Technical Services Special Interest Section

The ALA ALCTS/CCS Subject Analysis Committee met February 16 and 17, 1997 during the Midwinter Meeting in Washington, D.C. A number of reports were given by subcommittee chairs and Library of Congress staff.

Letters from Beacher Wiggins, Library of Congress Acting Director for Cataloging, addressed issues raised by SAC concerning subject subdivision order. He agreed with SAC that changing the order of certain subdivision strings would result in changing the meaning of the strings and hence the order of subdivision string proposals could not be adopted across the board.

LC is working on implementation of subfield "v" and "x55" fields. LC will continue to use subfield "x" for subdivisions that represent first order political subdivisions of countries, e.g., "xStates". Practice where topical subdivisions are not subdivided geographically because they are used as free floating subdivisions under geographic areas will be better documented. LC will continue to review free floating subdivisions in order to determine if the subdivisions should be subdivided by place. LC is currently studying the use of the subdivision "xHistory" and hopes to reduce the number of cases where "xHistory" is not used, hopes to revise H1647, the history memo, and hopes to examine the use of chronological subdivision dates. The Five-Year Progress Report on Subject Subdivisions Conference Recommendations has been posted to LC MARVEL.

Lynn El-Hoshy of LC's Cataloging Policy and Support Office reported on subject cataloging developments at LC. Sometime this spring CPSO will have a home page on LC MARVEL which will provide links to the weekly subject heading lists and to with various documentation and announcements. The fifth edition of the Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings has been published in four volumes with a glossary. Many of the memo's have been expanded and examples are given with USMARC content designation. Form subdivisions are identified by diamonds in the margin of the free floating subdivision list.

CPSO has been replacing subjects containing the word "man" with gender neutral terms. The subdivision "xRates and tables" has been replaced by "xRates" and "xTables". AALL's recommendations concerning changes to the heading "Constitutions" and "Constitutional law" were accepted by LC. The instructions for these terms will be published in 1997 Update No. 1 to SCM: Subject Headings. The subdivision "xProclamations" was canceled and the subject heading Proclamations may now be subdivided geographically. Subdivision "xManufactures" has been replaced by "Manufactures (May Subd. Geog.)" and "Manufacturing industries (May Subd. Geog.)"

Thirteen classification schedules have been published since being input into the MARC Classification Format. Later this year some of the P schedules, KF and M will be published.

Other schedules are being either proofread or reviewed. The KZ/JZ drafts are in their final stages.

LC has decided to relax the practice of assigning alternative numbers to titles within a classed together set by allowing an alternative number not to be given if classification development work is needed for the alternative number and by allowing the catalogers to omit the alternative number if too much work would be involved.

SAC will be sponsoring an ALA pre-conference institute on subject cataloging of electronic resources in San Francisco, June 26-27.

Much of the SAC work takes place at the subcommittee level. The Computer Files Subcommittee was notified that computer file catalogers at LC will begin using form/genre headings and subdivisions as an experiment once the subdivision authority records have been created. A list of SCM: Subject Cataloging memo's concerning computer files was distributed. They include Databases H1520, Electronic serials H1580.5, Software H2070, Establishing certain entities...H405, Free floating subdivisions H1095, Visual materials H2230. Classification is covered in SCM: Classification F710.

The Subcommittee on Subject Authority File Recommendations has been investigating ways of recording the history of subject heading changes and ways of allowing automatic validation of heading subdivision strings via authority records and coding. The group should have a final document ready for ALA in June. Various proposals include requiring "4xx" and "5xx" references to track relationships between current and deleted headings whenever possible and requiring subjects deleted in favor of names be retained as reference records. LC will begin to create authority records for form/genre subdivisions in late 1997.

The Subcommittee on Form Headings/Subdivisions Implementation will sponsor a panel June 28 at ALA. Work is proceeding at LC regarding the implementation of subfield "v" and "655" for form/genre. Tom Yee of LC's CPSO reported on those developments. "155" authority records for form headings and "18x" records for free floating subdivisions will be created eventually.

Currently LC is identifying form and topical subdivisions in preparation for the authority record creation. Hopefully by late fall the computer files catalogers will begin using "655" headings and "v" subdivisions. Changes and file maintenance will be postponed until LC has an integrated library system. They will continue to disseminate information on this topic.

Marie E. Whited
Lillian Goldman Library at Yale Law School
marie.whited@yale.edu