Announcements and Reports

Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR Meeting in London, England

The Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR, chaired by Ann Huthwaite, met in London, England, 13-15 September 2000. The meeting was highly productive. Major agenda items included revisions to Chapters 9 (electronic resources) and 12 (serials and integrating resources) of AACR; revisions to Chapter 3 (cartographic materials); a new appendix on major changes to a bibliographic resource requiring creation of a new record; and a statement of the principles underlying AACR. See the report on this meeting by Brian Schottlaender, ALA Representative to JSC.

1999 Amendments to AACR2 Available as Free Download on ALA’s Web site

CHICAGO—July 27, 2000—The Canadian Library Association, the Library Association and the American Library Association will offer a free, PDF version of the 1999 amendments to Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition, 1998 revision, on ALA’ Web site. The Adobe Acrobat PDF file can be downloaded at www.ala.org/editions/updates/aacr2. The Amendments 1999 are also available online in the ALA Store http://www.alastore.ala.org.

The Amendments 1999 were agreed to by the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR (JSC) at its Toronto meeting in October 1997 and its Leeds meeting in November 1998. They were approved for publication at the Brisbane meeting of the JSC in October 1999.

Library of Congress to Host a Conference on “Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium: Confronting the Challenges of Networked Resources and the Web”

The Library of Congress is hosting a 2 1/2-day invitational conference on “Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium: Confronting the Challenges of Networked Resources and the Web.” The home page for the conference can be found at http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/. Speakers for the conference have begun to submit their papers to provide the foundation for Conference deliberatoins and outcomes. A listing of speakers and their papers is given on the conference home page.

As an aid to foster discussion regarding these papers and the issues they address, an electronic discussion group (aka “listserv”) has been set up to provide interested parties with a means for sharing constructive feedback on the topics. This discussion list is intended to encourage interested colleagues throughout the world – particularly those who could not be invited to attend in person due to logistical constraints and other considerations – to participate by commenting on conference issues. Presenters and Commentators have been asked to monitor this discussion and to take into account important points you raise when developing the final versions of their papers.

Discussions will commence immediately and will continue until November 10, 2000. For those who will not be attending the conference, a delayed web-cast will also be made available so they may see and hear the actual speakers present their papers.

To sign up for the discussion list, send a message to listserv@loc.gov with the message being only the text:

subscribe bibcontrol [name]
e.g. subscribe bibcontrol John Smith

You will receive a response indicating your acceptance to the list, after which you may begin to participate in the discussions.

David Williamson, List owner
Cataloging Automation Specialist
Cataloging Directorate
Library of Congress
Washington, DC 20540-4300
202.707.5179 (voice)
202.707.2824 (fax)
dawi@loc.gov

CC:DA Co-Sponsors Preconference on Metadata

CC:DA was a co-sponsor of the ALCTS Preconference Metadata: Libraries and the Web — Retooling AACR and MARC21 for Cataloging in the 21st Century, Thursday and Friday, July 6-7, 2000, at the Palmer House. The Preconference was presented by the ALCTS Serials Section, Committee to Study Serials Cataloging and the CCS Task Force on Metadata Preconference; ALCTS Networked Resources and Metadata Committee; and the Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access.

Find out the most effective and the most efficient options for providing your users with access to Web resources. Topics range from library leaders’ viewpoints on Web resources access to the how-to's of creating records. Emphasis of this preconference is on presenting the pros and cons, standards, and especially the practicalities, of dealing with metadata for Web resources and a vision for the future, including DDI, Dublin Core, EAD, ISSN, MARC 21, RDF, TEI, XML, W3C and the new thoughts, rules, guidelines on seriality and AACR2.

CC:DA Meetings at ALA Annual Conference
Chicago, IL, July 8-10, 2000

Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access

• Saturday, July 8, 2:00 - 5:30 PM
• Monday, July 10, 8:00 AM - 12:30 PM
• Monday, July 10, 2:00 - 4:00 PM [Joint Meeting with MARBI]

CC:DA Activities at ALA Annual Conference in Chicago

CC:DA held two meetings in Chicago. The agenda for the meeting was particularly full. In addition, CC:DA participated in a joint discussion with MARBI on Monday afternoon.

A large part of Saturday’s agenda was taken up with the report of Brian Schottlaender, ALA Representative to the Joint Steering Committee. JSC had a productive meeting in March (see Brian’s report of that meeting). In particular, significant revisions to Chapter 9 of AACR2 (covering electronic resources) are under discussion, and CC:DA responses were voted on a number of unresolved issues.

The other major item on Saturday’s agenda was a discussion of the rule revision proposals to Chapter 12 of AACR2, made by Jean Hirons of the Library of Congress and a CONSER working group. This document has been distributed by the Joint Steering Committee to its constituent organizations, and CC:DA will be preparing a response.

Sunday’s agenda consisted of reports of several Task Forces, discussion of several rule revision proposals, and reports of CC:DA liaisons. The Task Forces include:

• Review of ISBD(M): This Task Force examined some proposed revisions to IFLA’ International Bibliographic Description for Monographic Publications and has submitted a set of comments, which were amended and approved.
• VRA Core Categories: This Task Force has been charged to review the metadata standard prepared by the Visual Resources Association. The Task Force is being reorganized and will have a brief progress report.
• Appendix of Major/Minor Changes: As part of the discussion of changes to AACR rule 0.24, the Joint Steering Committee decided that an appendix be drafted containing rules that distinguish major changes in bibliographic resources which require a new bibliographic description from minor changes which can be treated as revisions to an existing description. This appendix deals, not only with changes in title proper, but with changes in every area of the bibliographic record. CC:DA voted to send the draft appendix forward to JSC, with the minutes of the Committee’s discussion.
• Metadata: This Task Force has been working since 1998 and now presented its final report. The Task Force handed over its work to an ALCTS standing committee, the Committee on Networked Resources and Metadata, with some suggestions for areas in which work needs to continue.

CC:DA approved new rule revision proposals dealing with additional changes to rules concerning electronic resources and with non-roman access points; CC:DA decided to investigate the question of AACR2’s compatibility with ISO conventions for abbreviation, punctuation and symbolization (an issue raised in conjunction of the use of full stops following the symbols for metric units).

CC:DA also heard liaison reports from the Library of Congress representative, the OCLC representative and the MARBI representative.

CC:DA Holds Joint Discussion with MARBI

CC:DA held a joint meeting with the MARBI Committee. The topic for this joint meeting is “XML and MARC: A Choice or a Replacement?” The meeting began with a presentation by Dick R. Miller, followed by responses from Paul Weiss for MARBI and Matthew Beacom of CC:DA and general discussion by the group. An agenda and background statement is available.

Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR Meeting in San Diego, CA

The Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR, chaired by Ann Huthwaite, met in San Diego, CA, 22-24 March 2000. The meeting was highly productive. Major agenda items included revisions to Chapter 9 of AACR, review of The Logical Structure of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, further discussion of revisions to rule 0.24, and development of a detailed work program for JSC over the next year. See the report on this meeting by Brian Schottlaender, ALA Representative to JSC.

“Revising AACR2 to Accommodate Seriality: Rule Revision Proposals”

Following the International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR, the Joint Steering Committee asked Jean Hirons of the Library of Congress to coordinate the preparation of rule revision proposals in support of the recommendations in the paper, “Issues Related to Seriality,” presented at the Toronto Conference by Jean Hirons and Crystal Graham. The first result was a report containing specific recommendations, but without rule revision proposals; this report was submitted in April 1999 and considered at the October 1999 JSC meeting in Brisbane. Guided by the JSC decisions, a set of rule revision proposals was prepared and submitted in February 2000.

The revision proposals are available on the JSC website.

Update on CC:DA Task Forces

One CC:DA Task Force has completed its work since Midwinter, two more Task Forces have been appointed, and one has been reorganized.

The Task Force on Recommendation 2 in 4JSC/ALA/30 was appointed following Midwinter to provide an ALA response to a call from the Joint Steering Committee to consider a recommendation for describing material with manifestations in different physical formats. The Task Force presented its recommendation — that a working group be formed to test various options — in March; this recommendation was accepted by JSC at its March meeting.

A Task Force to Review ISBD(M) was appointed to review a set of proposed revisions to the International Standard Bibliographic Description for Monographic Publications. The report of this Task Force will be discussed at CC:DA during the Annual Conference in Chicago.

A Task Force on an Appendix of Major/Minor Changes was appointed to draft an appendix of rules dealing with changes to bibliographic resources – distinguishing those major changes which require a new description from those minor changes which can be handled by revising an existing description. The report of this Task Force will be discussed at CC:DA during the Annual Conference in Chicago.

The Task Force on VRA Core Categories was reorganized in June and will continue to analyze the metadata standard proposed by the Visual Resources Association.