Cataloging Committee Minutes

April 3, 1998, 9:00-10:30 a.m. Gainesville, Florida

Present: Julianne Beall (Library of Congress), Ruby Bell-Gam (UCLA), Joseph Caruso (Columbia), Jill Coelho (Harvard), Moore Crossey (Yale), Karen Fung (Stanford), Miki Goral (UCLA), Beverly Gray (Library of Congress), Dennis Hyde (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Al Kagan (Univ. of Illinois), Deborah LaFond (SUNY-Albany), Louise Leonard (Univ. of Florida), Pamphil Muaimu (Dar-es-Salaam), Razia Nanji (Univ. of Florida), Loumona Petroff (Boston University), Dan Rebonssin (Univ. of Florida), Mette Shayne (Northwestern), Elisabeth Sinnott (New York University), Andrea Stamm (Northwestern), Dave Tuffs (Michigan State University), Gretchen Walsh (Boston University), Joanne Zellers (Library of Congress)

1. Introduction and announcements

Chair Plantz opened at 9:10, with Sinnott as secretary.

2. The minutes of the Nov. 12, 1997 Columbus meeting were approved.

3. Dewey Decimal Classification

- Beall reported on the progress of the work on the revision of the Dewey Decimal Classification area table for South Africa. She provided two handouts with comments from South African Librarians on last year's draft. According to Beall, a new draft of the area table for South Africa will be presented to the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee incorporating everyone's suggestions as much as possible in mid-April. Late May this draft will appear on the Dewey Decimal home page. A final draft should be ready by mid-September. It is hoped that it will be published in the fall. So far, nobody is calling for drastic changes, but a few districts might be shifted. Game preserves, national parks, and capitals will be included.

- The new numbers which have been proposed for Venda and Ndebele languages were endorsed by the Africana Librarians Council (ALC), Cataloging Committee.

4. Africana Subject Funnel

Plantz reported that there has not been a lot of activity since last fall. The newly proposed subject headings may or may not have gotten on to the Multiple-Use MARC System (MUMS) yet. There seem to have been problems with Library of Congress' (LC's) change to a new e-mail system, and some headings have been delayed. They should hopefully show up soon. So far, there has been no response by funnel members to say that anyone has a problem with the use of IEN in the 040 subfield for all Africana proposals. The Library of Congress wants to use one institution code for statistical purposes and does not want to create a new code for the project. It was agreed to use IEN, the code for Northwestern, for all future proposals.

Next, the Africana Subject Funnel part of the ALC Web page was discussed. An introductory paragraph was presented for review. Fung proposed calling it the Africana Subject Funnel Project. Stamm drew the members' attention to the fact that there is a contradiction between the statement that anyone interested in participating should contact Elizabeth Plantz and that passage in the first paragraph stating that one has to be part of the ALC, Cataloging Committee in order to contribute to the project. Zellers suggested that this should be clarified in the first paragraph.

Plantz expressed her wish to have a link to the SACO (Subject Authority Cooperative) Program description. According to Caruso, this link should be embedded in the first paragraph by highlighting the text concerning SACO. Plantz wondered, if the SACO project might want to have a link to the Africana Subject Funnel Project, as they have links to other projects. She will inquire about this after our documents are mounted on the ALC Web page at LC.

Caruso raised the question of how many headings had been accepted by LC so far. Plantz thought that there were 116 accepted last year; the exact number could be looked up in the last Africana Librarians' Newsletter. Caruso emphasized the importance of keeping count of the number of headings accepted by LC. Kagan was interested in the question whether LC accepted

everything that comes in. Plantz noted that she now has a better picture of what is expected by LC. She finds more problems with presentation, e.g., in the 670s, than with the headings themselves and she is able to catch a lot of problems before she sends the headings in.

5. ALC Web page

Zellers inquired what Plantz's wishes concerning the section of the Cataloging Committee on the ALC Web page were. Regarding this point, Zellers has a section on minutes (Spring, Fall) and on funnel reports. Plantz suggested to call the latter section `Africana Subject Funnel Project'

and have it divided into two sections, namely introduction and reports. According to Zellers, there is neither a list of officers nor Internet resources for Africana catalogers so far. The Chair commented that she would prefer "resources" instead of "Internet resources." Handouts and reports from the meetings should be connected to the minutes as well.

Plantz asked members what sorts of links people would like to see for our Web site. Two Web pages by Cynthia D. Bertelsen might be a possibility. One is on cataloging foreign language materials (http://www.vt.edu:10021/B/bertel.ndx.html) and one specifically on issues

in cataloging African language materials (http://www/vt.edu:10021/B/bertel/africana.html). She suggested Ethnologue, GeoNet and Bertelsen's Web pages as links. There is some concern

about any links to Bertelsen as these pages are no longer being updated. Zellers thought it might be a solution to this problem to pick some of these sites from the Web page and link directly to them rather than to the entire Bertelsen's site itself. A member commented that it would be necessary to find out, if this is an authoritative site and, also, to ask for permission to copy it. Since this person is no longer maintaining these sites, we could ask permission to take over part of it and maintain it ourselves. Zellers reminded the members of the fact that when the work on

the ALC home page first started, it was obvious that other sites where members could contribute directly seemed to have more possibilities. As an example she mentioned that the guidelines for cataloging Africana by Northwestern University colleagues could be of benefit to others. Plantz

answered that she would be willing to consider documents that would be helpful to others. This discussion turned to the possibility of mounting documents by committee members on the Web site as well. The document prepared by Lauer on resources for African languages and presented at an earlier meeting was mentioned as a possibility.

6. Update article by Gail Junion (Gail J. Junion, `A guide to reference tools for cataloging Africana', Library Resources & Technical Services, vol. 26. No. 2, April/June 1982, pp. 109-21)

Last fall, Lohrentz had suggested to update Junion's article. Plantz noted that this is something we will probably want to have on our Web page. Do we want to only look at electronic resources or do we want to cover the universe of Africana cataloging tools? Zellers thought that such

a document would be helpful as an orientation for students. Plantz said that this is really a lengthy article and stressed that all the members would have to work on it. She would be willing to act as

facilitator, but she could not do all the work. Obviously, the article is outdated and Plantz noted that she never used most of the tools mentioned in it. Do members really want such a huge list or do they want to be more selective? Walsh's view was that the answer to this question depends on which audience is targeted. An Africana cataloger certainly would not need the whole list for doing daily routine cataloging work. Plantz noted that it took a very long time to put Junion's list together, with lots of contributions from many sides. Part of the audience are obviously the ALC members, but there might be other people interested in it, too.

Coelho proposed that the Committee begin by preparing some kind of an in-house cheat sheet and start with a list of favorites resources. Zellers raised the question, if someone could maybe scan a page of text in an unknown African language and have it posted for identification on the

ALC Web page. Everyone agreed that this might be possible. It was decided that Plantz would send out a message to Greg's list, asking all catalogers to develop a list of their favorite or most useful reference tools for cataloging Africana. The lists will be posted over the list for all to see

and provide feedback. These lists will be used to prepare a preliminary document to be discussed at the Fall meeting in Chicago. Annotated lists that could contribute to some kind of electronic dialog will be encouraged. Eventually this list would be a candidate for inclusion on the Web page.

7. Old business

- Follow up to African Publishers' Network (APNET) letters

Plantz asked the members, if they had noticed any differences concerning additional information in African language publications and if it was too soon to contact APNET. Walsh proposed putting this issue off for a while.

- DT revision Plantz will photocopy the DT revisions concerning the Indian Ocean and East Africa and will send a note out. This is the third version of Caruso's original draft in addition to LC's comments. Caruso said that he will still have to do some work on literary warrant, because the resent draft is too detailed for LC. He will send out explanations to Plantz who will ask the members to support him in this task.

8. LC report

Unfortunately, Zellers had forgotten to bring a copy of Ann Della Porta's report on cataloging activity at the Library of Congress with her, but she will send it out on Greg's list. Plantz mentioned that she asked Della Porta for more information on their contacts with librarians in South Africa.. Della Porta answered that they were negotiating with the University of South Africa to join Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO) sometime in 1999 and that aside from their already established relationship with UNISA, other South African libraries are certainly candidates to join the funnel project.

Library of Congress Cooperative Cataloging Report for ALC- Spring 1998

9. There was no American Libraries Association, Cataloging and Classification: Asian, African and Mid-Eastern Materials report.

Finally, Bell-Gam asked the members, if they would be interested in being informed about Africana headings established at UCLA locally. Plantz mentioned that the Smithsonian also establishes headings locally and sends them directly to LC. Information about UCLA and anyone's submissions of African subject headings would always be appreciated.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:15 a.m.