SAC REPRESENTATIVE’S REPORT FOR 2000:
Report on Mid-Winter and Annual Meeting activities of the
Subject Analysis Committee (SAC) of the Cataloging and Classification Section
of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services,
a division of the American Library Association

Melody Busse Lembke, Representative
Los Angeles County Law Library
melody@lalaw.lib.ca.us

Although much of the work of the Subject Analysis Committee (SAC) is conducted via email during the year, I still have a very full binder of agenda items, correspondence and reports after only two meetings. SAC has not only very active subcommittees, but also numerous representatives to SAC make reports at its meetings. Much of my first year has just been "getting with the program," that is discovering what each of the subcommittees of SAC does. I have listed in an appendix all of the current subcommittees as of ALA annual meeting in July 2000. For the latest information, see also the SAC page at: http://www.ala.org/alcts/organization/ccs/sac/subjecta.html.

Two SAC subcommittee reports should be of interest to the law cataloging community. "Report on Proposed Headings" by the SAC Task Force on Library of Congress Subject Heading Revisions Relating to the Poor People's Policy (http://www.ala.org/alcts/organization/ccs/sac/pptfreport.html) has already been accepted by the ALCTS Board. Library of Congress considered the report as recommendations for change and is already moving forward on revisions to some of its headings. "Subject Data in the Metadata Record, Recommendations and Rationale" (http://www.ala.org/alcts/organization/ccs/sac/metarept2.html) by the Subcommittee on Metadata and Subject Analysis has already been shared with the IFLA community by Lois Mai Chan. SAC has proposed a program for ALA 2001 in San Francisco on "Subject Access and Classification in Metadata for Digital Resources."

In addition to the above reports, the Subcommittee to Promote Subject Relationships/Reference Structures has drafted 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. Such an on-line display has not been available since LC implemented its integrated library system and LCXR was taken off line in January 2000. The LC representative to SAC, Ms. Lynn El-Hoshy, announced that name and authority records should again be available for down loading via Z39.50 by the end of this year.

Mr. Giles Martin, an assistant Editor of the Dewey Decimal Classification, asked for the legal cataloging community's help. A discussion paper on proposed changes to 340 Law is mounted at the Dewey Web site: http://www.oclc.org/fp. The editors of Dewey are soliciting outside opinions on these proposed changes. The comments are due to the Dewey Editorial Office by August 31, 2000. Mr. Martin said that some of the changes are to the European Union and the comparative and international sections of the scheme. The SAC Subcommittee to Review Dewey 340 Law includes two law librarians, John Hostage and Marie Whited.