Present: Julianne Beall (LC-Dewey), Ruby Bell-Gam (UCLA), Simon Bockie (UC Berkeley), Jill Coelho (Harvard), Greg Finnegan (Harvard), Gracie Gilliam (LC-Coop Cataloging), Pamela Howard-Reguindin (LC-Nairobi Office), Miki Goral (UCLA), Marieta Harper (LC), Joe Lauer (Michigan State, ALC Cataloging Committee chair), Bob Lesh (Northwestern), Nancy Pressman Levy (Princeton), Peter Limb (Michigan State), Ken Lohrentz (U. of Kansas), Jeffrey Myers-Hayer (LC), Joyce Noble (LC), Lauris Olson (U. of Pennsylvania), Laverne Page (LC-AMED), Loumona Petroff (Boston U.), Shoshanah Seidman (Northwestern), Janet Stanley (Smithsonian Inst.), Gretchen Walsh (Boston U.), David Westley (Boston U.), and Milicent Wewerka (LC).
1. Meeting opened at 8:40 with Lauer as chair and Lesh as secretary.
2. Minutes from the Spring meeting were approved, with the addition of name and url for the project mentioned by Caruso.
3. Agenda approved without additions
4. Use of subject headings with fictional works (DeHeer)
The New York Public Library has been providing subject access for African fiction, and Andrew DeHeer of the Schomburg Center outlined the arguments on Autocat for and against this practice. A lengthy discussion followed, with general support for adding Fiction to bibliographic records. Lesh suggested a policy that we would endorse and forward. The chair discouraged because of the lack of prior notification.
Wewerka pointed out that |v Fiction has long been used with events and people. This was recently expanded, as request of public librarians, to American fiction. An ALA committee proposed many genres (655s). LC uses some of these.
It was pointed out that no one is recommending adding this information to existing records.
5. Africana Subject Funnel report (Lauer)
A report listing the 22 new and 11 revised headings that were vetted by ALC was distributed. The funnel coordinator, Gracie Gilliam, has somewhat higher numbers because of slightly different reporting period and because she includes non-funnel submissions from MiEM, CSt, etc. Lauer does use the MARC21 code for the institution of proposing librarian, except for proposals from Janet Stanley which are extensively reworked.
Lauer raised the issue of updating bibliographic records when changes are made. Wewerka says it was done for Mbundu/Ovimbundu at LC. NW relies on authorities librarian to update, but could not explain what happens when the change is not one-to-one. Some other libraries make no effort to change headings or bibliographic records when changes are made.
Someone wondered if SACO could be operated more like NACO. This has been discussed at LC, which decided to continue the process of editorial review.
6. Work on chronological divisions.
No new headings were submitted via the funnel (Margaret Hughes did submit several for Burundi and Rwanda.), partly because the coordinator failed to sent any guidelines to the four volunteer until November 11. We do have volunteers to work on Ghana, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Togo. There was a call for more volunteers.
Wewerka stressed the need for literary warrant, both in terms of works on topic(s) and in terms of support from reference sources. Examples of useful reference sources would include: Columbia Gazetteer of the World Online (preferred by Hughes), Britannica, Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations, and even the LC classification schedule (except for cases when dates are arbitrary (e.g., 1951-) or for date of publication).
Librarians were encouraged to consult with African colleagues. Beall mentioned that the Dewey editors receive many changes from overseas as translations are being prepared. Apparently the kind of errors that get overlooked in the drafting of the English edition become a serious issue when, for example, all German librarians are able to read the headings selected by the Dewey editors.
7. Reports:
a. Library of Congress (Wewerka)
L.C. is up to date in the processing/cataloging of materials in history and the social sciences, but other areas are not current. The Thomas Kane special collection on Ethiopia has materials in many Western and Ethiopian languages. This collection is being cataloged by staff from different teams, and finding aids are being created for the archival materials.Wewerka has completed the revision of the PJ-PK classification schedules, which is now available from CDS. This includes numbers for Ethiopian languages. She has taken over the revision of the PL-PM schedules. Work has been slowed by changes in the romanization of Chinese and mistakes in the transcription of South and Southeast Asian languages. Publications is expected in early to mid-2006.
Any suggested changes to the headings for the PL8000s should be sent via Gracie Gilliam, the Africana funnel contact.
b. ALA's CCAAM (Lesh)--see Appendix A.
c. Northwestern University--see Appendix B.
d. Other: Jeffrey Myers-Hayer (LC) reported that the Library of Congress cataloged approximately 800 new African serial titles in the last year, including 400 from the Nairobi Office. As part of a reorganization in Library Services, the Cataloging Directorate and the Acquisitions Directorate have been combined to form the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate (ABA). The realignment is designed to ensure more cooperation between acquisitions and cataloging. It is expected that staff duties and workflow will be significantly revised over the next two years.
8. Announcements: During the Middle East Librarians' Association (MELA) program, there will be a presentation by Barbara Tillett, Director of CPSO, LC, on international cataloging initiatives.
APPENDIX A
Report On CC:AAM Meeting (Chicago, June 2005)
by Bob Lesh (Nov. 2, 2005; abbrev.)
CC:AAM (Committee on Cataloging: Asian and African Materials) is following closely the development of the new cataloging code, formerly called AACR3 and recently christened RDA (Resource Description and Access). CC:AAM liaison, Keiko Suzuki, reports closely on CC:DA (Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access) activity on RDA and has offered feedback from CC:AAM members to CC:DA. CC:AAM voted to formalize the RDA evaluation process by voting to form a task force. The task force will consist of eleven members, chaired by Hideyuki Morimoto. There are at least two members for each of the five regions covered by CC:AAM. The Africana members are Joe Lauer and Margaret Hughes. The JST (Joint Steering Committee) drafts of RDA will be forwarded to the task force membership, who will forward their evaluations of the drafts to the chair. The chair and the CC:AAM liaison will formulate a report to be presented to CC:DA. The task force will continue its work until the final RDA drafts are readied for publication, set for 2008. If the ALC Cataloging Committee members would like more information on RDA drafts, we would be open to increased involvement. A report on RDA could be given at the meetings of the Cataloging Committee.
CC:AAM is planning a program on PCC (LC’s Program for Cooperative Cataloging). The program (entitled: Area Studies Librarians: Do you PCC? What PCC can do for YOU. ) will take place on Sunday morning, June 25, 2006 (8:00-10:00) in New Orleans and will consist of a chair and four panelists. The presenters will limit themselves to about ten minutes each and endeavor to involve the audience in the discussion as part of an interactive learning experience. The themes that may emerge are: successful/unsuccessful stories of PCC participation; engaging the library administration to support PCC; initiating involvement in PCC; issues and challenges of PCC; improving cataloging at the participating institution and sharing with others; international participation. PCC will act as a silent co-sponsor of the program. We want to publicize the program as much as possible to encourage attendance.
CC:AAM is continuing its interest in Unicode. The Committee received a favorable response from MARBI (Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information Committee) to its motion about expanding the character repertoire. MARBI is already on record as supporting further character expansion. David Nelson conducted a literature review of writings on Unicode and reported that very little was written on the subject. He will draft a document to report his findings and conclusions. Nelson has a list of vendors interested in Unicode, and he will circulate a questionnaire/survey to determine how Unicode is being implemented. Two CC:AAM members attended AVIAC, the vendor group, and made contacts which may be helpful in the future. Jim Agenbroad’s resolution on access equity for nonroman library materials was presented to the ALA Council meeting, but it was not approved.
There was discussion of the relationship of the five area associations linked to CC:AAM work. Most of the associations maintain a non-formal relationship with CC:AAM although Africana has an official liaison. It was agreed that there should be a continued effort to promote greater communication. To this end, more documents could be forwarded to the membership of the area associations.
There has been a growing tendency on the part of LC and other SACO participants to cite internet sources in the 670s. Joe Lauer finds some of these simply repeat data from other established reference sources, or introduce new typos, or are of dubious permanence. Lesh asked for a short document with details.
ALA is changing its meeting schedule. To accommodate the schedule change, CC:AAM will meet on Sunday afternoons, 1:30-3:30. This decision will be revisited in a year.
Shi Deng stepped down as CC:AAM chair, and Bob Lesh became chair at the close of the meeting.
APPENDIX B
Northwestern Africana Cataloging Report for FY 2004/05
by Andrea Stamm (Nov. 14, 2005)
During the past fiscal year, Northwestern staff cataloged 7,101 titles in 7,590 volumes for the Africana collection. This includes 399 serial titles. The Africana backlog increased to 14,890 volumes (a 7% increase over the previous fiscal year).
Northwestern achieved all time high production figures for the Program for Cooperative Cataloging BIBCO and NACO projects. We created 1,960 BIBCO records and 2,558 NACO records, many of which were for Africana titles. Roxanne Sellberg, our AUL for Technical Services, just completed her term as chair of the PCC’s Policy Committee.
The separate Voyager database of Africana conference papers now contains 109,817 individual papers in 6,118 conference proceedings. Cataloging 198 new Africana conference proceedings resulted in the indexing of 3,655 additional individual papers.
Our two permanent Africana original catalogers, Bob Lesh (cataloging ¾ time) and Shoshanah Seidman continue to be very productive catalogers. In addition, Karen Miller, who has just become a permanent original cataloger here, catalogs Africana materials when she is not working on the cataloging of electronic collections.
During the past year, the Catalog Department continued to make progress on cataloging some of the Library’s “hidden collections”. Work was completed on projects mentioned last year:
South African children’s literature, Africana chapbooks or “Onitsha market literature”, Africana textbooks, Africana microfiche, a few Africana rare books, and an ongoing project, Africana posters (http://www.library.northwestern.edu/africana/collections/posters/index.html)
Using the Encoded Archival Description (EAD), the Catalog Department encoded an existing Africana finding aid describing the papers of Dr. Abdullah Abdurahman. For the Winterton collection of East African photographs, 48 of the 75 photo albums have been encoded thus far. Digitization is the next step in this project.
Northwestern has worked on two other digitization projects. First, approximately 100 rare maps of Africa have been cataloged, then sent to a commercial vendor for scanning, and the stitching together has been completed. Second, an additional 220 African posters were cataloged. At this writing, we are still negotiating with a commercial vendor to scan these posters.
As part of a project to accurately reflect Northwestern’s holdings in OCLC, the Catalog Department has been adding our holdings to OCLC bibliographic records and creating original bibliographic records in OCLC when there is no match of holdings. Africana accounts for a large proportion of original records in OCLC. Catalogers reviewed and updated 26,000 of the 60,000 records needing human review. The Library has just sent OCLC our entire database. We hope that OCLC’s recent revisions of matching algorithms and batch loading protocols will reduce the number of hours remaining for this painstaking but necessary project. A second project with OCLC, the local data records (LDR) of our serial volume holdings, was recently completed by OCLC.
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Page Updated March 16, 2006