Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee
2007-2008 Annual Report
Submitted by Jean M. Pajerek, Chair
The Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee and its sub-groups have had another busy and productive year.
A topic that received a lot of attention from the members of the Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee at the annual meeting in New Orleans last July was the work of the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, which at that time was still in progress. A small task force was appointed to draft testimony to be submitted to the Working Group on behalf TS-SIS. As it turned out, most of the testimony ended up being written by members of the TS-SIS Executive Board, but it was submitted on time. Once the LC Working Group's draft report became available in Nov. 2007, a few of us were asked by Mary Alice Baish, Acting Washington Affairs Representative, to draft a response on behalf of AALL. AALL's response to the Working Group was submitted in Dec. 2007. Documentation related to the LC Working Group's activities, including AALL's response to the draft report, can be found on the TS-SIS website at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/bibliographiccontrol/.
The two advisory groups constituted in 2006 continued their work during 2007/2007. Ann Sitkin agreed to continue to serve as chair of the Descriptive Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group, which is involved in reviewing draft sections of RDA (Resource Description and Access) and formulating responses from the law library perspective. The group initially conducted its discussions via email, but the complexity of the issues led to the creation of a wiki. During the past year, the group reviewed RDA chapters 6 and 7, which include most of the rules for legal materials, and solicited comments from the TS-SIS membership. AALL's recommendations were forwarded to the Joint Steering Committee (JSC) for RDA via ALA's representative to the JSC. Information related to this group, including its charge and membership list, may be found at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/descriptivecataloging/.
The Classification and Subject Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group was chaired by Chris Tarr of UC Berkeley during 2007/2008. During the past year, the Group's activities focused primarily on their ongoing project to assist in the creation of LC authority records for law genre headings, using the second edition of Bill Benemann's Genre Terms for Law Materials: a Thesaurus as a starting point. The group has developed a wiki to facilitate their work. Further information about the group's work, including a link to the law genre project wiki, may be found at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/classification/. Special thanks go to Yael Mandelstam of Fordham University for her tireless dedication to this project, and to the Inherently Legal Subject Headings Project (http://www.lawlib.duq.edu/ILSH/).
The Task Group on Vendor-supplied Bibliographic Records was formed in the fall of 2006; after a bit of a late start, it too continued its work during the past year. We had problems recruiting a chair for the group, but in Nov. 2007, Angela Jones of Southern Methodist University agreed to serve as chair. Under Angela's capable leadership, the group has reviewed sets of bibliographic records for CALI, BNA, MOML, and the Westlaw/Lexis records from Cassidy Cataloguing. The group has been approached by the ALA Catalog Form and Function Interest Group about the possibility of a joint wiki for vendor records. Members of the task group consider this to be a good idea, with a lot of potential for collaboration and sharing of information. The task group has already set up a wiki for its own use where members are documenting their important work. More information about the group, including a link to their wiki, may be found at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/vendorbibrecords/.
Leadership of the New Catalogers' Roundtable was assumed by Dan Blackaby of Western State University. The New Catalogers' Roundtable web page may be viewed at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/newcatalogers/. The Round Table's current project is to compile a list of "essential" Law Library Journal articles related to cataloging, in celebration of LLJ's centennial volume.
Sarah Yates continued as leader of the Rare Book Cataloging Round Table. Sarah is currently in the process for forming a task group to "assist the Bibliographic Standards Committee (BSC) of ALA's Rare Books and Manuscripts Section in the compilation of two handbooks of cataloging examples to accompany Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) (2007) and Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Serials) (forthcoming)."
The Cataloging Workshop proposal developed by Monica Kauppi (Columbia University) and Chris Tarr was approved by AMPC in fall 2007. Shortly thereafter, Monica had to withdraw as co-coordinator, and a new co-coordinator (Brian Provenzale of Stanford University) was recruited. The workshop is actually over-subscribed, indicating a high demand for this kind of continuing education. We also fielded an inquiry from the education chair of ALA's ALCTS as to whether non-law librarians would be able to take the workshop, another indication of the high level of interest.