Classification and Subject Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group
Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee
Annual Report 2011/2012
Submitted by Cindy May, Chair

Member Question Forum Project (Ask an Expert)

Submitted by Cindy May, Coordinator (clmay@wisc.edu)

This project established a forum where TS-SIS members could submit questions on law classification or subject headings and have them reviewed and answered by CSCP volunteers.

Members of this task group created a submission form, and webmaster Martin Wisneski linked it to the TS-SIS website. The link reads: "Get Your Classification and Subject Heading Questions Answered!" Submitted forms are automatically emailed to project volunteers, who then discuss the questions among themselves and provide answers. Over the course of the year the forum received and answered seven queries, generally after significant consultation. Aaron Kuperman has been especially active and helpful in crafting answers to submitted questions.

Member Question Forum Project volunteers: Jolande Goldberg, Aaron Kuperman, Kathy Lin, Cindy May, Karen Selden

SACO Funnel Project

Submitted by Suzanne Graham, Coordinator (srgraham@uga.edu)

The law funnel encourages law librarians to continue to develop subject headings and classification numbers for law-related topics. Any law librarian is welcome to submit a proposal by emailing the form to the funnel coordinator. The funnel administrators make initial assessments and adjustments before posting viable submissions to the CSCP electronic list for wider comment. Vetted proposals are refined, and the funnel coordinator submits them to SACO for consideration.

I've been reviewing the SACO manual and some of the other resources on the SACO site. I welcome and encourage TS-SIS members to review these as well:

A TS-SIS sponsored program at the AALL Annual Meeting entitled "Creating Legal Subject Headings" is scheduled for Sunday, July 22, 1:30-2:30 in HCC-Room 202. Presenters include George Prager, Paul Frank, and me. The synopsis reads: "The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) will grow and evolve only if librarians take an active role in its curation. Through hands-on practice, participants will work together to conceive, compose, evaluate, and submit a draft proposal for SACO of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), the editorial body that ultimately adds and changes terms in LCSH, via the TS-SIS Law Funnel. This program will involve participants in the kinds of discussions in which the LCSH editorial board engages." I hope this program spurs a flurry of submissions to the funnel.

An article about the funnel project that George Prager and I are co-authoring for a pending issue of Spectrum will further publicize the project.

SACO Funnel Project volunteers: Kathy Lin, Cindy May, Caroline Young.

Genre/Form Project

Submitted by Yael Mandelstam, Coordinator (ymandelstam@law.fordham.edu)

The Law Genre/Form Implementation Task Group is co-chaired by Robert Rendall and me. The group is developing strategies for identifying WorldCat records for retrospective application of law genre/form terms. The plan is to add the appropriate terms to WorldCat and then get a crosswalk between the OCLC numbers and the law genre/form terms so individual libraries can globally merge these terms into their existing records. Originally the group also planned to post the strategies on the AALL TS-SIS site for libraries that prefer to run these strategies locally. However, this may need further discussion since the strategies are not foolproof, requiring careful analysis and cleanup of the search results before the terms can be globally added to the records.

In the past year the group developed strategies for several terms, and Ed O'Neill from OCLC and I are currently testing these strategies on a small sample of WorldCat records. I am using MarcEdit and Excel to analyze and cleanup the data I received from Ed. Since no strategy is foolproof, the process is quite challenging and will become even more demanding when the search is done on a much larger section of WorldCat, but I believe it is doable.

Genre/Form Project volunteers: Melissa Beck, Lia Contursi, Jolande Goldberg, Suzanne Graham, Joni Herbst, Tom Latuszek, Yael Mandelstam, Ellen McGrath, Keiko Okuhara, George Prager, Robert Rendall, Pat Sayre-McCoy, Sallie Smith, Jessie Tam, Christina Tarr, Sally Wambold, Caroline Young.

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