Technical Services Special Interest Section

The ALA ALCTS/CCS Subject Analysis Committee met June 29 and 30. The various subcommittees met June 27-30. SAC sponsored an institute on subject headings for electronic resources and a panel on form genre headings at the annual meeting.

At the June 29 SAC meeting Lynn el-Hoshy of Library of Congress Cataloging Policy and Support Office gave an update on subject cataloging. LC has a new thesauri homepage at http://lcweb.loc.gov/lexico but it doesn't contain LCSH yet. The Cataloging Policy and Support Office (CPSO) homepage is at http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso. The 20^th edition of LCSH and the first update to the Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings are available.

LC is working on their internal authority systems to get the systems to accept 155 field for form/genre subject authority headings, subfield v for form subdivisions, and 18x fields for subdivision authority records. It is still expected that the computer files cataloging team will be the first at LC to use 655 and subfield v in their cataloging records.

LC is reviewing the memo on the subdivision --History with a view towards giving better explanations of when and how to use this subdivision. Changes are being made regarding headings with the preposition "in" to express portrayal of persons, bodies, places and topics in various media. (...) in the press has been replaced by the free floating subdivision --Press coverage. Israel-Arab conflicts is being replaced by Arab-Israeli conflict with four chronological subdivisions. Leaks (Disclosure of information) and Term limits (Public office) have been established.

Thirteen schedules have been placed in Classification Plus. KZ and JZ are done. An updated edition of J is due late 1997. Ukraine has been moved to European law schedule and given the class letters KKY.

The SAC Subcommittee on Subject Authority File Recommendations reported that USMARC currently has adequate coding for recording the history of subject heading changes and that earlier forms of subject headings entered be in a 4xx field. If the earlier heading does not have a one to one relationship with the new heading, then a reference record should be made. They also made recommendations for automatic validation of headings.

SAC has formed new subcommittees to study Metadata and subject analysis. The SAC panel for 1998 ALA will be on subject access systems.

The subcommittee studying form genre headings heard from Tom Yee of the Library of Congress Cataloging Policy and Support Office who reported that LC hopes to begin using subfield v in spring 1998. After the computer files catalogers have started using the 655 headings, other subjects where form access is especially important will be phased into the creation and use of these headings.

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