American Library Association
Midwinter Meeting (2016 January 8-12 : Boston, Mass.)
Report on cataloging meetings, etc.

ALCTS Technical Services Directors of Large Research Libraries Interest Group (“Big Heads”) (Friday a.m.)

The first discussion topic was the future of physical processing and the disposition of materials in relation to shared print repositories. Penn processed a gift collection with a call number in the record but not on the book; things that circulate get more processing. Others are doing variations on this, that is, only doing end processing when an item is used. U Chicago has gotten requests for call-number browse so they are still assigning call numbers for e-books, mostly pulling them from print versions. One library is only stiffening soft covers if and when a book circulates. U Cal is using vendor processing for Chinese and Japanese titles and have shifted some staff from processing to circulation/stack maintenance.

Next up: off-site technical services. Ohio State TS is now on fringe of campus, with staff mostly happy but finding the trek to meetings time-consuming. IT staff likes to visit the TS facility. Transit of special collections stuff is troubling to the caretakers of the collections, due to fragility and/or size. They are thinking of moving area studies staff to the facility. Part of Stanford's TS is on "North Campus" which is two towns away in an area without good mass transit. Acquisitions, Metadata, and bindery remain on central campus. Metadata shares a floor with Digital Library Systems & Services (DLSS), so there is good synergy between metadata and digital collections staff. Yale TS is scheduled to move to an existing facility where Beinecke TS is already located but still worried about loss of connections. NYPL TS moved to a newly-configured space in Long Island City; research and branch TS were merged; facility was configured for TS and they have way better HVAC than the old space. Conservation/preservation also at facility. Someone mentioned that project-based work often worked better on central campus, presumably because of staff mix.

Sharing data in a new, distributed, collaborative environment was the next topic. Stanford is not sending all records to OCLC, partly because they are actively building Linked Open Data into their processes. They have a mandate to provide access to all information the university creates, including football scores. The task of managing data has become more discovery and analysis. They are trying to build sharing into their systems, e.g., identifiers for people, works.

Next: staff morale and TS structure. Stanford did a general job reclassification effort and the libraries did not fare well, especially as TS becomes more technical. LC did a major revamping of position descriptions, mixing cataloging and acquisitions tasks (the "whole book" approach); it has worked well for dealing with the union when tasks and books need to be shifted around. Tuition exemption and housing rules have changed at Columbia and this has affected some staff (officers of the libraries get housing support; technicians don’t). Cornell is allowing more work from home and flexible hours.

Next topic: sustainable/consistent model for vendor records. Most vendor records at Columbia still get some handling but more are final records, e.g., they have call number, authority control, RDA. They are considered the best they are likely to get. What should they aspire to? They are finding that people will search the web for a desired item and then search the library to see if they have it or access to it.

Stanford (Phil Schreur) reported on BIBFRAME and the Linked Data for Production (LD4P) project. They are finding the work on MARC to BIBFRAME conversion not so helpful, mostly working on links between works and access. Six libraries are working on LD4P. Stanford is doing performed music extension for BIBFRAME in collaboration with PCC, MLA, and ARSC. Harvard is working on geospatial and moving image materials and some with cartographic. LC is working in all formats, with forty catalogers participating. U Wash is studying BF as a common data standard and finding that tools are missing.

The CIC Cooperative Cataloging Pilot is now done and the report is written and will be released later in 2016 (after the directors have studied it). CIC = Committee on Institutional Cooperation (mostly big state universities and some private universities in Midwest). The pilot included 768 titles (including 633 monograph and 100 maps), original and copy cataloging, various formats. Costs: copy cataloging $9; original cataloging, monograph $18-19; latin scripts $19; non-roman $30.; about the same whether AACR2 or RDA. Eight libraries participated and felt that some cooperation in the future would be good. Gaps between libraries are not one-to-one, based on language or format. [They didn't say it but these arrangements work better with a "share and share alike" understanding rathen than a strict quid pro quo. Similar to interlibrary loan; it's mostly balanced and valued across the whole group.] Money exchange is difficult between institutions but there are costs involved. Need MOUs? Coordinator? Within CIC, they can use the ILL functionality for getting items for processing from one school to another.


MARC Advisory Committee (Saturday a.m. and Sunday p.m.)

The agenda is at http://www.loc.gov/marc/mac/mw2016_age.html and papers are linked. These notes are in paper order rather than agenda order.

Proposal No. 2016-01: Coding 007 Field Positions for Digital Reproductions of Sound Recordings in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format. The changes to more clearly handle digital sound recordings were accepted.

Proposal No. 2016-02: Defining Subfield $r and Subfield $t, and Redefining Subfield $e in Field 382 of the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats. The changes were accepted so that the number of ensembles as well as the number of instruments can be coded.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP01: Defining Subfields $3 and $5 in Field 382 of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format. Music catalogers have not used $8 for linking. OCLC will implement $8 in all fields where it is defined some time in 2016. This will come back as a proposal.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP02: Clarifying Code Values in Field 008/20 (Format of Music) in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format. General support for the proposed changes. A new code is needed for piano score. This will come back as a proposal.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP03: Recording Distributor Number for Music and Moving Image Materials in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format. Videos do not always distinguish between publisher and distributor but OLAC thinks they are OK with change. The changes will allow for better correspondence to 264 and RDA. This will come back as a proposal.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP04: Extending the Use of Subfield $0 to Encompass Linking Fields in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format. Some issues remain: sequencing to denote meaning; primary and secondary content; strings vs things. Subfield $4 suggested but that would muddy object and relationship. There is a PCC task force looking at this. This will probably come back as another discussion paper without ambiguity and the combination, and will reflect input from PCC as well as BL.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP05: Expanding the Definition of Subfield $w to Encompass Standard Numbers in the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats. This might affect record merging in OCLC but will come back as a proposal.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP06: Define Subfield $2 and Subfield $0 in Field 753 of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format. Field 753 would be repeated if both open system and platform. The discussion paper was shifted to a proposal and the addition of $2 and $0 was accepted.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP07: Broaden Usage of Field 257 [Country of Producing Entity] to Include Autonomous Regions in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format. This will come forward as a proposal but is not seen as a field to replace a specific place of production but, rather, to help provide access to those autonomous regions with significant film cultures, e.g., Hong Kong, Palestine.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP08: Remove Restriction on the Use of Dates in Field 046 $k of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format. No one was quite sure why there was a restriction on using 046 $k if dates were coded elsewhere in the formats. This will come back as a proposal and general definition and subfields will be checked to see if there is rationale for this restrictions or other restrictions that are not reasonable.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP09: Coding Named Events in the MARC 21 Authority and Bibliographic Formats. Events are coming up in various cataloging discussions, here and RDA and there has been quite a flurry of messages on the BIBFRAME list in the past week. The paper from OCLC/FAST suggested two options: redefining X11 as events or defining new X47 for events. Preference was given to the X47 option. Some of the issues: events can be buried in subject strings (wars), events can be subdivided in subject strings by form terms (bibliography), events can have administrative bodies (exhibitions). That is, the whole string can be an amalgam. Preference was also given to subfielding for date and location. This will come back as a paper.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP10: Defining Field 347 (Digital File Characteristics) in the MARC 21 Holdings Format. General support was evident and this will come back as a proposal.

Discussion Papers 2016-DP11-16 came from the German National Library and grew out of the merger of four large authority files from the German-speaking countries into the Integrated Authority File (Gemeinsame Normdatei, or GND).

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP11: Punctuation in the MARC 21 Authority Format. This is an attempt to separate cataloging rules from punctuation style. It will come back as a proposal.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP12: Designating Matching Information in the MARC 21 Authority Format. This was seen as temporary and/or processing information when loading new records to catch potential matches. VIAF does something similar but uses a local field. If expanded to bibliographic records, it might be useful to ISSN. Issues round and about but this will come back as a proposal.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP13: Designation of a Definition in the MARC 21 Authority Format. Both 678 and 680 have been used for history or scope information rather like the definition examples in this paper. There was little support for another field for definition. The German-speaking community will do some more research and perhaps come back with some proposals for revision to 678 or 680.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP14: Designation of the Type of Entity in the MARC 21 Authority Format. The GND includes information at different levels of specificity about what type of name is represented in the authority record. For example, a city is a subtype of geographic place. More support was expressed for coding this information but perhaps it is adding too many layers to individual records that should be carried in related authority records.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP15: Media Type and Carrier Type in the MARC 21 Authority Format. The addition of media and carrier type in authority records breaks down the binary division of authority and bibliographic records. Manuscripts and other cultural documents do not fit easily into a WEMI world but it still seems that the functionality behind WEMI needs to be in both authority and bibs. This will probably come back as a revised discussion paper.

Discussion Paper No. 2016-DP16: Extending the Encoding Level in the MARC 21 Authority Format. NLM thinks that encoding for origin of a record (automated, machine, legacy) seems valuable but not person doing it (editorial center vs local). OCLC is looking at deprecating the various OCLC-specific codes in the bib format, e.g., I, K, L, M. Perhaps the Encoding Level could represent fullness and 042 could be used for authoritativeness. This probably will not come back as a proposal or a revised discussion paper.


ALCTS CaMMS Cataloging Norms Interest Group (Saturday a.m.)
http://connect.ala.org/node/247628

Michael Chopey (U Hawaii) talked about enhancing access to Pacific-language resources, using Ethnologue codes for languages since MARC language codes are mostly collective. They propose added references for specific languages to the collective code and add more specific terms to their records.

Peggy Griesinger (George Mason) reported on her work as an intern at the Museum of Modern Art to design a metadata profile for the digital conservation of audiovisual- and time-based artworks.
https://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2015/02/conservation-documentation-metadata-at-moma-an-ndsr-project-update/

Andrea Payant, Berty Rozum, and Liz Woolcott talked about their work on data sets at Utah State. The need came from the VP for Research at the university, based on 2013 federal regulations on the public availability of research data. They wrote a data management plan, determined required and recommended fields, did some mappings since the institutional repository was working on Dublin Core and the library was using MARC. Creator/collaborator identifiers were significant concern.


ALCTS CaMMS Subject Analysis Committee (Sunday a.m. and Monday p.m.)

Agenda and link to reports: http://connect.ala.org/node/64185

LC report (Janis Young): http://connect.ala.org/node/248900
A new law limits the term of the Librarian of Congress to ten years though the Librarian may be reappointed. * About 40 catalogers are involved in the BIBFRAME pilot. * Updates were issued to 15 instruction sheets in the Subject headings manual, with the updated 202 and 203 being the most important updates. SHM H 202 = Authority research for subject heading proposals (rearranged, 21st-century examples clarified, new examples of full authority records from various disciplines; H 203 = Citation of sources (with updated examples). https://www.loc.gov/aba/publications/FreeSHM/freeshm.html * LCGFT manual will appear in Cataloger’s Desktop after comment period and final edit, late 2016. * PSD is not yet accepting proposals for new or revised terms in the areas of music, literature, religion, or the “general” terms, nor have they decided when they will implement these terms in LC cataloging. * LCDGT is moving along, with over 400 more accepted terms in late 2015. PSD issued a discussion paper because they are having trouble figuring out how to deal with demonyms for local places, particularly conflict. The comment period has ended but the paper is available at https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcdgt-demonyms.pdf Janis noted that trans is a gender group, not a sexual orientation group.

RDA and RSC governance (Kathy Glennan):
Representatives to the RDA Steering Committee (successor to JSC) will be fewer, e.g., one North American representative, one European representative. There is a 3-year plan for reorganization and building the regional structure. It is not certain how the reorganization will play out in CC:DA but, for the moment, current constituencies will be retained but they will work up to the single North American representative, with a lightweight layer between the constituencies and the RSC representative. NARDAC = North American RDA Committee = members representing ALA, CCC, LC, BAnQ (name and membership not yet certain). Temporary members might be added to NARDAC to deal with specific topics. Working groups would be established, e.g., translation. New jargon: “task and finish” group. Glennan presentation to CC:DA: http://alcts.ala.org/ccdablog/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/RDAGov-2016-01.pdf

FRBR Library Reference Model (Kathy Glennan):
The LRM is a consolidation of FRBR, FRAD, and FRSAD, based on CIDOC CRM and FRBRoo. It is hoped that the proposal can go out for comment soon and ready for disucssion at IFLA in August 2016. "Agent" has become a super class with two subclasses: Person (individual human being and not fictitious persons), Collective (corporations and families). "Place" is a new entity. "Res" (formerly known as Thema) is any entity in the universe of discourse. "Nomen" is any sign or name identifying a Res. Time-span is a new element [not sure if it is an entity]. Entities have attributes and relationships. "Representative Expression" is a new concept, with the assumption being that some Expression, probably the first, is the most important Expression of a Work and can be used to describe the Work. The FRBR Groups will disappear though WEMI is still fundamental. There will be constrained and unconstrained streams of LRM in RDA. Stay tuned, I guess, for the comment-period release of the draft LRM. (… if you aren't crazed by acronym/initialism soup yet)

"By who and for whom? Developing LC Demographic Group Terms" (Janis Young):
LCDGT is aimed at creator, contributor, and audience characteristics. It grew out of the genre/form work. That is, existing LCSH terminology for genre/form included non-genre terms for these characteristics. There are eleven categories of demonyms, i.e., age, education level, ethnic/cultural, gender, language, medical/psychological/disability, nation/region, occupation/field of activity, religion, sexual orientation, social. Using the terms will be based on self-identification or at least not based on cataloger assumption. These terms vary over time and in context. There will be no broader terms for gender or sexual orientation. The Policy and Standards Division is flummoxed by how to deal with local demonyms and has issued a thought paper on options.
https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcdgt-demonyms.pdf
Phase 3 of the implementation pilot will involve SACO proposals. Those not in SACO will be able to propose through a SurveyMonkey process. The proposals will only be accepted for new terms needed for new cataloging (no projects, please) and should follow the draft manual:
https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcdgt-acceptance-manual.html

Notes from reports from various associations, etc.: Canadian headings will be added to the Sears database; they haven't been available online. A Spanish online version of Sears is being developed, with availability in 2018-2019. * A new edition of Dewey in French came out in 2015. There are enough sports biographies in the Young Adult division that catalogers have been adding them. * The report of the CC:DA Relationship Designators Working Group was rejected by RSC but some specific proposals that were consonant were saved and proposed individually. There is now a moratorium on proposals for RDA changes until the RSC releases guidelines on granularity and cross-entity relationships. * OCLC/FAST has been working on form subdivisions and genre/form terms. At a different meeting, it was stated that FAST will drop genre/form terms when LC implements LCGFT and discontinues using form subdivisions. (It’s fully faceted and doesn’t need to be FASTed.) * The LCDGT Working Group continues its work on tribal names. * The program at Annual 2016 will be on pre- and post-coordination with presentations by Diane Boehr of NLM and Peter Fletcher. * Lia Contursi reported that there is a new edition of Cataloging legal literature by Lemke and Beck, updated to RDA. * Casey Mullen noted that the MLA Subject Access Subcommittee has become the Vocabularies Subcommittee. They are now considering electronics as instrumentation. Music catalogers are generally using the new vocabularies, i.e., LCGFT, LCMPT. Maintenance is being done or considered on low-hanging fruit. * Maintenance of genre-form headings are being discussed, again with emphasis on low-hanging fruit. With revisions in the LCGFT manual, styles will be OK as proposals but not movements (recognizing that these are not totally separable).

LCSH uses "Illegal aliens" which is considered pejorative by many people but is the terminology used in the U.S. Code. A resolution was prepared by the Social Responsibilities Round Table to be presented to ALA Council. Preferred terminology is "Undocumented immigrants" or similar. SAC discussed the issues of illegal/undocumented and aliens/immigrants not really being parallel and debated whether "alien" is inherently pejorative. LCSH has both "Aliens" and "Immigrants." The resolution was supported and a SAC working group will be established to look at the issues. The working group will be chaired by Tina Gross.


Subject Analysis Committee / Subcommittee on Genre/Form Implementation (Saturday p.m.)

LCGFT manual is now up for comment until May 2016. * Definition and scope report was studied by LC PSD. Styles and movements are still somewhat up for grabs. Styles may generally be proposed for LCGFT; movements may not be proposed. * The Literature group met at Midwinter: they looked at rejected terms relative to the PSD response on definition; “Expressionist films” will be cancelled; LC Editorial will try to explain style/movement on List 2; Janis is going to look at magic realist; settings needs to be clarified. * LCGFT manual will get prefix J and will be separate files. Literature and Religion are now considered finished. Proposals not yet to be accepted for music, literature, general, and religion; they are working on some terms and hierarchies. LC will implement when Janis gets time to do training materials and do training. The LC Voyager implementation needs both subdivisions and GF terms so redundancy will be at LC for a long time. PSD needs to look at some moving image proposals and other areas relative to the work on the definition. * LCDGT now has about 800 terms. The draft manual is available and the prefix is L. Comments by May 31, 2016. They are accepting proposals based on manual, either through SACO or a SurveyMonkey process. The proposals will go through the normal editorial process. * Music catalogers are using LCMPT. MLA continues to look at complex issues that were set aside to get the thesaurus out, e.g., filling out electronics terminology, jazz ensembles, big band ensembles. * Discussion of implementation and recon: no algorithm for law terms, have to do term-by-term; need to lobby OCLC for any possible assistance; GFIS can do some of intellectual work; complexity by system or discipline; we should aim at low-hanging fruit such as fixed fields to find particular categories of genre/form. Stephen Hearn will draft a thought piece on using 380 rather than 555 in authority records. "Periodicals" is not necessarily the right or only genre/form term, e.g., Annual reports; Guidebooks. * The subcommittee will meet at Annual in Orlando. * Adam Schiff will draft a proposal for 385/386 $i and $4 for relationship designators, whether these should be included in Work records in the authority format.


SAC Genre/Form art project (informal discussion with Janis Young):
Janis and I met to discuss some issues about the art genre/form project. We should take a middle ground on specificity. This had come up in a CAC discussion, e.g., how many types of prints, albums. Janis suggested that there should be an art instruction sheet in the LCGFT manual referring people to AAT and TGM (RBMS) if more specificity is desired. This might also be part of the general application section of the manual. Literature and Music aimed at the middle ground. Papal documents has some specific UFs as well as some separate terms. For example, Papal bulls is a UF on Papal documents; Papal encyclicals is its own term (with BT Papal documents). Similar situation in Legislative materials. Specific questions: Installation photographs may be OK, we should propose and get it out there for discussion; no hybrids so Postage stamp albums, Landscape prints should be disconnected; Landscapes should be proposed; Digital maps and Digital elevation models are both approved so we could have Digital images; Electronic books is a known problem (Expression/Manifestation, OK to have GF if Expression, not for Manifestation). Environmental impact statements came up in GFIS discussion and it has been added to wiki document along with Historic structure reports. Both are in AAT. (Janis will be coming to the ARLIS/NA-VRA joint conference in Seattle.)


SACO-at-Large (Sunday a.m.)
Janis Young presented on the LC Demographic Group Terms. There are now about 800 terms, all of which were proposed by the Policy and Standards Division. They appear in eleven categories, i.e., age, education level, ethnic/cultural, gender, language, medical/psychological/disability, nation/region, occupation/field of activity, religion, sexual orientation, social. Phase 3 (starting now) will involve accepting proposals from others, either through SACO or using a SurveyMonkey form to gather the same information from non-SACO libraries. Proposals should follow the draft manual which is posted on the LC site:
https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcdgt-acceptance-manual.html
Proposals should be based on new cataloging, not for projects.

PSD is struggling with how to represent local demonyms: conflict and qualifiers, disambiguation. They want a sustainable solution with as few exceptions as possible and consistency across jurisdictions and within jurisdictional levels. Generally speaking, some LCDGT terms have been established at continental, supranational, national, regional, and 1st-order administrative levels, and the issues are pretty well figured out. The questions for local demonyms: anticipate conflict? (if so, how much research and maintenance, or hybrid where if you know of a conflict, go ahead and apply qualifier); should we bother with disambiguation (or let all New Yorkers and Washingtonians stand together, whether city or state); less familiar place is likely to get buried (demonym may not be used for less familiar place, e.g., Paris (Tex.), London (Ont.), California (Pa.)); qualifier by higher level seems unworkable, e.g., Californians (Pennsylvanians) and Californians (Americans). Other issues: using NAF/RDA qualifiers (not always transparent and American- and Canadian-specific; would U.S. or Canada be added to all qualifiers); spell out all place names in qualifiers; places without demonyms, e.g., Sinnemahoning residents, and where to put qualifier, e.g., Sinnemahoning, Pa., residents or Sinnemahoning residents, Pa. PSD did think of putting the larger jurisdiction or other qualifier elsewhere in the authority record but the relationship of our bib and authority records is not yet sophisticated enough for that to work out in catalogs or discovery layers. PSD prepared a thought paper on the local demonym issues and it was out for comment through January:
https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcdgt-demonyms.pdf


ALCTS CaMMS Heads of Cataloging Departments Interest Group (Monday a.m.)
http://connect.ala.org/node/247820

Nancy Lorimer (Stanford) talked about authority control and identity management. Stanford has 1.4 million unauthorized names in its data universe, including e-records in discovery layer and image records. They are adding IDs to MARC legacy metadata ($0 in access points) but the practice is that the earlier the identifier can be added, the better. Stanford is one of the universities in the Person Entity Pilot at OCLC to work on linking related sets of identifiers, such as ISNI, VIAF, LC/NAF, and WorldCat.

Katherine Wisser (Simmons) talked about how EAC-CPF works for identity representation and management in archival collections, how to deal with various types of entities (single, multiple, collaborative). She described some topical projects and also the National Archival Authorities Cooperative (NAAC) and Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC).
http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/SNACI/NAAC_index.html


OCLC Research Update (Monday a.m.)

Lynn Connaway talked about a report entitled The Library in the Life of the User. Interesting observations: library has to be as easy as an ATM; rule of three (if three people in a group are engaged in the conversation, others in the group may text); no determining variable; personal preferences for modes of information search, discovery, and delivery mean that redundancy is not necessarily redundant.

Jeff Mixter talked about turning bibliographic descriptions into actionable knowledge, specifically related entities in Archives Grid, EntityJS for crowdsourcing relationships and/or confirming machine possibilities, Knowledge Vault (entity verification via data/metadata comparison).

Karen Smith-Yoshimura talked about organizational identifiers and the need for unique, persistent, and public URIs associated with a digital project. Five hundred thousand organizations have public ISNIs and an ISNI task force on organizations is looking at the issues. Special challenges are like the ones we catalogers have been facing for decades: mergers/splits, acquisitions, hierarchies, branches, locations, name change.

Notes compiled by Sherman Clarke
sherman.clarke@gmail.com


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