Announcements and Reports

Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access

• Saturday, January 15, 2:00 - 4:00 PM
• Monday, January 17, 8:30 AM - 11:30 PM

2000 Preconference Planning Task Force

• Friday, January 14, 2:00 - 4:00 PM Conference Center, 213B

Task Force on Metadata

• Sunday, January 16, 8:00 - 11:00 AM Four Points Hotel, Rio Grande Ballroom

Task Force on Rule 0.24

• Cancelled

Task Force on the VRA Core Categories

• Cancelled

CC:DA Activities at ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio

CC:DA held two meetings in San Antonio. The agenda for the meeting included a number of important discussions of proposed rule revisions. The ALA Representative to the Joint Steering Committee, Brian Schottlaender, reported on actions taken at the JSC’s October meetings in Brisbane (see a brief summary below) and the actions required of CC:DA in response. The most extensive discussion concerned revisions to the rules in Chapter 9 for Electronic Resources.

CC:DA also considered and approved (with many modifications) an extensive set of proposals to revise the rules for describing cartographic materials, submitted by the MAGERT Committee on Cataloging and Classification. These proposals resulted from the work of the Anglo-American Committee for Cataloguing Cartographic Materials (AACCCM) to revise Cartographic Materials: A Manual of Interpretation for AACR2. The text of these proposals is available, but has not yet been revised to reflect decisions made in San Antonio.

CC:DA heard a number of reports, including

1. an update from Jean Hirons on the progress of the revision of Chapter 12 to expand its scope to include continuing resources of all kinds;
2. a report on the Preconference on Metadata being planned for the 2000 Annual Conference;
3. an interim report of the work of the Task Force on Metadata;
4. a report on the IFLA Conference in Bangkok;
5. a report from the Library of Congress Representative;
6. a report from the MARBI Representative; and
7. a report from Don Chatham of ALA Editions on publication of updates to AACR2.

Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR Meets in Brisbane, Australia

The Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR, chaired by Ann Huthwaite, met in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 18-20 October 1999. The meeting was an extremely productive one. There was an extensive agenda, some sense of which is given in the list below of CC:DA Task Force reports that were forwarded for consideration in Brisbane. The following is a brief sketch of some of the actions on major issues. As always, the specific text of these decisions has not yet been approved or published, and these notes should only be seen as previews of coming attractions.

• Titles of nobility and terms of honour: A number of proposals were considered and the British Library will reconsider their proposal in the light of comments.
• Harmonization of AACR and ISBD(ER): The bulk of the ALA proposals were endorsed in substance (if amended in detail). CC:DA will consider the results of these decisions during the Midwinter meetings.
• Seriality: Jean Hirons’s recommendations were considered and direction was given to Jean for preparing specific rule change proposals. Most of the required revisions will affect Chapter 12 of AACR2, including the addition of rules for integrating resources. A CONSER working group will be preparing revision proposals for consideration at the next JSC meeting.
• Organization of the rules in Part I of AACR: Tom Delsey, seconded by other groups, recommended abandoning the concept of classes of materials as the basis for the chapters in Part I. Instead, he suggested that Part I be reorganized into a series of chapters for each of the ISBD areas of the description. Each chapter would contain general rules applicable to all materials, as well as specific rules for particular categories. The Joint Steering Committee endorsed the recommendation and has arranged for a “proof-of-concept” prototype created by cut-and-paste from the electronic text of AACR2.
• Rule 0.24: The Committee endorsed the recommendation to revise the text of rule 0.24 to give equal significance to all aspects of the item being described. They agreed to study further the question of works and expressions that appear in versions with different physical characteristics. Finally, they agreed with the need for an introductory chapter for AACR2; the British members of JSC will take the lead in drafting such a chapter.
• Principles underlying AACR: Work continues on compiling a statement of principles; Barbara Tillett of LC will pursue this task.
• Next meetings: The Joint Steering Committee will been in March 2000 in San Diego, California, and in September 2000 in London, England.

A more extensive report of the outcomes of the Brisbane meeting is available on the JSC web site.

CC:DA Task Forces Have Busy — and Productive — Summer

Four CC:DA Task Forces completed their work in September and October. The resulting documents (over 200 pages!) were approved by CC:DA and forwarded to the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR, for consideration at their meeting in Brisbane, October 18-20 (see a summary report of that meeting above).

The Task Force on the Harmonization of ISBD(ER) and AACR2 has been working for some time on a comparison of the recently-published International Standard Bibliographic Description for Electronic Resources (ISBD(ER)) and Chapter 9 of AACR2. The Final Report of the Task Force contains extensive proposals for the revision of Chapter 9 of AACR2.

The Task Force on Rule 0.24 was appointed at the request of the Joint Steering Committee to consider a number of issues discussed at the International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR (October 1997). In particular, the Task Force was charges to “forward the discussion of intellectual content over physical format.” The Task Force Recommendations include (a) a revision of rule 0.24 which emphasizes that “it is important to bring out all aspects of the item being described” (b) support for the suggestion to reorganize Part I of AACR2 into chapters for each ISBD area, with each chapter to include general rules applicable to all materials and specific rules applicable to particular categories of materials; (c) a recommendation to provide specific guidance on the question of when to make a new record and what variations can be accommodated within a single record; (d) a tentative suggestion to replace the concept of edition with the concept of expression in discussions about when to make a new record; and (e) a recommendation to draft an introductory chapter for AACR that will state the principles underlying the rules and provide general instructions about how to apply the rules.

The Task Force on the Review of the Logical Structure of AACR was appointed to respond to the Joint Steering Committee’s call for comments on the documents of that name. These documents contain a data model of the structure of Parts I and II of AACR prepared by Tom Delsey of the National Library of Canada. They present a number of recommendations on some key issues revealed in the model. The Task Force Report consists of comments on the recommendations and key issues.

The Task Force on Seriality and AACR2R was appointed to respond to the Joint Steering Committee’s call for comments on the document “Revising AACR2 to Accommodate Seriality,” a report by Jean Hirons of the Library of Congress on the work of a number of Task Forces organized by CONSER. The report includes discussions of the concept of seriality and related concepts and suggests a set of categories for various types of continuing or ongoing items. It presents the outlines (but not yet specific text) of rule changes to AACR2 that would implement these concepts and, in particular, provide for the description of various types of ongoing electronic resources. The Task Force Report consists of comments on the recommendations.