FRBR Programming
MARBI and CC:DA co-sponsored a program at the Toronto Conference on FRBR. Some of the PowerPoint presentations are posted at:
<http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/ALCTS/Continuing_Education2/Presentations/Presentations.htm>.
MARBI and CC:DA will co-sponsor a day-and-a-half preconference at the 2004 ALA Annual Conference in Orlando.
Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA)
Liaison Report
submitted by John Attig
Pennsylvania State University
The CC:DA Observer, Sophie Bogdanski of West Virginia University, was unable to attend the ALA/CLA Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada. This report covers some of the main items of interest on the CC:DA agenda.
Conventional Terminology
CC:DA considered three related proposals concerning the list of Specific Material Designations (SMDs) in Chapters 6 (Sound recordings), 7 (Motion pictures and videorecordings) and 9 (Electronic resources). The common theme was the attempt to implement a tentative decision that the terms in the list of SMDs should reflect common usage. The Music Library Association had prepared a set of rule revisions for Chapter 6 and, thanks to prior discussion with the OLAC Cataloging Policy Committee, I was able to contribute the opinions of OLAC. Both groups found difficulties with the concept of "common usage" and wanted to modify it in various ways. Both were concerned about the unstable nature of terms in common usage and wanted to limit the impact of common usage on terminology for existing types of material. Both were reluctant to add endless lists of terms for fine distinctions between types of encoding (e.g., CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, CD-I). In the CC:DA discussion, another concern emerged: the SMD term itself should indicate the general type of material, i.e., whether a CD contains sound, video or computer data.
CC:DA had an extensive discussion of these issues without reaching any final conclusions. That discussion will continue by e-mail and the final ALA response will be sent to the Joint Steering Committee (JSC) around August 11.
Other revision proposals
CC:DA considered the following revision proposals:
- A proposal regarding new rules for capitalization of German. Action was deferred on this proposal pending further consultation.
- A proposal on a Turkish word in the list of initial articles. Action on this proposal was deferred.
- A proposal to delete the definition of “Coloured illustration” from the Glossary. This proposal was approved by CC:DA and forwarded to the Joint Steering Committee for their consideration.
- A proposal to simplify the wording of the rule for transcribing other title information for serials and integrating resources (12.1E1). This proposal was also approved by CC:DA and sent forward to JSC.
- Four new and revised proposals from the Task Force on Consistency across Part I of AACR. These proposals deal with Areas 2 (Edition), 3 (Material-specific details), 4 (Publication, distribution, etc.) and 6 (Series). The proposals were approved and forwarded to JSC.
Reports
CC:DA heard reports from the following Task Forces:
- MARBI/CC:DA Program Planning Committee. The Committee is planning a preconference at the 2004 ALA Annual Conference in Orlando.
- Appendix on Major Changes. The Task Force presented the completed text of Differences Within, Changes Between: When to Create a New Record; CC:DA accepted the document and discussed plans for publication.
- Reconceptualizing Chapter 9. The Task Force presented an interim report, containing revision proposals that would limit the scope of Chapter 9 to computer software, numeric data, computer-oriented multimedia, and online systems and services, and would add electronic versions to the scope of other chapters in AACR. The report contained draft revision proposals for the rules for scope and sources of information. CC:DA decided that the report should be forwarded to JSC for their information, but not for action at this time. The Task Force expects to have a more developed set of proposals to present at ALA Midwinter 2004.
- Rule 21.0D. This new Task Force was asked to examine the rule that allows designations of function or relator terms in headings. The group presented a brief interim report on its initial investigations; the final report is expected before ALA Midwinter 2004.
- Consistency across Part 1 of AACR. As noted, CC:DA approved the documents submitted by this Task Force.
CC:DA also heard reports from the ALA Representative to the Joint Steering Committee, the Library of Congress Representative, the ALA NISO representative, ALA Publishing Services, the MARBI representative, and the CC:DA Webmaster. Some of these reports, and many of the working documents referred to above, are available on the CC:DA Website at: <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/>.
Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA)
Cataloging and Documentation Committee
Liaison Report
submitted by Sueyoung Park-Primiano
New York University Libraries
(With special thanks to Jane D. Johnson)
The Cataloging and Documentation Committee has officially been renamed the Cataloging Committee. The Documentation aspect of the Committee’s work will now be addressed by AMIA’s Moving Image Related Materials & Documentation Interest Group.
Mark your calendars! AMIA’s 2003 Annual Conference will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, from November 18-22. For more information, go to: <http://www.amianet.org/annual/past/2003/overview.html>.
The Standards Review Subcommittee has been very active since last winter. A report was submitted to CPSO concerning LCRI 25.5B and the application of uniform titles for motion pictures. The position of the report urged LC and PCC not to adopt this RI as written.
Members of the Subcommittee also provided feedback to Simon Pockley in support of the proposal by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) Type Working Group submitted to the Dublin Core Usage Board for a moving image Type in the DCMI Type Vocabulary. You can access the full proposal at: <http://dublincore.org/usage/meetings/2003/06/MovingImage.html>.
Many of the members of the Cataloging Committee were deeply involved with the MIC (Moving Image Collections) project. MIC is a collaboration between AMIA and the Library of Congress, with major funding from the National Science Foundation. Developer sites are Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Washington.
MIC’s Education and Outreach Committee was formed to create a clearinghouse with links to information on preservation, cataloging, exhibition, and rights, including bibliographies, glossaries, metadata and preservation FAQs, mentor directory, calendar, alerts for training, conference, and funding opportunities, and step-by-step instructions for installing and implementing supported databases and catalog formats.
MIC’s Archive Directory—a searchable directory of moving image repositories, with contact information, collection strengths (forms, subjects, formats), preservation, cataloging, and programming activities, guidance on how to obtain materials, etc.—is currently being programmed by the University of Washington and the final data elements have been posted to the MIC project Website.
Much of the metadata mapping required for MIC’s Union Catalog—a centralized catalog for access to moving image materials that will map and extend to a variety of metadata schema and incorporate interoperability for metadata mining and federated searching of distributed catalogs—has been drafted and is ready for review. The crosswalk between MARC and the MIC semantic registry is available on the MIC project Website.
The database for MPEG-7 and Dublin Core is now available for download at the MIC Website, along with the MIC/ViDe Application Profile. The application profile provides MPEG-7 description for multimedia materials: audio, audiovisual (video+audio), image and video materials. It fully maps, and supports round trip mapping, from MPEG-7 to Dublin Core. A metadata creator may enter metadata through the MPEG-7 or the Dublin Core view, and export the metadata as either MPEG-7 or Dublin Core simple for OAI, in XML. The application profile was developed by the ViDe <http://www.vide.net/> Video Access Working Group, in collaboration with the MIC development team at Rutgers University, and is intended to serve as a cataloging utility for the moving image community and to export records into the MIC union catalog. It is freely available to anyone with an interest in exploring or using MPEG-7. A user guide accompanies the application profile, and a Dublin Core/MPEG-7 map and presentations are available to assist with MPEG-7.
Individuals or institutions are welcome to download the MPEG-7 database at no cost; users are asked only to complete a simple questionnaire. Those who use the AP and/or database are also asked to participate in a follow-up assessment questionnaire and telephone interview. Participation is optional. As a descriptive metadata schema, MPEG-7 is in the very earliest stages of adoption in the United States. ViDe and MIC developers would like to evaluate its usefulness and the usefulness of the MIC/ViDe application profile, and would appreciate your support. For more information, see the MIC Website.
MIC activities at the 2003 AMIA conference in Vancouver will begin with an Archive Directory table in the AMIA registration area where attendees can directly register their institutions into the MIC Directory. There will also be an MIC history, overview, and update session, a metadata workshop, and a working group meeting for conference attendees who are involved with, or wish to be involved with, the development of MIC's Education and Outreach space.
For more information on the conference, Committee projects, or general questions relating to AMIA, please feel free to contact me by email <syp3@nyu.edu> and/or visit the AMIA website <http://www.amianet.org>. For more information about MIC, please contact Jane Johnson <jdj@ucla.edu> and/or visit the MIC Project Website <http://gondolin.rutgers.edu/MIC/>.
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Last updated: June 23, 2004
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