Barristers Hall, Boston
University School of Law.
Friday, May 5, 2006: 10:30am-12 noon
(draft of 5/10/07)

Note: I still need to add web addresss (or attach documents) for the CCAAM report, the LC announcement upon series authorities, the Calhoun report, the Mann commentary, and the Univ. of Cal. report.

Present: Atoma Batoma (Univ. of Illinois at UC), Ruby Bell-Gam (UCLA), Marian Conteh Morgan (Ohio State Univ.), David Easterbrook (Northwestern Univ.), Archie Elliott (Boston Univ.), Vicki Evalds (Philadelphia), Greg Finnegan (Harvard Univ.), Karen Fung (Stanford Univ.), James Gentner (LC), Miki Goral (UCLA), Pamela Howard-Reguindin (LC-Nairobi Office), Bassey Irele (Harvard Univ.), Al Kagan (Univ. of Illinois at UC), Zbigniew Kantorosinski (LC), Patricia Kuntz (Madison, Wisc.), Joe Lauer (Michigan State Univ., ALC Cataloging Committee chair), Peter Limb (Michigan State Univ.), Heidi Lyons (Boston Univ.), Emilie Ngo-Nguidjol (UC-Berkeley), Patricia Ogedengbe (Northwestern Univ.), Lauris Olson (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Laverne Page (LC), Loumona Petroff (Boston Univ.), Charles Riley (Yale Univ.), Ann Seskin (Boston Univ.), Gretchen Walsh (Boston Univ.), and David Westley (Boston Univ.).

1. Introductions limited to Boston University librarians.

2. Minutes of the Fall meeting accepted without amendment

3. Modification/approval of the agenda -- Short reports were moved ahead of the discussion items.

4. Romanization rules for N'ko, Tifinagh and Vai (Riley) N'ko and Tifinagh scripts will be available in the 5.0 version of the Unicode Standard, due to be released later this year. The Vai script will be included in the 5.1 release of the Standard. Transliteration and romanization rules will need to be established for each of these scripts, by Technical Committee 46 and ALA-LC, respectively, and it would be good if that work could go forward in tandem. Michael Everson, of the ISO TC46 committee, and Riley may be starting soon on developing proposals for romanization rules for these scripts.

   International Components for Unicode (ICU) (Riley) For the Ethiopic script, an open-source transliteration tool can be developed, but various sets of existing rules need to be harmonized first. Daniel Yacob prepared a draft document [forwarded to the ALClist on 5/9] that reviews the differing transliteration methods, and he would like feedback from ALC. The document will be reviewed within the next two weeks at the University of Hamburg, before being submitted as a proposal to the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) Technical Committee.

5. 5. Africana Subject Funnel report (Lauer) The distributed report will be posted on ALC website. Changes for Hamites/Hamitic were submitted in March but have not yet shown up on LC list of proposed changes. Olson mentioned a thread contesting the use of the qualifier (African people) for Africans living abroad. Limb complained about the continuing use of Berbers. Lauer noted that very few books use the preferred Amazigh.

6. 6. LC decision to cease creating SARs (series authority records) [The April 20 announcement to implement this change on May 1 was attached to the agenda.] [Summarize?] Gentner said that LC was interested in comments, and he could announce that implementation was delayed for 1 month. [Letter of May 5 from Deanna Marcum to ARL directors acknowledged a communication failure and agreed to delay implementation "until June 1 to give libraries an opportunity to adjust their local practices."] Lauer pointed out that what LC calls "technical reports" would also be an exception to the rule of classifying separately each individual volume in a series.

   In response to a question as to how many were involved in creating NACO-level authority records, the Boston University catalogers reported that they do not participate in NACO, and they would continue to make local SARs, as their 490s are not indexed. Lauer had NACO series training, but he did not complete the review process. He has used the OCLC software to create naco-like authority records for the local catalog; and he does not always follow local policy to create authority records for all series.

   Some asked how acquisitions would record monographs received in a series. Lauer pointed how that serial records (with cross-references) take care of this.

   Pamela reported that the LC-Nairobi office creates many SARs (for a recent year, 82 new and 28 modified), and they would be following LC policy.

   Kagan said that a petition was being circulated, and this decision should be reversed.

   Lauer noted that the University of Wisconsin did not file series added entry cards in pre-computer days, and this was only occasionally an inconvenience for users. Gentner said that the British Library also did not list under series; and he noted that the series title would still be keyword searchable.

   Limb said that as a scholar, he used series. Someone commented on series as a way to locate related material. Goral reported helping users with only a series citation. Malanchuk reported that the University of Florida staff was opposed to the change.

   There were many comments on the process and apparent lack of consultation. Several noted that no one came from the LC cataloging division. (ALC chair L. Olson admitted that a planned letter to Barbara Tillich did not get sent.)

   Lauer felt that the LC decision, but not the timing, had merit; and he did not want a resolution coming from this meeting. ALC chair Olson reported that a resolution would be prepared for the Business Meeting.

7. 7. Changing Nature of the Catalog (& LCSH): Calhoun, Mann, et al. [attach web addresses; & ?summarize here] Discussion opened with Gretchen expressing her opposition to the business model being imposed. Lauer then attempted a brief summary of handout, which was pulled from L. Olson mailing of April 28.

Olson agreed with Mann that the Calhoun report seemed to be an attempt to kill the catalog.

Goral reported that University of California librarians were upset by the 79-page report prepared mostly by administrators. Limb noted that more flexible interfaces make full cataloging data more valuable, as it gets retrieved in innovative ways.

Lauer: the catalog never was the universal access mode that these reports describe as being replaced by Google et al. Book stores, colleagues, and handouts always played a role.

Finnegan noted that local systems often end up being a waste of money. As the editor of the Anthropological Literature, he noted that the descriptors used by the competing Anthropological Index (of the Royal Anthropological Society) often link to very different materials.

Walsh commented on the bizarre results with keywords, citing Distant Mirror.

Olson noted that with new media, summaries are displayed more prominently. People want to search multiple systems.

Riley: a business model would point LC towards cost recovery though some value-added services.

Lauer noted the closing of departmental libraries suggests that further cuts in academic support for libraries are coming. We need ideas on what they can stop doing and what new tasks we could assume. As a way to save money, libraries should classify more series as sets, with analytics. Rather than do incomplete cataloging with "core" records, the acquisitions record should be regarded as sufficient for circulating a book. Adding subjects should be regarded as a useful enhancement, similar to adding tables of contents or updating subjects (e.g., from Zaire to Congo). To save reshelving funds, put low use titles directly into compact storage, with classification schemes used only for subject access (and not location).

Several argued strongly that LC as a national library should be making our work easier and not dumping more work on other libraries. Miki and others decried the dumbing down of records. Finnegan: the world is complex; students need to be pushed to work harder (Possible response to inane query: You are not ready to do research on this topic.); and complex rules do make specialists necessary.

Conteh-Morgan said we should try to understand better how our current users do things and explore ways of matching what they need and want.

Summary: No one was comfortable with abandoning LCSH [though the chair was the only one engaged in SACO & fully aware of the time involved in maintaining the current system]. Chair noted that automated classification might work for collection of 150,000 titles [but not foreign language titles].

Meeting adjourned at noon, with no other reports or announcements.