LC Cataloging Newsline

Online Newsletter of the Cataloging Directorate, Library of Congress

Volume 7, no. 7, ISSN 1066-8829, June 1999
Contents

Dewey Editorial Policy Committee
PCC SACO Workshops at ALA Annual, New Orleans
New Standardized Form Division Tables for Class K Schedules
Tom Delsey on the Logic of AACR
MARC Harmonization Coordinating Committee Meeting
Soros Foundation Visiting Fellows
Digital Futures Group

Dewey Editorial Policy Committee

The Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee (EPC) held its Meeting 112 in Washington on May 2-4. The ten-person committee welcomed two new members: Lucy Evans, British Library; and Richard Baumgarten, Johnson County (Kansas) Library. At a farewell dinner on May 3, EPC paid tribute to Susi Woodhouse, the previous United Kingdom member; Peter Paulson, who retired as executive director of OCLC Forest Press on January 1; and Judith Greene, who has been the Forest Press house editor since 1979. Ms. Greene will retire June 30, when the OCLC Forest Press office in Albany, New York, closes and its functions are transferred to the OCLC campus in Dublin, Ohio.

Committee members and guests heard Joseph Miller, editor of H. W. Wilson Company's Sears List of Subject Headings, open the three-day meeting Sunday evening with a presentation of his views on abridged editions of the Dewey Decimal Classification. On Monday, the committee discussed OCLC consultant George D'Elia's report on a survey of abridged edition users designed to gauge how well the abridgment is meeting customer needs and in what areas it might be improved.

Following this discussion, editorial exhibits pertaining to unabridged edition 22, to be published in 2003, were addressed. EPC approved changes for Table 1 (Standard Subdivisions) and 800 Literature. It approved the draft schedule 540 Chemistry for review by outside experts, and it agreed to further collaboration with French-speaking colleagues in the revision of Table 2's Area 44 (France).

The committee's next meeting will be held in Washington November 7-9.


PCC SACO Workshops at ALA Annual, New Orleans

The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) will present two workshops Friday, June 25, 1999, in support of SACO, the Subject Authority Cooperative Program of the PCC. Lynn El-Hoshy, senior cataloging policy specialist, Cataloging Policy and Support Office (CPSO), Library of Congress, is the instructor for Workshop A: How to Propose Subject Headings for LCSH to be held from 8:30 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. Tom Yee, acting chief, CPSO, will conduct Workshop B: Proposing Geographic Subject Headings for LCSH from 2:00-4:00 P.M.

Participants must register by June 4 through the SACO workshop registration form on the PCC home page (URL: http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pcc ) or by email to [email protected]. The workshops are open at no charge on a first-come, first-served basis to all catalogers interested in proposing new headings and changes to LCSH. Training materials will be provided free of charge at the workshop. Americans with Disabilities Act accommodations are available upon request.


New Standardized Form Division Tables for Class K Schedules

On May 17, 1999, the Library of Congress began using a newly developed set of standardized form division tables for all of the LC law classification schedules except KD, Law of the United Kingdom and Ireland, KE, Law of Canada, and KF, Law of the United States. The tables, numbered K1-K24, are contained in a new publication K Tables: Form Division Tables for Law, now available from the Cataloging Distribution Service.

The various subclasses of class K, Law, were published over a twenty-eight year period beginning in 1969 with the publication of subclass KF, Law of the United States, and ending in 1997, with the publication of subclass KZ, Law of Nations. (The subclasses for theocratic law are currently under development and have not yet been published.) Each individual schedule was originally published with its own set of form division tables appended at the end of the schedule. Although the tables had much in common across the range of schedules, they also exhibited minor variations from one schedule to another in level of detail, notation, terminology, and arrangement.

In response to requests from the law library community to correct these inconsistencies in the form division tables, the Cataloging Policy and Support Office developed the new set of uniform tables. The schedules were drafted by Jolande Goldberg, law classification specialist, and edited by Paul G. Weiss, senior cataloging policy specialist. They have been developed with the advice of technical services librarians on the Cataloging and Classification Committee of the American Association of Law Libraries and with input from the general library community in response to an invitation for comment that was published in Cataloging Service Bulletin, Number 72, Spring 1996.

These tables have been published in a separate volume in order to facilitate their maintenance, update, and use across schedules.

The Library of Congress is using these new form division tables in conjunction with the following schedules: K, KDZ, KG-KH, KJ-KKZ, KJV-KJW, KK-KKC, KL-KWX, and KZ.

As stated above, they are not used with KD, KE, or KF. The specific form division tables designed for use with those schedules and included with them will continue to be used.

New editions of all of the K schedules will be published in the near future, beginning with subclass K, which is now available. In the new editions of the schedules (except KD, KE, and KF), the form division table references will be updated so that they point to the uniform tables K1-K24. In the meantime, a conversion table included with K Tables: Form Division Tables for Law will enable users of the LC classification to begin applying the new form division tables immediately, even while still using the older editions of the K schedules. This conversion table shows the form division table numbers that appear in the older editions of the K schedules and their equivalent table numbers in the new volume of tables.

The usage of these standardized tables and their publication in a separate volume is parallel to the usage of standardized tables for language and literature in Classes P-PZ.


Tom Delsey on the Logic of AACR

Tom Delsey (director general of Corporate Policy and Communications at the National Library of Canada) told an audience at the Library of Congress on May 3, 1999, that, though he has never been a cataloger, "you don't have to be a chicken to know a good egg." His talk on "The Logical Structure of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules" showed that his knowledge comes from in-depth analysis. Delsey recently participated in the IFLA study on functional requirements of the bibliographic record; its recommendations influenced the formulation of the core-level standard. In 1997 he volunteered to conduct a study on the logic of AACR for the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR (JSC). The full text of his report, completed in November 1998, can be found through the JSC Web site (URL: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/jsc/index.htm).

The growing impact of digital technology on cataloging, Delsey explains, affects both the objects cataloged and how data about them are recorded. Modeling the logic of the code will help in developing a response to emerging issues associated with the evolution of digital technologies and a networked environment. Delsey's study was not undertaken to suggest the direction of code development, but to describe the existing code and its anomalies. Among his conclusions is a conviction that "digital objects" should not be handled by a separate set of rules within AACR, but rather included among other works under a unified theory of cataloging that will apply the same underlying logic both to digital objects in cyberspace and physical objects on library shelves.

Using the "entity-relationship" technique, Delsey models the principles and structures that underlie AACR. The first flowchart accompanying his talk showed the relationship of "producers," "users," and "intermediaries," such as libraries, to the "metadata" (including cataloging) that connects them to "objects" (including works) and ultimately to their content. The library, Delsey said, provides a context for the objects it catalogs through subject headings and by showing their relationships to specific persons, bodies, and other objects or works.

This value added by cataloging is what enables objects in cyberspace or elsewhere to be found by those who wish to use them. Delsey models Parts One and Two of AACR as similar flowcharts, analyzing the factors that influence the physical description of the "object" on the one hand and its relationships to persons, bodies, and other works on the other. His analysis will provide models that can be applied to unfamiliar "objects" as well as to the books and other objects originally contemplated by the cataloging code, as technology creates such objects and brings them to the notice of libraries.


MARC Harmonization Coordinating Committee Meeting

The MARC Harmonization Coordinating Committee (MHCC) met at the Library of Congress on March 5. MHCC is responsible for pursuing the goal established by the British Library, Library of Congress, and National Library of Canada to align the MARC formats used by these institutions. The purpose of this session was to discuss progress in issuing MARC 21, the harmonized CAN/MARC-USMARC format, and to explore possibilities for further alignment of MARC 21 with UKMARC and other European formats.

The MHCC chair is John Byrum, chief, Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division, Library of Congress; other national library representatives are Stuart Ede, Director of Acquisitions, Processing and Cataloguing at the British Library (BL), Ingrid Parent, Director General, Acquisitions and Bibliographic Services, National Library of Canada (NLC), and Sally McCallum, chief, Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NDMSO). Also attending were Susan Morris, assistant to the director for cataloging, LC, recorder; Beacher Wiggins, director for cataloging, LC; and Peter Young, chief, Cataloging Distribution Service, LC.

Meeting highlights included a report that NDMSO would be able to send camera-ready copy of the MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data to CDS in time for CDS to issue the format before ALA Annual Conference at the end of June. Further, NDMSO expected that the MARC 21 Format for Authorities Data would be ready for publication by the end of 1999. NLC will issue the French-language version of the formats simultaneously.

NLC made approximately fifty format changes in January to move CAN/MARC to MARC 21. These are listed on the NLC home page at URL: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/marc/eimplem.htm. LC and NLC expect to implement changes in October.

In Britain, the Bodleian Library (University of Oxford), National Library of Scotland, and National Library of Wales plan to adopt MARC 21. To ascertain interest and concerns among current UKMARC users, BL has commissioned an impact study that is due in June. BL's earliest date for implementation of MARC 21, assuming the decision is made in favor of adoption, is 2001.

The meeting also touched on possible methods of bringing other European MARC formats into closer alignment with MARC 21 and on what governance issues would arise from wider adoption of MARC 21. The session concluded with a discussion of activities undertaken by BL, LC, and NLC to monitor standardization work related to metadata and other developments with potential implications for communication of bibliographic information.


Soros Foundation Visiting Fellows

The seventh class of Library of Congress-Soros Foundation Visiting Fellows arrived in Washington, D.C. on March 1, 1999, to begin a three-month program designed to introduce foreign librarians to U.S. libraries and librarianship. The program is sponsored by the Network Library Program of the Open Society Institute, Budapest, Hungary. The three librarians hosted by the Library of Congress received general orientation about the Library, intensive Internet training, and participated in a management skills institute and trainer workshop.

The Cooperative Cataloging Team of the Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division hosted two of the visiting fellows. Lenka Sukova from the International Baptist Theological Seminary in the Czech Republic and Tunde Lepp from the Central European University Library in Hungary came to the team on March 29. The interns were given the standard week-long NACO training and spent a second week honing their skills in establishing name authority records and performing routine descriptive cataloging. They participated in a two-week subject cataloging training program as well, which had been geared for their particular needs. Subject analysis, use of subject cataloging documentation, and preparation of subject proposals dominated the training content.

The Special Materials Cataloging Division hosted Monika Mindosova, systems librarian at the University of Presov in Slovakia. Mindosova helped Music and Sound Recording Team I to catalog books in Slovak, Czech, and Russian by providing translations. She also worked with a computer files cataloger to create records for both packaged computer software and Internet resources. She spent several days with Sally McCallum of the Network Development and MARC Standards Office learning about MARC 21.

Mindosova explained why she wanted to learn LC cataloging standards, practices, and documentation in depth. Currently, Slovakia has no nationally recognized cataloging standards similar to MARC 21, LCSH, or AACR2. However, several Slovak libraries, including Mindosova's, are installing integrated library systems and want to exchange bibliographic and authority data. As systems librarian, she has to configure her library's ILS to facilitate data exchange; she also needs to be able to explain MARC content designation to her library's catalogers.


Digital Futures Group

Winston Tabb, associate librarian for Library Services, and Laura Campbell, director of the National Digital Library (NDL), addressed the future of digital technology at the Library of Congress during an April 22 presentation cosponsored by the Library's Cataloging Forum and Reference Forum. Campbell recalled that Librarian of Congress James H. Billington requested Deputy Librarian Donald Scott to establish a task force that in turn led to the formation of the Digital Futures Group (DFG).

Tabb then explained that the Digital Futures Group held a March 18 retreat to identify projects and programs to nurture and continue building the Library's digital collections and services. The group agreed to begin working on three major initiatives that encompass collection development, infrastructure development, and access tools. Each initiative will be addressed by a digital futures team. The DFG consulted with management of the Library's Information Technology Services, Integrated Support Services, and Financial Services to estimate the cost of implementing the projects. Tabb announced that Congress has been informed that the DFG is drafting a substantial item for the fiscal year 2001 budget.

Diane Kresh (director for Public Service Collections) and Carolyn Brown (acting director for Area Studies Collections) co-chair the Collection Development Team. The team's tasks are to find new ways to serve LC's constituents and expand the Library's role in providing high quality content in digital products through the Internet. The team surveyed the American Memory collections. The team is considering increasing the American Memory collections' subject coverage to add material on topics such as statehood, American culture, science, and technology. Other sources have been examined for future development of LC's digital collections, including K-16 teaching curricula and selected Congressional Research Service documents. The next step in the Collection Development Team's analysis is to look into issues related to digitizing the Library's foreign-language collections.

Peter Young (chief, Cataloging Distribution Service) who co-chairs the Access Tools Team with Robert Zich (electronic programs manager, National Digital Library), spoke of the team's charge to deliver digitized products to end users. The Access Tools Team has presented a project plan comprised of three major elements: finding aids/tools, new navigation/searching infrastructure tools, and electronic reference services. The Access Tools Team envisions the creation of a reference center at LC open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to provide information on digital products to customers.

The Infrastructure Development Team co-chaired by Sally McCallum (chief, Network Development & MARC Standards Office) and Clifford Cohen (director of operations, Library Services) provides the technical environment needed to support LC's role as a library with a growing digital collection. To build better tools for storing, organizing, managing and reformatting digital materials is the responsibility of the team. Having studied the technical environment at the Library of Congress, the infrastructure group has recommended improving the system of storage, delivery, and production to maintain the Library's growing digital text, image, and audio resources. McCallum emphasized the "need for LC to be a major player in creating the standards for the digital environment so interoperability will not be an impediment to efficient resource use and discovery."


LC Cataloging Newsline (ISSN 1066-8829) is published irregularly by the Cataloging Directorate, Library Services, Library of Congress, and contains news of cataloging activities throughout the Library of Congress. Editorial Office: Cataloging Policy and Support Office, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540-4305. Editor, Robert M. Hiatt; Editorial Advisory Group: William Anderson, Victoria Behrens, John Byrum, Roselyne Chang, Janice Herd, Angela Kinney, Albert Kohlmeier, John Mitchell, Mary Louise Mitchell, Susan Morris, Geraldine Ostrove, David Smith, and David Williamson. Address editorial inquiries to the editor at the above address or [email protected] (email), (202) 707-5831 (voice), or (202) 707-6629 (fax). Listowner: David Williamson. Address subscription inquiries to the listowner at [email protected]

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