Standing Committee on Automation

Minutes ALA Midwinter, Boston, MA

January 16, 2005

Present: Robert Bremer, Liz Brown, Gary Charbonneau (chair), Helen Gbala, Jane Grawemeyer, John Riemer, Gary Strawn, David Williamson

Guests: Mechael Charbonneau, Carlen Ruschoff

The meeting opened with a discussion of the times of future meetings. Carlen Ruschoff reported that the meeting time of PCC might be changed in the future, and that it might occur during the 4-6pm Sunday meeting slot traditionally used for SCA meetings. Nevertheless, Robert Bremer agreed to book the meeting room for the summer conference provisionally in the traditional time slot, with the possibility of rescheduling it if more information becomes available on PCC's plans.

New member Liz Brown was welcomed to the committee.

Gary Charbonneau distributed a list of contacts that he had compiled for the major ILS vendors used by PCC libraries.

Gary Charbonneau reported that the Monograph Aggregator Task Group had engaged in mutual introductions via e-mail and had begun to consider its charge. Two of the three members of the task group were scheduled to meet at Midwinter.

Gary and Mechael Charbonneau led a discussion of the draft report of the Task Group on Linking Entries. The committee had a few suggestions for the task group to consider with regard to the problem of the suppression of the OPAC display of a linking entry field when there is a 580 field present. John Riemer proposed that the 580 field be internally subfielded so that each title in the field would be recorded in a separate subfield. These subfields could be separate clickable links, thus permitting the suppression of the relevant 760-787 fields in the usual way. Gary Strawn suggested as an alternative that the number of indicators for 760-787 be expanded to provide for various possibilities regarding the display of those fields. He thought that CONSER should be advised that the task group had identified the issue as a problem and let CONSER take some alternatives forward to MARBI. On a separate matter, Robert Bremer suggested that the task group ought to recommend that as many linking numbers as possible be recorded in linking entry fields. CONSER libraries are often recording only one [Note: The CONSER Editing Guide says, "Subfields |w, |x, |y, and |z include standard numbers associated with the serial title or its online record. Subfields |w and |x are critical for searching and retrieval. When linking to an existing record, input one or more of these subfields."]

After discussion of the draft, the committee voted to accept it with such changes as might subsequently be added to it by the task group prior to submission to PCC.

Gary Strawn brought up the issue of NACO normalization, saying that it needs to be reviewed. Groups other than PCC/SCA might need to be involved, including Standing Committee on Standards. It was agreed that SCA will recommend to PCC that such a group be established, with a draft charge to be formulated by Robert Bremer, Gary Strawn, and Gary Charbonneau.

Helen Gbala reported on the activities of the NISO/EDItEUR Joint Working Party for the Exchange of Serials Subscription Information, providing the committee with information about Nathan Robertson's draft coverage statement.