Africana Librarians Council

ALC CATALOGING COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES

April 30, 1999: 9:20-10:40 am

Washington, D.C.

Present: Dawn Bastian (Northwestern), Julianne Beall (Library of Congress), Joseph Caruso (Columbia), Kay Elsasser (Library of Congress), Greg Finnegan (Harvard), Miki Goral (UCLA), Joseph Lauer (Michigan State University), Robert Lesh (Northwestern), Sibyl E. Moses (Catholic University of America SLIS), Lauris Olson (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Loumona Petroff (Boston Univ.), Elizabeth Plantz (Northwestern), Elisabeth Sinnott (New York University), Andrea Stamm (Northwestern), Janet Stanley (Smithsonian), Gretchen Walsh (Boston Univ.)

1. Introduction and announcements
Chair Plantz opened at 9:20 a.m., with Sinnott as secretary.

2. The minutes of the Oct. 29, 1998 Chicago meeting were approved. Plantz will contact Zellers to have the status of the minutes on the Africana Librarians Council (ALC) web page changed.

3. Dewey Decimal Classification report
Beall reported that the Dewey Decimal classification area table for South Africa came out on the Dewey Decimal Classification web page. The problem of classification for the Ndebele language persists. Instead of establishing a number for Ndebele as a Sotho language in accordance with the usual standard sources, such as Ethnologue and the International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee is now proposing to place Ndebele within the Nguni group, following the advice of several correspondents in South Africa. A cross-reference under the Sotho-Tswana group, where Ndebele had been placed in Edition 21, will lead the user to the new location in the classification schedule. At this point, the Editorial Committee suggests placing Ndebele after Swazi within the Nguni group, another possibility would be to place it before Xhosa. Beall would appreciate fairly quick comments from the ALC Cataloging Committee members to this question.
4. Africana Subject Funnel
After the Fall 1998 meeting, the Chair had reported back to the Library of Congress (LC) about the ALC Cataloging Committee's decision not to include Afro-American subject headings in the Africana Subject Funnel project in the future, but has heard nothing back about how LC will procede with our offer to serve as mentors. Plantz spoke with someone at LC on April 29, 1999 about this topic and was told that someone from LC will attend the Black Caucus meeting in Las Vegas and will probably talk about this issue then.
This spring there has been more activity in the Africana Subject Funnel project, mainly thanks to Loumona Petroff. Since some of the headings submitted within the last year have never made it into MUMS (Multiple-Use MARC System), Plantz has resent them within the last few weeks
.
Rebecca Williams, the LC liaison for the Africana Subject Funnel, has been promoted to another position. The new liaison for now is Carolyn Sturtevant.
In respect to the Africana Subject Cataloging Workshop, which took place on April 29, 1999 at LC, Plantz expressed regret that it did not cover as much as she had hoped for. It dealt only with language and literary headings, whereas Plantz had expected a wider variety of headings such as politically oriented headings, e.g., battles and events. According to Lauer, the main problem was the time constraint. He appreciated the discussion of the Asante/Ashanti question. (Replacing 'Ashanti (African people)' with 'Asante (African people)', as proposed by the Smithsonian, having a possible impact on 25 subject headings. A proposal with such a major impact obliges the cataloger, who submits it, to present the whole case.) The possiblity of holding more workshops in the future to focus on other subject types was endorsed.
Lauer suggested Plantz post proposed subject headings on the Africana Subject Funnel list for review prior to submission to LC, an idea which was supported by Stanley. Plantz pointed out that in the past she has always concentrated on the individual who proposes a heading and how to present each case to LC, but she welcomed Lauer's proposal to open up the possibility of discussion before final submission. Committee members felt that this would enable people with a variety of subject backgrounds to provide input and help for more difficlut headings. In the future, proposed headings will go to the Africana Subject Funnel list with an indication of the time when Plantz will need to hear back from the project participants before the headings will be sent to LC. A very timely response will be necessary for subject headings that are part of BIBCO (Bibliographic Cooperative Program) records. Stanley and Walsh proposed to ask all ALC members if they would want to be put on the funnel list so that they can provide research expertise for new proposals in addition to catalogers.
5. ALC web page
The Chair told Sinnott to send a message to Zellers asking her to change the status of the "draft version" of the Spring 1998 ALC Cataloging Committee meeting minutes to an "approved version". Plantz noted that the Fall 1998 Africana Subject Funnel report is not yet on the ALC web page.
A discussion of the question of how long the minutes of the ALC Cataloging Committee should stay on the ALC web page followed. Petroff thought that it would be useful to have them there as long as possible. Stamm's position was that the minutes of the ALC Cataloging Committee and the ALC Bibliography Committee should remain on the web page for the same length of time. Then, Walsh and Plantz drew the members' attention to the fact that sometimes one has to go back to the minutes after several years in order to understand some issues. In light of this argument, Olson suggested to keep the minutes on the web page forever. Caruso argued that the abbreviated minutes will be in the Africana Libraries Newsletter (ALN) and are archived, but Lauer pointed out that not all issues of the ALN are on the ALC web page. Also, if the minutes were important forever, then it would follow that all the pre-1998 minutes should be put on the web page, too. The Chair asked members to think about the issue over the next few months so that we could discuss it at the next Fall meeting. Finally, Stamm proposed to put Beall's Dewey Decimal Classification reports on the ALC web page. Beall said she would look into the possibility.
6. Present and future projects
The Chair reported that no progress has been made in respect to a proposed project involving identifying African language title pages, a project that she had wanted to work on in cooperation with other members. Also, no movement has been made on developing a list of African language specialists working at various institutions.
Lauer mentioned the fact that about ten years ago he had put notes together for a list of African language words which would be helpful for minimal level cataloging.
Caruso raised the question what could be done about the lack of African language skills among Africana catalogers and was wondering if African language training for catalogers could be part of a Title VI proposal. According to Walsh, this might not be worthwhile because there are not enough materials in specific African languages which need to be cataloged at a single institution. Goral suggested that Africana catalogers attend intensive language courses. Others noted that the time and money for such activities are difficult to come by for catalogers.
Approaching the problem from a different perspective, Stanley proposed to develop some cooperation with colleagues in Africa. Walsh offered to draft a message in conjunction with Plantz for the African librarians' listserv (AFLIB-L) asking for African librarians to volunteer to help with the cataloging of African language materials.
Olson offered to provide a facility at the University of Pennsylvania during the ALC Fall meeting in Philadelphia if the Committee were interested in holding any workshops or training in cataloging African language materials. Plantz will look into the possibility.
Finally, in response to questions why we should worry about this issue, Plantz reminded the membership of the fact that there has been an increase in faculty demand for the cataloging of African language backlogs and that we should be prepared for any proposals they may put forward.
7. ALC/CC:AAM report
Bastian reported that Beall had discussed the relocation and reclassification of the Ndebele language in the Dewey Decimal Classification schedule at the American Libraries Association, Cataloging and Classification: Asian and African Materials (CC:AAM) meeting on Jan. 31, 1999 in Philadelphia. No starting date was given for the establishment of the former South African homelands in the new area table for South Africa.
In response to James Agenbroad's proposal to have Asian and African vernacular headings in authority records in RLIN and OCLC as additional access points, a sub-committee was formed. Bastian will be its chair.
8. LC reports
There were no LC reports.
9. Other business
- Schomburg report and discussion of subject headings for literature
There was no report from Andrew DeHeer, but he had written to the Chair and spoken with her at the Africana Subject Cataloging Workshop about Schomburg's sizeable African language materials backlog.
- New technology (Cataloger's Desktop; web site locations in bibliographic records)
Lauer announced that a new version of Cataloger's Desktop will be released soon and he emphasized that the present one had problems.
As to web site locations in bibliographic records, Stamm reported that this is done at Northwestern, but that the link does not work on public terminals at the present time.
At Michigan State University it is not done because of access problems, according to Lauer.
Olson explained that catalogers at the University of Pennsylvania create separate cataloging records for web sites to which this institution subscribes, but include only notes in bibliographic records for web sites which can be accessed without any cost.
- Core cataloging; practices and impact
It was suggested to find out more about this topic between now and the Fall meeting.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:40 a.m.