ALC Cataloging Committee Meeting
November 14, 2001 1:00-2:45 pm, Houston, TX
Minutes

Present: Jim Armstrong (Library of Congress), Julianne Beall (Library of Congress), Ruby Bell-Gam (Univ. of California, Los Angeles), Simon Bockie (Univ. of California, Berkeley), James Gentner (Library of Congress), Miki Goral (Univ. of California, Los Angeles), Margaret Hughes (Stanford Univ.), Joseph Lauer (Michigan State Univ.), Robert Lesh (Northwestern Univ.), Peter Limb (Michigan State Univ.), Ken Lohrentz (Univ. of Kansas), Peter Malanchuk (Univ. of Florida), Emilie Ngo-Nguidjol (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison), Lauris Olson (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Loumona Petroff (Boston Univ.), Shoshanah Seidman (Northwestern Univ.), Paul Steere (Library of Congress, Nairobi), David Westley (Boston Univ.).

1. Introductions & announcements: Chair Lauer opened the meeting at 1:08 p.m. Limb volunteered to take notes as secretary.

2. Approved the minutes of the Spring meeting as sent to ALC list on May 17, 2001.

3. Additions and approval of agenda: added items 10 and 11 (see below)

4. Revisions of Dewey (Beall)
On behalf of the Dewey editorial team, Beall submitted two queries in advance of the meeting. The first was concerned with Dewey Historical Periods for Africa and included some proposed new submissions for the 960s, mostly for post-1960 but also for the precolonial period for some countries. Lesh, as the spokesman for catalogers at Northwestern had an extensive lists of suggested improvements and questions. Limb and others also added numerous other suggestions concerning new time periods that were likely to have literary warrant. Several mentioned the need for additional historical periods to be added to the list of Library of Congress Subject Headings.
The second query involved Table 5 (Ethnic and National groups); and there was less discussion on what was an already fine draft. The rough deadline for additional comments on both topics is early December; publication will be in 2003.

5. Africana Subject Funnel (Lauer)
a. Progress: The Fall 2001 report (distributed at meeting and to be posted on web) lists the 21 new subject headings and 8 revised headings that had been submitted since the last report in Fall 2000. An unofficial list of 48 headings in various stages of editorial review was also distributed.
b. Procedures and problems: Briefly reviewed the procedures in place and agreed that future drafts would be submitted as flat files rather than as attachments. The general absence of comments or timely objections was noted. LC's continued used of James Olson's The peoples of Africa: an ethnohistorical dictionary was discussed. Limb proposed that Lauer write again with documentation on this issue. The majority of new Africana subjects on LC's Weekly Lists (available at: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/cpso.html#subjects) continue to come either from LC or from other libraries who chose to evade the peer review that is offered by the ALC subject funnel. In most cases, these libraries do not have catalogers who are ALC members.
c. Priorities: The coordinator plans to give priority to headings eliminating pejorative terms, new historical periods with literary warrant, and form headings not needing much review.

6. Follow-up from previous meetings: Lauris Olson plans to conduct a telephone survey of workflow patterns for LC Nairobi acquisitions at various institutions.
Penn recently completed a survey of their collection for the North American National Title Count. For older titles, this involved converting the Dewey 16th ed. numbers to the LC system, using Voyager software. The 1997 numbers for DT1-39 indicate that not all libraries are following the same instructions.

7. American Library Association reports: There was no African issues raised during the annual meeting of CCAAM (Cataloging & Classification: Asian & African Materials Committee). Lauer is now the ALC representative on that committee.
It was suggested that the issue of area reference works used in cataloging at LC and elsewhere be put on a future CCAAM agenda.

8. Revision of DT schedule for Indian Ocean islands: Caruso and Hughes will be updating the 1995 draft, preparing new subjects for the subject funnel as needed.

9. Discussion: Experiences with cataloging; e.g. cataloging of web sites or of PDF files from web: Stanford is cataloging many documents printed from pdf files. Michigan State has done a few and plans to expand, focusing on its own publications or those of high interest. Northwestern prints small items and puts into vertical files. UCLA considered and dropped due to copyright concerns.

10. Institutional reports:
Northwestern University (Lesh): Shoshanah Seidman is the newest Africana cataloger, replacing Liz Plantz. During the past fiscal year, Northwestern staff cataloged 5606 titles (5830 volumes) for the Africana collection. All of the growing backlogged materials have Voyager records and can be requested for rush cataloging. They also indexed 310 new Africana conference proceedings (6254 individual papers) in the last fiscal year. The separate Africana conference paper file now has 5231 proceedings with a total of 93,189 papers. Dawn Bastian, former NU Africana cataloger and head of the MARC Dept., is now Coordinator for Bibliographic Control and Electronic Resource Services at Colorado State University.

11. Challenges in cataloging: Gretchen Walsh's "Opportunities and Challenges in Africana Library Service: A Framework for Cooperation and Development" listed three issues: Backlogs, Original cataloging for complex subjects, and Institutional priorities that defer work on Africana titles. Lauer proposed the following as alternatives: Adding new or amended subject headings and classification numbers; Correcting errors or obsolete terms in bibliographic records on the utilities; maintaining and improving the quality of cataloging by avoiding both minimal-level and rush cataloging and by incorporating the knowledge of specialist librarians in the cataloging process.

The meeting adjourned at 2:50.