Technical Services Special Interest Section

The Committee held meetings at both the Midwinter and Annual meetings. This report summarizes discussions and actions taken at both meetings.

There were two major accomplishments in the area of outreach and communication with the cataloging community. First, is the publication by ALCTS of a brochure describing the work of the Committee: Building International Descriptive Cataloging Standards: the role of the American Library Association's Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access. Second, the completion of the work of the Task Force on Document Distribution which establishes a Committee home page and procedures for posting draft documents, committee reports minutes, and maintaining the site. Instructions for comments on draft proposals will be posted when appropriate. Please visit the site at: www.ala.org/alcts

Considerable time was spent on reviewing and acting on rule revisions proposed by the Library of Congress. These proposals emanate from the Library of Congress' review of its Rule Interpretations and were proposed by the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, with the goal of bringing AACR2 and the LCRI's more in alignment. Libraries which follow the LCRI's have generally adopted the practices recommended in these rule revisions. The majority of the revisions concern rules under 12.1 dealing with the title proper of serials, rules 12.7B1 dealing with relationship of serials with other serials, rules 1.6 on punctuation and numbering of series titles and series parallel titles. (See below for list of rules.) The Committee gave its approval to most of the revisions, which must now be approved by the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR. Some of the proposals were deferred to the Serials Cataloging Committee for further consideration. The Committee approved a proposed new Appendix to AACR2 which lists all initial articles to be omitted when the rules call for omission.

The Committee discussed and approved a proposal to include a new Appendix in AACR2 which will list all initial articles to be omitted where omission instructions exist in the rules. The list includes articles in many languages.

Plans for the International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR for October 23-25, 1997 in Toronto are well under way. Drafts of the papers to be presented are being posted on the Conference web page for public viewing. Some of the papers topics are discussions of: Concepts of "work", "edition", and "publication"; Content vs carrier; Relationships between bibliographic entities; concept of main entry; and, concept of seriality. The Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR2 will meet immediately following the Conference to consider the results, and formulate an action plan for the development of formal proposals or additional investigation as needed. The web site for conference information is: www.nlc-bnc.ca/jsc.

The Committee discussed and approved a proposal to include a new Appendix in AACR2 which will list all initial articles which are to be omitted where omission instructions exist in the rules. The list includes articles in many languages.

At both Midwinter and Annual meetings reports were heard concerning the relationship between Chapter 9 of AACR2 (Computer Files), the publication Guidelines for the Bibliographic Description of Interactive Multimedia, and IFLA's ISBD(ER), International Standard Bibliographic Description for Electronic Resources. There are numerous instances of differing practices among the three publications. The general consensus was that those wishing to follow the Guidelines should continue to do so, as well as those adhering to Chapter 9. There will be no attempt at this time to revise the Guidelines. The only change that is being considered and recommended is that the GMD for computer files be changed from "computer files" to "electronic resource" in Chapter 9 of AACR2 and in the Guidelines, and a proposal to add a number of terms and cross references to the AACR2 Glossary relating to electronic resources, such as CD-ROM, Computer optical disc, Diskette, Laser optical card, Magnetic disk, and more.

CCDA held an historic joint meeting with MARBI to discuss issues of mutual concern relating to Metadata and the Dublin Core. The discussion raised more questions than it answered, such as, Is Dublin core data a title page surrogate? Can this data be added as is to our catalogs? Does it have any value? What guarantee do we have that creators will supply core data? There was general agreement to appoint a joint task force to look at metadata and the cataloging rules.

David Epstein, from ALA Editions, reported that work on the electronic version of AACR2 (known as AACR2-e) is proceeding towards completion. Release is expected at the end of November. Third party licensing has been approved, allowing vendors, such as the Library of Congress, to include AACR2-e in products such as the Catalogers Desktop. AACR2r will be reprinted at the same time, incorporating all new revisions approved by the Joint Steering Committee since the 1993 Amendments were issued. The text will be available in paperbound copy only. The loose-leaf version will be discontinued.

Ann Sitkin
AALL Representative to CCDA
Cataloging Services Librarian
Harvard Law School Library

List of rules under discussion at ALA/ALCTS/CCS Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (1997)

• Omission of titles from the title proper (12.1B1)
• Omission of names, dates, and numbers from the title proper (12.1B7)
• Words and phrases in the title proper (12.1B3)
• Relationships with other serials (12.7B7)
• Prescribed sources for series area for serials (12.0B1)
• Prescribed punctuation for the title and statement of responsibility area (12.1A1)
• Numeric and chronological designation in a serial (12.3C4)
• Prescribed punctuation for the series are (1.6A1)
• Scope of the series area (1.6A3)
• Numbering grammatically integrated with series title (1.6B1)
• Parallel titles of series (1.6C1)
• General information about series numbering (1.6G1)
• Both numeric and chronological designations for series (1.6G3)
• General information about subseries (1.6H1)
• More than one series statement (1.6H1)
• Definition of "numbering" (Appendix D)
• Definition of "series" (Appendix D)