ALC Cataloging Committee Meeting
April 27, 2001: 9:00-10:30 am, Bloomington, IN
Minutes

Present: Simon Bockie (Univ. of California, Berkeley), Jill Coelho (Harvard Univ.), Andrew de Heer (Schomburg Center), Karen Fung (Stanford Univ.), Miki Goral (Univ. of California, Los Angeles), Marieta Harper (Library of Congress), Patricia Kuntz (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison), Joseph Lauer (Michigan State Univ.), Robert Lesh (Northwestern Univ.), Peter Limb (Michigan State Univ.), Peter Malanchuk (Univ. of Florida), Judy McDermott (Library of Congress), Edward Miner (Indiana Univ.), Valentine Muyumba (Indiana State Univ.), Lauris Olson (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Loumona Petroff (Boston Univ.), Dan Reboussin (Univ. of Florida), Margie Struthers (Univ. of Cape Town), Gretchen Walsh (Boston Univ.), David Westley (Boston Univ.).

1. Introductions & announcements: Chair Lauer opened the meeting at 9:12 a.m. Walsh volunteered to take notes as secretary.

2. Approved the minutes of the Fall meeting
(sent to list on Dec. 09, 2000; see http://www.loc.gov/rr/amed/catm200.html)

3. Additions and approval of agenda: Items 10 & 11 added later.

4. Use of "Bantu-speaking peoples" as a 550 (see also tracing) under various "(African people)" headings such as Shona (African people).
A 2-page handout gave some background to the unusual use of "Bantu-speaking peoples" as a 550 with the 142 authority records for African peoples who speak Bantu languages. While the 550 to "Bantu languages" is appropriate for the 190 authority records of Bantu languages, the attempt to group peoples (as distinct from languages) by language groups is not done elsewhere in the world (e.g., there are no references to Romance- or Dravidian-speaking peoples) and it reflects older South African usage that was abandoned in the 1970s.
It was generally agreed that a change would be proposed through the subject funnel. Those needing more time to review the issue were asked to contact Lauer within a week.
For books about the whole or a large part of the Bantu-speaking area, the phrase continues to be acceptable. But it should rarely be used for books about the peoples of a specific country. Thus, Hammond-Tooke's The Bantu-speaking peoples of Southern Africa (2d ed., 1974), both "Bantu-speaking peoples" and "Indigenous peoples-South Africa" should be replaced with a single subject (Ethnology-South Africa), as the Bantu-speakers form 75 percent or more of the total. The group was reminded that the omission of 25% of the whole does not usually affect the assignment of subject headings. For example, books about Asia without Western Asia are assigned the subject heading of "Asia".
Walsh noted an ongoing need to change access points to match current approaches.

5. Cooperative cataloging of LC-Nairobi acquisitions:
a. Survey of current practices (Lauris Olson): His "Survey on processing materials distributed through the Cooperative Acquisitions Program for the East Africa Region of the Library of Congress Office, Nairobi, Kenya" is a 37-item questionnaire to be sent to the 42 participants. There was some discussion of the need for further testing and possible shortening in order to encourage cooperation. Question 24 (to be perhaps rephrased as: Does your library give original cataloging priority to a subset of these materials?) seemed to be a key to the chair. The survey is at: http://www.library.upenn.edu/~olson/africa/LCNairobi/LCNairobi.CAPsurvey.iv01.doc
b. Discussion of possible changes for the future: deferred

6. Aksum/Axum & Cush/Kush terminology (& classification)
This issue came up because of some email correspondence involving Peter Limb and Julianne Beall. The original issue (placement of Aksum within the Dewey table) had been dealt with. There was agreement that Aksum and Kush are the preferred spellings.

7. Africana Subject Funnel report: No formal report was available, as Lauer had made very little progress since Liz Plantz turned over this assignment in October 2000. There have many submissions (29 from Janet Stanley and 4 from Loumona Petroff) that are in various stages of editing. Some of these will be going out to the review list with the week. Most of the headings submitted in Fall 2000 have gone through the LC review and have been added to LSCH. In reviewing the Weekly Lists for Oct. 25, 2000-April 4, 2001, he found about 70 subject from LC, 12 from the Africana funnel and 23 from other libraries. Lauer is creating an Excel file of recent submissions to monitor the work in progress and done.
The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) will offer SACO workshops at ALA in San Francisco.

8. Reports: none submitted.
PCC statistics for FY2000 show a total of 2791 new subjects and 621 changed subjects. Of these, 15 and 10 came via the Africana funnel project.

9. Cataloging problems, needs, etc.
Agenda listed two possible projects: analytics for microform sets; and upgraded records for newspapers (adding Hierarchical Place Name (oclc field 752) and even Electronic Location and Access (field 856)).
Walsh questioned need for upgraded newspaper records, given Afrinul (the African Newspapers Union List). Lauer questioned need for Afrinul, given this option.

10. Northwestern University: Lesh reported that that completed a survey of "hidden" (without opac access) collections and produced a list of their African-language materials.

11. Directory of individuals willing to assist in the cataloging of African-language materials. Caruso asked the status of this project. Plantz sent file to Lauer, who had done nothing further. There was interest in getting this list on the web and adding to the list of names, possibly with a notice in ASA News.

Adjourned at 10:35.