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CONFERENCE REPORTS
Jan Mayo, Column Editor

** REPORTS FROM THE **
2004 ALA Annual Conference
Orlando, Florida


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 two sessions during the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida. 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. 2004-05: Changes Needed to Accommodate RISM Data--Music Incipits
This proposal came from an international project that is--among other things--trying to record incipit information about musical works as a means of identifying them precisely. During discussion, a number of issues with subfield definitions were clarified and generalized, and subfields $y (Link text) and $z (Public note) were added. MARBI approved the proposal.

Proposal No. 2004-06: Defining the First Indicator and New Subfields in Field 017 to Suppress Display Labels
 This proposal would allow coding for flexible display of copyright registration numbers, including cataloger-supplied captions in $i. In discussion, a number of editorial changes to the documentation were suggested. MARBI approved the proposal.

Proposal No. 2004-07: Applying Field 752 (Added Entry--Hierarchical Place Name) for Different Purposes
 This proposal from the Map and Geography Round Table (MAGERT) was based on Discussion Paper no. 2004-DP02. Field 752 has been used until now primarily for place of coverage access for newspapers and place of publication access for rare materials. The field is now being used for subject access, particularly for cartographic materials. At Midwinter, the group had been equally divided on whether subject access should be in 752 (with an indicator value to identify it as such) or in a separate field. The proposal presented these two options. After discussion, MARBI decided that it should be a separate 6XX field. There were additional questions about the appropriate subfields for coding different types of place names. The discussion was unable to resolve all of these issues, and a revised proposal will be prepared for Midwinter 2005.

Proposal No. 2004-08: Changing the MARC-8 to UCS Mapping for the Halves of Doublewide Diacritics from the Unicode/UCS Half Diacritic Characters to the Unicode/UCS Doublewide Diacritic Characters
 This proposal deals with some particularly difficult diacritics--the ligatures that span two characters, such as the "ia" and "ts" in Russian. The proposal called for MARBI to endorse the Unicode/UCS double-diacritic characters, instead of the half-diacritic characters. The proposal was accepted over opposition from the Library of Congress and OCLC.

Discussion Paper No. 2004-DP04: Use of ISBNs and LCCNs in MARC 21 Bibliographic Records
 This discussion paper talks about the difficulties of using standard numbers such as the ISBN and LCCN for retrieval and matching. One of the difficulties is that these numbers are printed on the item, but are not always valid numbers and do not always apply to the manifestation in hand. There is a need to record their presence on the item and to retrieve records through them, but there is also a need to provide a more reliable number for record matching. The subfields for cancelled and invalid numbers in field 022 (ISSN) were seen as a possible approach. Further work will be done, and a proposal will be submitted for discussion at Midwinter 2005.

Report No. 2004-Report01: Assessment of Options for Handling Full Unicode Character Encodings
 This is the first of several papers by Jack Cain discussing issues involved in the implementation of Unicode. There was some preliminary discussion, but a more thorough discussion will take place after the second paper is distributed, probably before Midwinter 2005.

Announcement
Library of Congress announced that it will begin to distribute records with 13-digit ISBNs on October 1, 2004. ISBN guidelines call for items to carry both 13- and 10-digit versions of the ISBN. LC will encode both versions in field 020, probably in separate fields; OCLC will initially encode the 13-digit ISBN in field 024 rather than 020. For more information on the changes to the ISBN, see the ISBN Revision page on the NISO Website <http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/ISBN.html>, as well as implementation announcements from LC, OCLC and system vendors.


Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA)
 Liaison Report
 submitted by John Attig
Pennsylvania State University

This report covers (a) amendments to AACR2, (b) plans for AACR3, and (c) actions and discussions at the 2004 ALA Annual Conference in Orlando.

AACR2
 The 2004 Amendments should be published shortly. See my report on its contents in the March 2004 OLAC Newsletter.

There may be one more, brief set of revisions to AACR2, to be published next summer. It will contain some small, but significant changes that JSC wants to publish before the publication of AACR3. These may include: revision of Rule 21.0D to allow wider inclusion of designations of functions (relator terms) in headings; revision to the rule for capitalization that would permit unusual capitalizations of corporate names, such as "eBay" and "netLibrary"; revision of the rules for capitalization of German, to bring them in line with new German orthography; removal of the Turkish word "bir" from the list of initial articles; and revision of the definition of "coloured illustration".

After 2005, there will be no further updates to AACR2. All effort will be directed towards the preparation of AACR3.

AACR3
 The Joint Steering Committee is moving ahead aggressively with plans to publish a new edition of AACR in 2007. They will shortly have an editor hired to direct the effort. The revision of the rules will be begin with the rules for description in Part I. Building on the work of CC:DA's Task Force on Consistency across Part I, a draft of Part I should be distributed for review before the end of 2004. It will contain a greatly expanded set of general rules, applicable to all categories of resources, followed by brief chapters giving supplementary rules for particular forms of content, forms of carrier, and types of media, as well as rules for resources issued successively or updated periodically.

While this draft is being reviewed, JSC and the editor will begin work on a revision of the chapter on choice of access points, to correct some lapses of logic (such as the "rule of three") and restate the rules in terms of the relationships identified in the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records.

After that work is under way, work will be undertaken to transform the current chapters on form of access points into a Part III dealing with authority control. The chapters for each type of name will include both rules for establishing authorized forms of name and for making references.

Finally, the introductions to each part of the code, as well as the General Introduction, will be rewritten. A major goal of this effort will be to make the principles and the conceptual background of the rules more apparent, so that catalogers may more readily exercise informed judgment.

There is an excellent PowerPoint presentation introducing the AACR3 revision posted on the JSC Website at: <http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/current.html#AACR3>.

CC:DA Actions and Discussions, June 2004
 At the ALA Annual Conference in June 2004, the Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access:

For further information, please consult the CC:DA Website at <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/index.html>.


Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA)
Cataloging Committee
Liaison Report
 submitted by Sueyoung Park-Primiano
New York University Libraries

The Standards Review Subcommittee remained active this year led by its Chair, Sarah Ziebell Mann. A report on the third draft of a proposed revision to LCRI 25.5B on Uniform Titles for Motion Pictures, Television Programs, and Radio Programs was submitted to CPSO on May 28, 2004. Comments addressed direct-to-video releases and the qualifier "(Motion picture)", distinctions in the publication/distribution statement, and the unreliability of GMDs to collocate works and the need for uniform title main entry. The Subcommittee also provided feedback to the Society of American Archivists' Description Section relating to Describing Archives: a Content Standard (DACS) on May 21, 2004.

As mentioned in past reports, members of the Cataloging Committee continued to contribute to the ongoing development of the MIC: Moving Image Collections Website, which is now live at <http://mic.imtc.gatech.edu>. (Technical developments and specifications continue to be documented on the Project Website: <http://gondolin.rutgers.edu/MIC/>.) MIC is built on a portal structure to customize information for its diverse audiences. Choose a portal: to find resources and perform more complex searches for moving images ("Collections Explore") and organizations ("Archive Explore"). Comments and questions are welcome and desired, and they should be sent to <mic@loc.gov>.

For the OLAC community, MIC's Education and Outreach Committee will be of particular interest. The Education and Outreach Committee’s Cataloging Portal has recently been updated with links to resources on standards and tools, authority control, systems and utilities, and training and education. The site can be found at: <http://mic.imtc.gatech.edu/catalogers_portal/cat_govcom.htm>. 

Additional updates on MIC activities are recorded below as supplied by Jane D. Johnson, MIC Project Manager, on June 22, 2004.

MIC Archive Directory
 The MIC Archive Directory online input form is available to simplify input of an organization’s entry. Whether a moving image archive or one that holds a few film titles as part of a larger general collection, institutions are invited to register their organizations with MIC. By doing so, they join a groundbreaking initiative to provide access to moving images worldwide, and contribute to further collaboration, research, and mentoring in the archival moving image community. Any institution holding archival moving image materials is eligible for a Directory entry. To participate, visit the MIC site at <http://mic.imtc.gatech.edu> and click on "List your archive".
 
Over a hundred institutions, including organizations in Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Scotland, and the United States, have registered in the MIC Archive Directory. Registrants represent a cross-section of the field: historical societies, national, state, municipal, and university archives, television stations, motion picture studios, independent arts and media organizations, museums, distributors, stock footage houses, and small subject-oriented collections.
 
MIC Union Catalog
Records from five alpha sites have been loaded into the MIC Union Catalog, including National Library of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Pacific Film Archive, Smithsonian Institution Archives, and the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collections. Library of Congress, ResearchChannel, and Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies records are on their way, and remaining alpha site records will be loaded by this Fall.
 
MIC User Studies
 The MIC Evaluation Team at the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, has conducted a survey of MIC users. The evaluation seeks to determine if the MIC Union Catalog metadata meets the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) defined by IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations): enabling users to find, identify, select, and maintain the best or most useful moving images. The team has developed an additional instrument, including an exit interview, to assess the usability of the MIC Website.
  
Phase 2 Development
 The full MIC Steering Committee, chaired by Oksana Dykyj, has been appointed and met in January for the first time at the Library of Congress, to discuss MIC's strategic plan and business model and strategize regarding Phase 2 (2005-2006) development activities.
 
Following these discussions and others with the National Science Foundation, a second NSF grant proposal was submitted to fund the cataloging utility conceptualized as part of the original MIC architecture. In the long term, the cataloging utility will serve two functions:
This grant would further MIC's long-term goals to promote standards-based, interoperable metadata use in the moving image archives community, and provide leadership in moving image preservation and digital rights management, facilitating progress into a full MPEG-21 rights management implementation in Phase 3 (1-2 years).

MIC and Education
 The MIC Science Educators Advisory Board met June 4 in Piscataway, New Jersey, to discuss MIC's use in the education community. The Board is composed of eminent educators in the sciences representing the spectrum of K20 education (United States), including educators from museums and libraries. The MIC Science Educators' Advisory Board provides ongoing guidance and support in MIC's development and is a critical partner in achieving our goal of integrating moving images into the research and education mainstream.

For more information on the Cataloging Committee or for general questions relating to AMIA, please feel free to contact me by e-mail <syp3@nyu.edu> and/or visit the AMIA Website <http://www.amianet.org>. For more information on MIC, please contact the MIC Project Manager, Jane D. Johnson, at <jjohnson@loc.gov>.

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Last updated: September 21, 2004
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