Technical Services Special Interest Section

Given the levels of hierarchy through which each course of action must be considered (see levels outlined above) SAC still manages to get a lot accomplished.

The Subcommittee on Metadata and Subject Analysis submitted its final report to SAC. This report will be posted soon to the SAC web site at http://www.ala.org/alcts/organization/ccs/sac/subjecta.html. Until that happens the report can be found at http://www.govst.edu/users/gddcasey/sac/msafinalreport.html, the web site of the chair. This committee was then disbanded; however, a related committee may soon be constituted to work on the issues of interoperability of metadata subject heading lists.

A new subcommittee was formed at the ALA midwinter meeting with its charge finally formalized via email. But the subcommittee was renamed again at the San Francisco annual meeting; so the SAC Subcommittee on Guidelines for Application of Genre Headings was renamed the SAC Subcommittee on Fiction Guidelines. I mention this only to remind you why name authority work can be as much of a challenge as subject heading reference structures! Speaking of reference structures, the Subcommittee on Subject Reference Structures in Automated Systems held a very active working session at the annual meeting identifying issues associated with reference structures in the automated environment and dividing the issues among subcommittee members. These issues are to be explored and good and bad examples found in existing systems. The final result is to be a position paper that should guide systems designers in presenting syndetic structures effectively. If one is willing to work, one need not be an official SAC member to participate in such subcommittees. For instance, I am now on the list serve for this Subcommittee chaired by Sara Shatford Layne of UCLA.

In my 2000 report I mentioned that SAC had sent a letter to Winston Tabb, the Associate Librarian of the Library of Congress, stressing the need for web-based access to a thesaurus-style display of LC Subject Headings. Mr. Tabb has replied to SAC stating that a thesaurus-style display is available through Classification Web, which must be made available on a cost recovery basis. So no free web access to thesaurus-style display is available at this time.

One of the most interesting reports of the many liaisons to SAC continues to be that of the Lynn El-Hoshy of the Library of Congress. At the midwinter meeting, she reported that approximately 600 subject heading authority records that included the terms Afro-American and Afro-Americans were changed to African American and African Americans. You have probably noticed these changes by now. Watch for other proposed changes such as "Handicapped" to "Disabled persons" and a new heading for "Developed countries." Ms. El-Hoshy explained that web access to LC authority records would be delayed until after the next upgrade to the Voyager system. LC will probably not upgrade until February 2002. Happy Birthday to Cataloging in Publication (CIP) as it marks its 30th year. No wonder I feel like it's been around forever. I was 20 when it began! Also, LC plans new editions of classification schedules for KL-KWX by late 2001.

At the annual meeting much discussion focused on future possible activities for SAC as a result of the draft Bibliographic Control of Web Resources: A Library of Congress Action Plan (http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/draftplan.html). Please take a look at this report if you have a chance.

Submitted by
Melody Lembke
Technical Services Librarian
Los Angeles County Law Library
AALL Representative to ALA, ALCTS, SAC