The Committee met at both the Midwinter and Annual ALA meetings in 1998. This report summarizes both sessions.

Brian Schottlaender, the representative to the Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of AACR, reported on the international conference held last October in Toronto. The JSC recommended three areas for continued study as a result of the conference. They are seriality, underlying principles, and the issue of content vs. carrier. Tom Delsey (National Library of Canada) is responsible for a study of the underlying principles of AACR2. He has not yet reported. The issue of content vs. carrier was delegated to CC:DA by the Joint Steering Committee and a Task Group led by Martha Yee (UCLA) has begun looking at Rule 0.24. A progress report will be presented in January 1999.

A CONSER task group has been formed to study the Hirons/Graham paper on Seriality presented in Toronto and to formulate possible rule revisions based on the recommendations in the paper. A subgroup of this task force has been formed, led by this representative, to study the impact of proposed changes on loose-leaf publications and to recommend possible rule revisions specifically related to loose-leafs. Since the legal cataloging community has the most experience with this type of publication, this subgroup is formed primarily of catalogers from law libraries. Ms Hirons attended CC:DA meetings in Washington and presented a summary of the Modified Model C proposal and of her group’s discussions of the past months. To briefly summarize, this proposal divides the bibliographic world into monographic entities and ongoing entities. Ongoing entities can be either successive, such as traditional print journals, or integrating, such as looseleafs, databases and websites. Seriality task groups have been concentrating on defining these entities and will also be addressing its impact on the rules. In a related development, a new member has been added to CC:DA, from the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) to facilitate the presentation of rule revision proposals from CONSER and PCC and from the Seriality Task Groups.

A Task Group on Conference Proceedings continued its work on defining what constitutes a named conference (Rule 21.1B1). Two options were presented, one giving more specific guidance, and the other more generalized. The second, more generalized option was approved by CC:DA, which would change the wording to read: Consider a corporate body to have a name if the words referring to it are a specific appellation rather than a general description.

Another task group is looking at harmonization of ISBD(ER) and AACR2 Chapter 9. This group will identify areas of AACR2 which are not in conformance with the ISBD(ER), and if necessary, propose rule revisions. This group is just beginning its work and will report at Midwinter.

The Task Force on Metadata and the Cataloging Rules presented its final report. The full report (as well as the draft reports of other task groups) can be found at: http://www.ala.org/alcts/organization/ccs/ccda/tf-tei2.html. Its findings, very briefly stated, are that metadata is not a substitute for cataloging, but can be viewed as a source of information.

Finally, an update on AACR2e and the print version of the AACR2. The work on the electronic version of AACR2 is just about finished. Preparation work is expected to be finished by mid-July, after which the Joint Steering Committee must review the text one more time. It is expected to be incorporated into LC’s Cataloger’s Desktop and be available in the October release. The 1993 amendments have all been incorporated in the text. The 1997 amendments will not be. They will appear as a separate section in the electronic version. A new print version of AACR2 will be issued at the end of September or early October. The 1997 amendments will not be incorporated into the printed text either, but will be printed separately within the new edition. This news caused some dismay, since apparently no separate issuance of the 1997 amendments is planned and the only way to obtain them is to buy the new print edition.

CC:DA Action items - 1998

1. Omission of names, dates and numbers from the title proper

Rule 12.1B7 instructs the cataloger to omit from the title dates and numbers that constitute the designation of the serials issue. The proposed revision would allow for the omission of other names, dates, prices and numbers that do not constitute designation.

2. Prescribed punctuation for the series area

Rule 1.6A lacks two situation of prescribed punctuation: 1) when the numbering consists of a numeric and/or alphabetic designation followed by a chronological designation; and 2) when the title of a subseries is preceded by the alphabetic or numeric designation for the subseries. Proposal corrects this situation.

3. Numbering grammatically integrated

The proposed revision of 1.6B1 adds the missing instruction for transcription of the title proper when the numbering is grammatically integrated with the title of any comprehensive publication.

4. General information about series numbering

Proposed revision of 1.6G adds examples with chronological and alphabetic designations.

5. Both numeric and chronological designations for series

The proposed revision adds the option to record the chronological designation when an item in a series has both a numeric and a chronological designation.

6. General information about subseries

Rule 1.6H does not address three general subseries situations: the selection of title proper when some of the main and subseries titles are not in the same languages or scripts, the handling of such phrases as "new series" or "second series" when numbering is lacking, and action to take when there is doubt about the subseries. The proposed revision adds instructions in these situations.

7. Numeric and chronological designation of a serial

Rule 12.3C4 incorrectly uses the term "numbering" when "numeric and/or alphabetic designation" should be used. The proposed revision changes the wording.