Metadata & Cataloging Annual Reports

Metadata Management & Cataloging Committee Annual Reports

• 2021 - 2022 Metadata Management Committee

  2022 TS-SIS/MMSC ANNUAL REPORT

  2021-2022 ACTIVITIES

  Shawn King and Tania Diaz Marrero, co-chairs

  The Committee had planned on having smaller RDA sessions throughout the year. We held one in December regarding the RDA handling of jurisdiction following the announcement by the RDA Steering Committee of the Place/Jurisdiction Working Group. The Working Group was tasked with examining “the concepts of place and jurisdiction (corporate body) and their associated definitions and instructions in RDA.” The Committee reached out to the RDA Steering Committee to ensure that a U.S. law cataloger would be on the Working Group.

  Following the announcement by PCC that they wouldn’t be implementing the Official RDA Toolkit before October 2022, the Committee felt that further sessions closer to the actual implementation of the new standard was appropriate.

  The co-chairs worked on updating the Committee section of the Handbook.

  2022 ANNUAL MEETING

  The MMSC Business meeting will be held virtually this year on July 11 via Zoom starting at 1:00 PM CDT separately from the in person AALL Annual Conference July 16-19 in Denver, Colorado.

  There will be a MMSC Roundtable in Denver on Monday, July 18, at 1:15-2:15 where we will be continuing the discussion from the prior session ‘Beyond “Change the Subject”: Cataloging with a Conscience for Sustainable Inclusive Descriptive Practice.”

  2022 METADATA POLICY AND STANDARDS ADVISORY GROUP (MPSAG)

  Pat Sayre-McCoy and Alexis Zirpoli, co-chairs

  The MPSAG meeting will be held virtually as a part of the MMSC Business meeting on July 11.

  2022 VENDOR-SUPPLIED RECORDS ADVISORY GROUP (VRAG)

  Rebecca Bearden and Susanna French, co-chairs

  Heather Buckwalter stepped down as co-chair in July 2021 and Susanna French became co-chair for the 2021-2023 term. The current co-chairs, Becky and Susanna, met via Zoom 7 times between Sept. 2021-June 2022. During that time, the co-chairs communicated about several topics and projects. They worked on overhauling the existing Vendor Records for Digital Law Collections spreadsheet, per feedback at the 2021 meeting, discussed some problems with linking e-journal titles to the Alma Community Zone, a member’s question on My Communities regarding MARC records from Oxford, and continued concerns relating to serial and multivolume set records in LexisNexis Digital Library’s MARC records from both sources. They also talked about the continued desire to have Bloomberg MARC records available within OCLC Worldshare Collection Manager, and more recently, about Cassidy Cataloging’s migration to a new FTP server. They provided some configuration information to Cassidy to help the set-up process within Alma for other customers. They were also in touch with AIL for AILAlink, encouraging them to look into MARC records, and provided some information. Becky also served in a NELLCO working group which authored Preservation, Discovery, and Accessibility: Talking Points of a Critical Nature, a document which links out to VRAG as a valuable resource in the discovery section. They also discussed ideas for marketing VRAG to AALL members who may not be aware of its purpose, which will be a goal for 2022-2023. Rachel Decker will become co-chair for the 2022-2024 term, as Rebecca Bearden steps down. The annual VRAG meeting was held virtually, via Zoom, on Monday June 13, 2022, at 2:00 PM Eastern time. Aside from reporting on what was worked on for the past year, the quality of the Aspen Learning Library MARC records on WorldShare, Alma CDI interoperability, and drawing a line between vendor records and ILS’s containing records (ex. Alma CZ records) was discussed. Goals for the upcoming year include updating the website, dividing spreadsheet duties, reviewing the co-chair duties, and marketing the group. It was requested that the frequency of meetings be changed to semiannual.

  2021-2022 Heads of Cataloging in Large Libraries Roundtable

  Cate Kellett, chair

  The Heads of Cataloging in Large Libraries Roundtable (Big Heads) met on August 3, 2021 for a data entry training session. Cate Kellett from Yale gave a brief history of the Big Heads group and Amanda Karel from NELLCo demonstrated how to use the AllStar platform. Any institution with an AllStar membership can add their data to the Big Heads survey. Technical questions should be sent to allstar@nellco.org.

  A second training session was postponed until FY23. This will show how to generate our annual reports based on the Big Heads data. Individual institutions could also use the report function to analyze their own data over time. While most data in AllStar is confidential, we have permission to post our annual report on our webpage, just as we have in the past with our manual surveys. Once this training is complete, we’ll be able to update the Big Heads website with the last few years’ reports. See https://www.aallnet.org/tssis/about-us/committees/metadata-committee/working-groups-roundtables/heads-of-cataloging/.

  Big Heads is looking for a new chair. Cate will stay on for another year but would like a co-chair to learn the role and take over next summer. It’s a great position for someone looking to get involved without overwhelming their calendar. Duties include setting up meetings 1-3 times (depending on need/interest) and sending reminders for everyone to enter their stats into AllStar in November.

  CO-CHAIRS OF THE MMSC

  Tania Diaz Marrero continues with her duties as Co-Chair for the 2022-2023 term. Rachel Decker, Chapman University, will become the new Co-Chair for 2022-2024.

  Respectfully submitted,
  Shawn King, 2020-2022
  Tania Diaz Marrero, 2021-2023
  Metadata Management Standing Committee Co-Chairs

• 2020 - 2021 Metadata Management Committee

  2021 TS-SIS / MMSC ANNUAL REPORT

  2020-2021 ACTIVITIES

  Shawn King and Alexis Zirpoli, co-chairs

  This year this committee was relatively dormant in terms of activities throughout the year. After over a year of dealing with all that is related to the COVID pandemic, we are feeling a bit stretched. We have had to perform in our jobs, our home life, and professional association activities, while also fighting burnout. We’ve all been very busy adapting our workflows for remote work. Some of us have experienced furloughs.

  Shawn has been very diligent working on tasks with the TS-SIS Executive Board, such as participating in the Bylaws and Handbook Committee. Alexis co-presented, along with Jennifer Mart-Rice and Anna Lawless-Collins, a TS-SIS Professional Development Committee webinar on Building Your Emotional First Aid Kit. Alexis volunteered to co-chair, along with Karen Scoville, to form a Task Force on DEI issues in technical services. We also submitted a proposal for a Deep Dive session on the new RDA for AALL 2021. Our proposal was not accepted, but we still have plans to create resources for our membership.

  We will be seeking out volunteers to propose/host mini webinars (an hour or less) on some aspect of the new RDA Toolkit. Some examples include understanding some of the newer terminology or navigating the Toolkit. There will be a brainstorming session on this topic after the MMSC Business Meeting.

  2021 ANNUAL MEETING

  The AALL Annual meeting will be held remotely, via Zoom, again this year due to COVID-19. TS-SIS and LSRD-SIS are again coordinating a joint Summit, held separately from the main conference. The Summit will be held over 5 days: July 7, 8, 13 (which is the date for LSRD Business Meeting), 14 and 15. Last year we had participants register for each meeting/event separately. For 2021 we are asking participants to register for the whole day. Full details are found here: https://www.aallnet.org/tssis/education-training/annual-meeting/2021-annual-meeting-information/

  This year’s MMSC Business Meeting will be held, as part of the Summit, on Wednesday, July 14, 2021, at 1:00 PM CDT. Following the Business Meeting with have an RDA Webinars Discussion, as previously mentioned, at 2:00 PM CDT. You may register for this day of the summit at http://bit.ly/SummitJuly14.

  2021 METADATA POLICY AND STANDARDS ADVISORY GROUP (MPSAG)

  Annie Mellot and Christina Tarr, co-chairs

  The MPSAG meeting will be held virtually, via Zoom, on Thursday, July 15, at 1:00 PM CDT at http://bit.ly/SummitJuly15.

  MPSAG continued to provide support for AALL’s liaisons to ALA — CC:DA, SAC, and MAC via the MyCommuntities platform. The liaisons continue to do great work of submitting reports before and after their respective groups meet. We’ve scheduled a meeting at the AALL annual meeting for the liaisons to report in full on their activities and to get input from AALL membership.

  We are working on a new way to communicate with the liaisons about funds available to them as well as how those funds are shared across the three positions. With conferences changing, such as ALA midwinter ceasing and some smaller groups meeting virtually, the funds in the cataloging liaison account may go further.

  2021 VENDOR-SUPPLIED RECORDS ADVISORY GROUP (VRAG)

  Heather Buckwalter and Rebecca Bearden, co-chairs

  The VRAG meeting will be held virtually, via Zoom, on Wednesday, July 7, at 2:00 PM CDT at http://bit.ly/SummitJuly7.

  The co-chairs met 4 times and corresponded throughout the year. Thomas Ma stepped down as co-chair and Becky Bearden became co-chair. We verified the members of VRAG and Alan Keely updated the My Communities list. Alan Keely contacted Dan Rosati at Hein concerning adding the OCLC number to the Hein KBART files. The spreadsheet for Vendor Records for Digital Law Collections was updated with information concerning the Wolters Kluwer Study Aids Online records. Becky contacted Edward Elgar on behalf of a member’s concerns regarding certain fields in the vendor’s records. After receiving a response from Edward Elgar, an email was sent to the member summarizing the response from the vendor.

  2021 HEADS OF CATALOGING IN LARGE LIBRARIES ROUNDTABLE (BIG HEADS)

  Cate Kellett, chair

  The Big Heads meeting will be held virtually, via Zoom, on Thursday, July 8, at 2:00 PM CDT at http://bit.ly/SummitJuly8.

  The Big Heads group met in October 2020 on Zoom to discuss issues with the AllStar platform and plan future activities. They planned to meet again in the spring to do a demo or training session with AllStar staff. Due to scheduling problems, the session was rescheduled for Tuesday, October 12 at 2:00 EST.

  All Tier 3 and 4 AllStar members have access to and can add data to the current year’s Big Heads Survey. We should encourage all libraries, regardless of size, to join. Additionally, any institution which wishes to add previous years’ data can do so by asking AllStar staff allstar@nellco.org to unlock the old surveys.

  In the past, calls for stats have gone out in the spring semester. Now we should align it with AllStar’s main survey, so calls should go out in November.

  TS-SIS is still tracking down missing reports from the past couple decades: https://www.aallnet.org/tssis/about-us/committees/metadata-committee/working-groups-roundtables/heads-of-cataloging/. The most recent ones will be generated on the AllStar platform. AllStar staff confirmed that we can post this particular report, and only that report, on our AALL website. All members must sign a release first because the survey data is confidential. Any institution that does not sign the form will be removed from the generated report but their data will remain on the platform.

  CO-CHAIRS OF THE MMSC

  Shawn King, Head of Cataloging and Metadata, University of Wisconsin, continues with her duties as Co-Chair for the 2020-2022 term.

  Respectfully submitted,
  Alexis Zirpoli, 2019-2021
  Shawn King, 2020-2022
  Metadata Management Standing Committee Co-Chairs

• 2019 - 2020 Metadata Management Committee

  2020 TS-SIS / MMSC Annual Report

  2019-2020 Activities

  This year we tried to keep the membership engaged by introducing discussion topics on My Communities. We discussed Classification Web 4 and engaging with public service librarians. One topic that we have been finding hard to tackle is RDA (3R) training. But as we are also hoping to encourage more contributions to the BoK and the Knowledge Center from technical services folks, the idea is that this engagement will grow consistently over time.

  Our members are hosting two Hot Topic sessions during AALL 2020. “Technologies We Use” will be held virtually, via Zoom, on Tuesday, July 28, 10-11 AM Central. “Update on Law Cataloging 101” will be held virtually, via Zoom, on Tuesday, July 28, 12:45-1:30 PM Central.

  2020 Annual Meeting

  The AALL Annual meeting was moved to a virtual one due to COVID-19. TS-SIS and OBS-SIS coordinated a joint Summit to be held separately from the main AALL programming. The Summit will be on Monday and Tuesday, July 27 and 28, 2020. This allows us to schedule our meetings without running into any conflicts with AALL programs. This is an exciting opportunity for many of us to attend meetings or events that we previously were not able to attend during in-person conferences. All meetings will be held via Zoom. Doing so allows us to have control over the meeting dates and times and does not rely on using the AALL platform. This was not without its challenges, however. We had initially drafted a schedule, but then had to re-draft it when AALL created some other events that we had to schedule around. We all had to learn some of the more advanced features of setting up Zoom meetings rather quickly, such as figuring out how to create a registration link (note: some events in the summit require registration, while others do not). We hope it will all work out, but please bear with us if we run into the inevitable technical difficulties. Also, we are aware that having the Summit two weeks after the conference poses other challenges, such as having to juggle regular work duties.

  This year’s MMSC Business Meeting will be held virtually, as part of the TS-OBS joint summit, via Zoom, Monday, July 27, 4-5:30 PM Central. We will have reports from the liaisons, as well as from MPSAG and VRAG. Our topic for discussion this year is creating or gathering resources for understanding the RDA after the 3R update.

  2020 Metadata Policy and Standards Advisory Group (MPSAG)

  The MPSAG meeting will be held virtually, via Zoom, on Monday, July 27, 10:15-11:15 AM Central.

  MPSAG continued to provide support for AALL’s liaisons to ALA — CC;DA, SAC and MAC. We set up a My Community list to provide a place for the liaisons to request advice and input. We’ve scheduled a meeting at the AALL annual meeting for the liaisons to report in full on their activities and to get input from AALL membership.

  2020 Vendor-Supplied Records Advisory Group (VRAG)

  The VRAG meeting will be held virtually, via Zoom, on Tuesday, July 28, 1:45-2:15 PM Central.

  This year the membership of VRAG was verified and that information was updated to the My Communities list. Maria del Carmen Deans wrote an article for CRIV, entitled “Wolters Kluwer Helps Law School Libraries Increase Discoverability and Usage of Legal Content”.

  2020 Heads of Cataloging in Large Libraries Roundtable

  This meeting will be held virtually, via Zoom, on Tuesday, July 28, 9-10:15 AM Central.

  Co-Chair of the Metadata Management Standing Committee

  Shawn King, Head of Cataloging and Metadata, University of Wisconsin, has been appointed as Co-Chair for a two year term, 2020-2022.

  Co-Chair of the Metadata Management Standing Committee

  Alexis Zirpoli, Serials Librarian, University of Michigan Law Library has been appointed as a Co-Chair for a two year term, 2019-2021.

  Respectfully submitted,
  Jesse Lambertson, 2018-2020
  Alexis Zirpoli, 2019-2021
  Metadata Management Standing Committee Co-Chairs

• 2018 - 2019 Metadata Management Committee

  Annual Report: Metadata Management Standing Committee 2018-2019
  June 17, 2019

  2019 Annual Meeting of the Metadata Management Standing Committee (MM)

  The meeting will be held on Sunday, July 14, 12:45-2:15 pm at the Washington Convention Center in Room 156. In the general assembly, there will be a Q & A session on the pre-posted reports from LC, MPSAG, and our cataloging liaisons. The second part is a worldcafe session, and two topics will be discussed. They are 1) data-clean up priority for system migration and how to validate free-floating subdivisions, geographic subdivisions, and fields ending with “, #e. 2) LC Classification Schedule Update for Environmental Law and Terrorism.

  2019 Annual Meeting of the Metadata Policy and Standard Advisory Group (MPSAG)

  The meeting will be held for the first time on Tuesday, July 16, 7:00-8:00 am at Marriott Cherry Blossom. Our three Cataloging Liaisons are giving an oral report for 30 min and MPSAG members will discuss important cataloging issues.

  Appointment of new AALL Liaisons to ALA Committees

  The AALL Executive Board approved our three cataloging liaisons to the ALA committees for the next three years in November 2018. Appointed liaisons are:

  ALA Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA): Ryan Tamares, Stanford University
  ALA MARC Advisory Committee (MAC): Rachel Decker, Chapman University
  ALA Subject Analysis Committee (SAC): Cate Kellett, Yale University

  As a separate proposal to the AALL Executive Board, a plan to address the long-term funding of these positions was putting forward by the SIS Council. Commitments for funding for 2019 were made by several SISs. Thank you very much for being willing to serve AALL in this role.

  Metadata Management Standing Committee Website Update

  With the help of Marijah Jan Sroczynski, TS-SIS Web Master, and Christopher Siwa, AALL Director of Information Technology, the MM related Websites have been updated as follows:

  • Metadata Management Working Groups and Roundtables
  • Vendor-Supplied Records (VRAG)
  • Metadata Policy and Standard Advisory Group
  • Heads of Cataloging in large Libraries Round Table
  • New Catalogers
  • Inactive Advisory Working Groups: Classification and Subject Cataloging (CSCAG) and Descriptive Cataloging (DCAG)

  Task force Reports

  Two task force groups were initiated as a result of 2018 worldcafe discussion: Metadata Management Standing Committee Mission Statement and RDA Revision Proposal for Administrative Regulations.

  a) Mission Statement
  The taskforce was chaired by Alan Keely, Wake Forest University, and its members were Michael Maben, Indiana University, Annie Mellott, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, Melissa Beck, UCLA, Julie Stauffer, University of Chicago, and Corinne Jacox, Creighton University. The draft was reviewed by all membership and their feedback was incorporated into the final version as follows:
  The Technical Services SIS Metadata Management Standing Committee serves as a hub for the creation, discussion, analysis, and dissemination of resources and information relating to the creation, enrichment and management of all forms of metadata, for the TS-SIS community and the broader cataloguing community.

  b) Administrative Regulations in RDA pertaining to RDA 6.29.1.4 & 6.29.1.7
  Chaired by Aaron Kuperman, LC, and George Prager, NYU. The members of the group were Patricia Sayre-McCoy, University of Chicago, Melody Lembke, UCLA, John Hostage, Harvard Law, Jolande Goldberg, LC. After deliberation among taskforce members, a proposal of RDA revision will be put on hold due to the RDA revision currently undertaking.

  c) TS-SIS Ad hoc Committee on Foreign Law Enhancement of Metadata
  Under Jolande Goldberg’s auspicious direction, the FLEM group was formed in 2017. Co Chairs of the project are Tania Diaz-Marrero, LC, and Jake Kubrin, Stanford University, to assist the project manager, Jolande Goldberg, LC, in implementing the cooperative project. The mission of the taskforce is to update Library of Congress Classification (LCC) schedules K-KZ (Law) and Library of Congress legal Subject Headings (LCSH) to comply with the evolution of the domain of law over the past 50 years. To this end, study and evaluate equivalencies of foreign terms of both Civil law and the (Anglo-American) Common law. The goals of the task force are to identify problematic and outdated areas in the LCC law schedules and in the LCSH pertaining to law. The taskforce will work on environmental law and policy and Terrorism for 2019. The FLEM project will be discussed in the MM meeting worldcafe on Sunday, July 14 and the FLEM will meet on Monday, July 15 at 11:15 am in the Exhibit Hall.

  Metadata Management Board Member Meeting

  Co-Chairs of the Metadata Management Standing Committee (MM) and Metadata Policy and Standard Advisory Group (MPSAG) virtually met in August, December in 2018 and February and May in 2019 to discuss the MM annual meeting in DC and to finalize the charge and description (mission statement) of MPSAG. The Board members are Christina Tarr, University of California School of Law Library, Berkeley, and Annie Mellott, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles and Jesse Lambertson, Georgetown, and Keiko Okuhara, University of Hawaii. After the worldcafe discussion survey, the board decided to have another worldcafe discussion with some modifications in 2019. Access the Metadata Policy and Standard Advisory Group mission statement.

  Co-Chair of the Metadata Management Standing Committee

  Alexis Zirpoli, Serials Librarian, University of Michigan Law Library has been appointed as a Co-Chair for a two year term, 2019-2021.

  Respectfully submitted,
  Keiko Okuhara, 2017-2019
  Jesse Lambertson, 2018-2020
  Metadata Management Standing Committee Co-Chairs

• 2017 - 2018 Cataloging Committee

  Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee
  2017-2018 Annual Report

  2018 Annual Meeting of the Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee

  The meeting will be held on Sunday, July 15, 12:45-2:15 pm at the Hilton Calloway AB. In the general assembly, there will be a Q & A session on the pre-posted reports from LC, MPSAG, Ad Hoc committee. The second part is a worldcafe session, and five topics will be discussed. They are 1) BIBFRAME, 2) Faceted Vocabularies (SSFV), 3) Mission Statement, 4) FLEM (Foreign Law Enhancement of Metadata), 5) Administrative Regulations in RDA pertaining to RDA 6.29.1.4 & 6.29.1.7.

  Reorganization of Working Groups

  Two working groups within the Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee, the Descriptive Cataloging Advisory Working Group (DCAG) and the Classification and Subject Cataloging Advisory Working Group (CSCAG), were dissolved. The Metadata Policy and Standard Advisory Group (MPSAG) has been created. The current groups within the Committee are one working group, the Vendor-Supplied Records Advisory Working Group (VRAG) and one advisory group, the Metadata Policy and Standard Advisory Group (MPSAG).

  Name Change of the Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee

  The new name of the Standing Committee was approved by the TS-SIS Board. The name of the Metadata Management Standing Committee was supported by its membership in contingency of the possible name change in the future. Alan Keely will lead the discussion on the mission statement of the Metadata Management Standing Committee in the worldcafe session of the annual meeting.

  Status of the Cataloging Liaisons

  The motion that TS continue to oversee the fund for the cataloging liaisons has been carried, and the TS continue to oversee the fund for the cataloging liaisons. In the board meeting in June, the board approved to contribute $1,000 to support the liaisons. Although the uncertainty in funding for those liaisons will continue, more discussion on the status of the liaisons funding was posted on TS community forum by Out-going TS Chair, Lauren Seney, on June 21. A full history of the cataloging liaisons is available at:
  https://www.aallnet.org/tssis/about-us/leadership/funding-aall-representatives/. Lauren Seney’s effort and leadership in this area is commendable and shows a great deal of support in the cataloging liaisons issue.

  The current SAC liaison, Lia Contursi, finished her full term and expressed to step down. All membership benefits from Lia’s extended service to the wide-ranging SAC activities. Several individuals have been contacted to be a successor by Incoming TS Chair, Wendy Moore, but no appointment has been made yet.

  Ad Hoc Taskforce

  An ad hoc taskforce within the Committee, the Foreign Law Enhancement for Metadata (FLEM), was created in 2017. Under Jolande Goldberg’s auspicious direction, the FLEM project is moving forward. The three Chairs of the project are Tania Diaz-Marrero (LC), Jake Kubrin (Stanford), and Jesse Lambertson (Georgetown) to assist the project manger, Jolande Goldberg, in implementing the cooperative project. The mission of the taskforce is to update Library of Congress Classification (LCC) schedules K-KZ (Law) and Library of Congress legal Subject Headings (LCSH) to comply with the evolution of the domain of law over the past 50 years. To this end, study and evaluate equivalencies of foreign terms of both Civil law and the (Anglo-American) Common law. The goals of the task force are to identify problematic and outdated areas in the LCC law schedules and in the LCSH pertaining to law. Susan Gualtier (University of Pennsylvania) has been instrumental to promote the FLEM project within the FCIL-SIS to solicit volunteers who have civil/common law proficiency. The FLEM project will be discussed during the worldcafe. In addition, the FLEM has set up a meeting on Monday, 7/16 at 11:30 am in the Exhibit Hall.

  Co-Chair of the Metadata Management Standing Committee

  Jesse Lambertson, Head of Cataloging & Metadata at the Georgetown University Law Library has been appointed as a Co-Chair for a two year term, 2018-2020.

  Leadership Change in VRAG

  Tom Ma, Harvard University law graciously agreed to Co-Chair the VRAG with Diana Jaque. The leadership and contributions of the Out-going Co-Chair, Chris Thomas, to the VARG is greatly appreciated.

  Respectfully submitted June 28, 2018,
  Keiko Okuhara
  Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee Chair, 2017-2019

• 2016 - 2017 Cataloging Committee

  Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee
  2016-2017 Annual Report

  Representatives

  The issue of greatest importance to the committee in the past year was the end of AALL support for representatives to outside organizations. There are three AALL representatives who perform great service to the law cataloging community: Robert Bratton to the ALA Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA); Lia Contursi to the ALA Subject Analysis Committee (SAC); and Jean Pajerek to the MARC Advisory Committee (MAC). They continued to ably represent us as the Technical Services Special Interest Section joined with others to fill the gap for funding in this year. The prospects for the coming year look bleak.

  The Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee carried out most of its activities through the efforts of working groups, as in the past.

  DCAG

  The Descriptive Cataloging Advisory Working Group has been working on several ideas for revision of RDA and best practices. Our representative to CC:DA put forward a proposal for single laws that govern more than one jurisdiction. It was accepted with some revisions and included in the RDA Toolkit in April, just before it started a year-long moratorium on changes to the text. The group has also done some work on the relationship designators for “enacting jurisdiction” and “jurisdiction governed.” This will have to wait until after the moratorium. Through the efforts of a group working on best practices for recording statements of responsibility, the Library of Congress revised its policy statement on this point. However, members felt this was not adequate and plan to continue their work and press for more revisions. Another group has been working on best practices for distinguishing authorized access points for works. For the future, DCAG plans to address revising the RDA instructions for compilations of court rules governing a single jurisdiction and for constitutions, charters, etc., of non-governmental bodies.

  CSCAG

  The Classification and Subject Cataloging Advisory Working Group helps to coordinate the SACO Law Funnel, which helps law libraries to propose new subject headings and genre/form terms to the Library of Congress. In the past year they proposed five new subject headings as well as revisions to several genre/form terms. The group also coordinates the Genre/Form Retrospective Project. The project involves working on strategies for identifying bibliographic records for each genre/form term. Since none of the strategies are foolproof, the process is slow and cumbersome and is further hampered by the small number of members with the kind of access needed to test the strategies and clean up search results. The viability of this project will be discussed at the group’s meeting in Austin.

  VRAG

  One of the major projects for the Vendor-Supplied Records Advisory Working Group (VRAG) was working with Wolters Kluwer on its MARC records. In conference calls in February and March major topics of discussion included:

  • Functionality of the Wolters Kluwer MARC Record Manager
  • Handling duplicate records when the same title exists in more than one WK collection
  • Level of linking: single link for entire work vs. multiple links for chapters/components
  • Use of contents notes and added titles for components
  • Time frame for sunset of Intelliconnect (2018) and migration to the Cheetah platform

  The group also updated the VRAG spreadsheet listing MARC record sets available. New sets added include:

  • Bloomberg Securities Practice & Tax Management Portfolios
  • Gale collections: Archives of Human Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940; Slavery and Anti-Slavery: a transnational archive
  • HeinOnline collections: Law in Eastern Europe; Slavery in America and the World
  • LexisNexis digital study aids
  • West Academic study aids

• 2015 - 2016 Cataloging Committee

  Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee
  2015-2016 Annual Report

  The Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee carried out most of its activities through the efforts of working groups, as in the past.

  The Classification and Subject Cataloging Advisory Working Group (CSCAG), chaired by Yael Mandelstam and Suzanne Graham, prepared comments on the Library of Congress’ thought experiment on the use of demonyms. CSCAG responded that from the perspective of law cataloging it is not particularly worthwhile to use demonyms and that it would be especially complicated to establish demonyms for local places. However, if LC decides to move forward with this project, law catalogers would advocate disambiguating all local demonyms. The form that would be most efficient would be [Place] resident. CSCAG also commented on the draft LC Genre/Form Terms Manual. Additionally, the group has resolved various genre/form issues for law materials and has been making progress on testing strategies for the retrospective application of law genre/form terms.

  The Descriptive Cataloging Advisory Working Group (DCAG), chaired by George Prager, prepared a revision to LC-PCC Policy Statement for RDA 11.2.2.14.6 to treat the European Union as a governmental body for the purposes of establishing subordinate bodies. This is similar to the treatment of the United Nations. The proposal was submitted to the Program for Cooperative Cataloging’s Standing Committee on Standards. DCAG also proposed a revision to LC-PCC Policy Statement for RDA 1.6.3.3 concerning the re-basing of an integrating resource. This proposal was incorporated in the RDA Toolkit in April 2016.

  DCAG completed or revised three cataloging best practice documents: Distinguishing authorized access points for law materials, Dealing with existing non-RDA authorized access points for treaties, and Recording extensive statements of responsibility (SORs). These were posted on the website.

  The AALL representative to ALA’s Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA), Robert Bratton, supported by DCAG, prepared a revision proposal for RDA concerning individual laws that govern multiple jurisdictions, such as laws that govern multiple colonies of one country. The proposal was expected to be discussed at the CC:DA meeting in late June 2016.

  Bratton also prepared a revision to RDA 11.2.2.21 to add a provision for international courts. The proposal was discussed at CC:DA in January 2016 and submitted as a test case for fast-track revisions. DCAG also prepared a revision proposal for LC-PCC PS for 6.29.1.29 on date of promulgation of a law. The proposal was accepted by the Standing Committee on Standards and appeared in the February 2016 release of the RDA Toolkit.

  The Vendor-Supplied Records Advisory Working Group (VRAG) was chaired by Angela Jones and Caroline Walters. VRAG has looked at and made comments regarding several groups of sample records from Wolters Kluwer. Several VRAG members were in communication with Wolters Kluwer about the MARC records that they have developed for Intelliconnect and now Cheetah. This involved multiple conference calls over the course of the past year. Angela Jones and Caroline Walters wrote a short history and description of VRAG for the CRIV Sheet in the February 2016 issue.

  Through the efforts of Suzanne Graham, the New Catalogers Roundtable was revived, and Alexis Zirpoli took over as chair. The group has held a couple of conference calls this spring.

  The Heads of Cataloging in Large Libraries roundtable, chaired by Chris Tarr, met in Philadelphia and had its usual productive conversation. The annual statistical report was prepared and distributed to members by Ryan Tamares.

  The AALL representative to the MARC Advisory Committee (MAC), Jean Pajerek, attended two meetings of MAC at the ALA Midwinter meeting in Boston. Action was taken on 16 discussion papers and two proposals during the meetings. There is a trend toward altering or expanding the MARC formats to accommodate the encoding of new elements of information for digital resources, such as digital sound recordings and computer games. Another prominent theme is the proposed encoding of relationship and entity identifiers in numerous MARC fields, in anticipation of the evolving linked data environment in which bibliographic metadata will need to operate in the future. The AALL representative’s complete report on the Midwinter deliberations of the MARC Advisory Committee is available in the March 2016 issue of Technical Services Law Librarian, p. 13-16 (1.3 MB PDF).

  The report of the AALL representative to the ALA Subject Analysis Committee, Lia Contursi, is available online.

  ---

  See also: 2016reporttocatalogingandclassificationcommittee-goldberg (32KB PDF)

• 2014 - 2015 Cataloging Committee

  Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee
  2014-2015 Annual Report

  During the past year, the Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee (CCSC), through the work of the advisory working groups, has acted on improving the application of RDA in cataloging and on establishing some best practices, while awaiting for the much anticipated publication Cataloging Legal Literature in RDA authored by Melody Lembke and Melissa Beck. In Fall 2014, the AALL Liaison to CC:DA, Robert Bratton, proposed the discontinuation of the old uniform title Laws, etc. in RDA. After the ALA Midwinter 2014 meeting, CC:DA approved the proposal which is now at the last revision stage and awaits approval by JSC. Our Representative anticipates that the proposal will not find any resistance. The Descriptive Cataloging Advisory Working Group (DCAG), chaired by George Prager, worked on some very important issues such as the languages of treaties and the RDA guidelines for distinguishing authorized access points (AAPs). The latter issue has been analyzed in a discussion paper that has recently been sent to the entire law cataloging community for comments. This very important document authored by Melissa Beck (UCLA), Jean Pajerek (Cornell), and Ted Pitts (Fordham) will probably be further commented on and finalized at the Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. It will resolve a crucial issue regarding the choice of qualifiers to distinguish preferred titles of legal material.

  During the course of the academic year, the AALL Executive Board decided to eliminate many positions of representatives, among which were the TS-SIS Cataloging liaisons to the Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA), the MARC Advisory Committee (MAC), and the Subject Analysis Committee (SAC). This was felt as a major setback and as a missed opportunity to continue to play an active role in the establishment of law cataloging standards within the national (and international) library community. Thanks to the strong support and hard work of our TS-SIS Chair Suzanne Graham, the Executive Board reversed its decision and re-instituted the three representative positions.

  A decision has also been made to eliminate the Round Tables’ format at the 2015 AALL Annual. For the first time this year in Philadelphia there will not be a separate Cataloging and Classification Round Table. Therefore the chair will combine the Standing Committee Meeting and the Round Table, reducing the time of the reports’ reading. The reports of the representatives and the chairs of the working groups will be sent to the community in advance, but will not be read at the Meeting. Instead the important points will be highlighted to generate a discussion among the attending members.

  The chair of the CCSC would like to thank the chairs of the three advisory working groups: Classification and Subject Cataloging Advisory Working Group (CSCAG), chaired by Yael Mandelstam; Descriptive Cataloging Advisory Working Group (DCAG), chaired by George Prager; and Vendor Supplied Records Advisory Working Group (VRAG), co-chaired by Angela Jones and Caroline Walters.

  The current chair of CCSC will end her term at the Annual Conference in Philadelphia and will pass the baton to John Hostage who has kindly agreed to be the next head of CCSC. Before the end of the term, Lia and John will focus on inviting members of the cataloging community to join the CCSC and volunteer on special projects for the coming academic year.

  Respectfully submitted by Lia Contursi / 7-2-2015 (revised 8-1-2015)

• 2013 - 2014 Cataloging Committee

  Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee
  2013-2014 Annual Report

  Submitted by Lia Contursi, Committee Chair

  Overview

  The Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee (CCSC) is one of the TS-SIS standing committees with the task of addressing awareness and concerns on all issues of descriptive cataloging, subject cataloging and classification. The committee web page is updated annually at: http://www.aallnet.org/sections/ts/committees/Cataloging

  During the past year the chair of the CCSC has revisited the nature and the structure of the three groups that constitute the primary functioning parts of the committee, and together with the leaders of those groups, a decision was made to change the names in order to clarify and harmonize their principal tasks. All the chairs felt that the essential function of the groups was not that of establishing policies. Rather, their main focus was that of identifying inadequacies or contradictions in descriptive and subject cataloging, and working within the committees to propose corrections or new directions appropriately. The three advisory working groups are: Classification and Subject Cataloging Advisory Working Group (CSCAG), chaired by Yael Mandelstam; Descriptive Cataloging Advisory Working Group (DCAG), chaired by Melissa Beck; and Vendor Supplied Records Advisory Working Group (VRAG), chaired by Angela Jones.

  The CCSC chair has assisted in planning some of the discussions prepared for the Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. The chair has also functioned as coordinator for the special program on K Classification, which will be presented by Dr. Jolande Goldberg (Senior Cataloging Policy Specialist/Law Classification at the Library of Congress), Tina Gheen (Emerging Technology Librarian, Library of Congress), and Jennifer Gonzales (Emerging Technology Librarian, Library of Congress).

  Future Directions of CCSC

  The CCSC will meet twice at the 2014 Annual Meeting in San Antonio. At the Standing Committee meeting, all three Advisory Groups’ Chairs will present their annual report. Much has been accomplished this past year, including the Joint Steering Committee’s approval of the change of instructions on Treaties in the RDA. For the immediate future, the CCSC and the DCAG feel the urgency to continue to work on some proposals for revisions of the RDA in the context of Treaties and the Collective titles of treaties. Work will also continue on strategies to apply law genre terms retrospectively. The VRAG Group will continue to review vendor records and to encourage the production of MARC records of high quality. The second meeting in San Antonio will be the Cataloging and Classification Round Table. Members of the CCSC have prepared some crucial discussions touching on topics such as RDA and law cataloging, developments and implementation of law genre terms, new directions for an interactive K Classification Schedule, and latest developments on vendor records. During the coming year, the Committee intends to direct some attention to the Bibframe model, still under development and testing lead by the Library of Congress.

  The chair of the CCSC would like to thank the chairs of all three working groups Yael Mandelstam, Melissa Beck and Angela Jones.

• 2012 - 2013 Cataloging Committee

  Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee 2012-2013 Annual Report 2012/2013

  Submitted by George A. Prager, Committee Chair

  1. Overview

  The Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee (CCSC) is one of the four TS-SIS standing committees. It currently has 50 members, including the chair, George Prager. The committee’s primary web page is at: http://www.aallnet.org/sections/ts/committees/Cataloging.

  During the past year, the committee as a whole was not involved in any initiatives. For the last few years, most of its work has been performed through its three working groups: the Descriptive Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group (DCAG, chaired by Melissa Beck), the Classification and Subject Cataloging Policy Advisory Group (CSCP, chaired by Suzanne Graham), and the Task Group on Vendor Supplied Bibliographic Records (VBR, chaired by Cindy Spadoni). The CCSC chair has assisted as needed in the initiatives of these working groups, especially in the planning of the upcoming AALL Conference workshop: RDA Cataloging Cooperative, and the submission of an RDA instruction revisal proposal for the entry of treaties (More on both of these initiatives are given below in the section on DCAG). The CCSC chair has also spent a few weeks at the Library of Congress, assisting Jolande Goldberg, Senior Cataloging Policy Specialist/ Law Classification Specialist in several endeavors, most notably refinement of the draft Class KIA-KIK Indigenous American schedule, and reclassification of affected titles in the LC Law Library collection.

  2. Future Directions of the CCSC

  The current chair’s term will end after the Seattle meeting, and a new chair will be needed. During his two terms as CCSC chair, he has tried with mixed success to get more of the newer TS-SIS and CCSC members involved in the work of the committee and its working groups. As catalogers become more familiar with RDA, it is to be hoped that a new chair will be able to devote less time to RDA training and implementation issues, and more time to recruiting new and dynamic members of the committee.

  CCSC will meet twice at the AALL conference in Seattle: a general meeting of the committee, as well as a roundtable. The three CCSC working groups will also meet during the conference.

  The CCSC chair would like to thank the chairs of the three CCSC working groups: Suzanne Graham, Melissa Beck, and Cindy Spadoni. Edited versions of their reports are given below.

  3. Annual Report of the Classification and Subject Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group to Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee of Technical Services Special Interest Section, American Association of Law Libraries 2012/2013

  Submitted by Suzanne R. Graham, CSCP Chair (with revisions by George Prager)

  3a. Identification of Crime Headings in LCSH

  In support of a proposed Library of Congress Policy Standards Division (PSD) policy change, Suzanne Graham coordinated a group of twelve volunteers from the AALL Technical Services Special Interest Section in compiling and submitting a list of 368 LCSH crime headings and one free floating subdivision. The group combed through the hierarchies of crime terms identified as “inherently legal” and terms listed under “Crime” and “Criminal law” to create the list. This list was then submitted to Libby Dechman in PSD on May 22, 2013.

  The proposed policy change will allow the subheading “Law and legislation” for crimes. Policy implementation and the updating of identified headings from the list will occur during the four- to six-month period following the week of May 27, 2013. This change should be helpful for users of these records as well as catalogers. PSD memo: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/crime-law-and-legislation.pdf.

  3b. SACO Law Funnel

  As of June 30, 2013, the Law Funnel submitted eight subject heading proposals. Seven have been approved and one is not yet scheduled. Also, in June, the funnel submitted one new form/genre heading, promoting “Legislative hearings” as a break-out NT under “Legislative materials.” While this change is likely to be approved by LC, it may take a few months to come into effect.

  In November 2012, AALL Spectrum published an article highlighting the SACO Law Funnel (co-authored by George Prager and Suzanne Graham). The summer issue of TSLL features an article on classification proposals (also with reference to the SACO Law Funnel), written by Lia Contursi and Karen Wahl.

  This funnel is coordinated by Suzanne Graham, Cindy May, Kathy Lin, and Caroline Young Einlauger.

  3c. Law Form/Genre Terms

  Work continues to encourage law librarians to implement new form/genre headings into their catalogs and submit lists of OCLC numbers of updated records to Yael Mandelstam. This will be a topic of the upcoming CCSC Roundtable in Seattle. After much discussion within CSCP as well as with PSD, a decision was made to revise the genre/form term: “Commentaries (Civil law systems)” to “Law commentaries”. Accordingly, George Prager submitted a SACO revision proposal in spring 2013. The revised genre/form term was added to the authority file in early July 2013. The revised term will be applicable to a broader range of commentaries, including commentaries on laws of civil and common law countries, as well as commentaries on international laws.

  3d. 2012-2013 CSCP Members

  • Abigail Bibee, University of Michigan
  • Amalia Contursi, Columbia University
  • Pam Deemer, Emory University
  • Suzanne Graham, University of Georgia
  • Joni Herbst, University of Oregon
  • Aaron Kuperman, Library of Congress
  • Tom Latuszek, Florida Coastal School of Law
  • Melody Lembke, UC Irvine
  • Kathy Lin, UC Davis
  • Yael Mandelstam, Fordham University
  • Ellen McGrath, SUNY Buffalo
  • Pat Sayre McCoy, University of Chicago
  • Sallie Smith, University of Pittsburgh
  • Robert Rendall, Columbia University
  • Sally H. Wambold, University of Richmond
  • Caroline Young, Rutgers University
  • Ex-officio
    • Jolande Goldberg, Library of Congress
    • George Prager, New York University
      (TS-SIS Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee Chair)

  4. Descriptive Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group (DCAG) Annual Report, 2012/2013

  Submitted by Melissa Beck, DCAG Chair (with revisions by George Prager)

  Melissa Beck is current chair of DCAG. This group works closely with John Hostage, our AALL representative to ALA’s Committee on Cataloging: Description & Access (CC:DA), providing feedback on continuing changes, updates, and new developments in RDA. John continued to keep us updated on revisions under discussion by the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC) and CC:DA, and solicited our comments and suggestions as appropriate.

  A major accomplishment this year was the submission of a proposal to revise the RDA instructions for the cataloging of treaties, thanks in large part to the inspired work of John Hostage. Assisting John in his efforts were selected members of DCAG as well as other catalogers from the Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, and the Library of Congress. John successfully presented the DCAG treaty proposal to CC:DA at the American Library Association meeting in June 2013. The proposal now goes forward to the JSC, who will decide in their November 2013 meeting whether or not to approve the proposal in whole or in part. If the proposal is approved, it will then be included in a midyear 2014 update to the RDA Toolkit. In the meantime, DCAG made an interim policy recommendation to the Library of Congress and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging that all new treaty access points be created according to AACR2, and existing AACR2 treaty headings not be revised to RDA, at least not until the fate of our RDA treaty instruction proposal has been decided by the JSC. LC is in favor of our interim recommendation, and we expect it to be approved soon by the PCC Policy Committee, and to become “official” PCC interim policy. The DCAG membership has dwindled this year, mostly due to the retirement of several key members. A goal for the coming year is to re-establish and maintain a core group of expert descriptive catalogers who are willing to actively assist in further possible revisions to RDA and also to develop best practices for the cataloging of legal materials. During the work on the treaty instruction revision proposal, we were able to recruit a few new members for DCAG.

  Melissa Beck, DCAG’s chair, has been serving as the coordinator for the upcoming RDA Cataloging Cooperative Workshop, which will be held Saturday, July 13, 2013 during the AALL Annual Meeting. Four additional DCAG members will be instructors at the workshop: Lia Contursi, John Hostage, Patricia Sayre-McCoy, and George Prager.

  5. Report of the 2012/2013 activities for the Task Group on Vendor Supplied Records

  Submitted by Cindy Spadoni, VBR chair (with revisions by George Prager)

  The VBR group has been mostly quiet this year. It’s been working with Serials Solutions to try and figure out ways to reduce duplication in their database due to the scarcity of information in their brief records, primarily for monographs. The group has also worked with Proquest to help the vendor improve its records for the Legislative Insight database. The Task Group’s greatest need is helping vendors navigate RDA and the provider neutral record.

  Cindy Spadoni has indicated that she will need to step down as VBR chair after the AALL 2013 conference. While there are several very knowledgeable and active members of VBR, the group needs to expand its membership. Much work remains to be done.

• 2011 - 2012 Cataloging Committee

  CATALOGING AND CLASSIFICATION STANDING COMMITTEE
  2011-2012 ANNUAL REPORT

  Submitted by George A. Prager, Chair, based in part upon contributions by Melissa Beck, Cindy May, Suzanne Graham, Yael Mandelstam, and Cindy Spadoni.

  The Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee will have its usual meeting at the 2012 AALL Annual Conference in Boston, on Sunday, July 22, from 7:00-8:30 A.M (HCC Room 202). The Cataloging and Classification Roundtable will be meeting on Tuesday, July 24, from 5:00-6:00 P.M (HCC Room 205). We expect to discuss a variety of topics during the Roundtable. The Chair is pleased to report that Paul E. Frank, cooperative cataloging specialist on the Cooperative Cataloging Team at the Library of Congress, is the TS-SIS section’s 2012 Annual Meeting VIP. He will be presenting at two cataloging programs during the conference. For more on Paul, see the announcement at http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/annualmeeting/2012/. All of the groups listed below will also be meeting at the AALL Conference in Boston.

  DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGING POLICY ADVISORY WORKING GROUP (DCAG).

  Melissa Beck is current chair of DCAG. This group works closely with John Hostage, our AALL representative to ALA’s Committee on Cataloging: Description & Access (CC:DA), providing feedback on continuing changes, updates, and new developments in RDA. John continued to keep us updated on revisions under discussion by the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC) and CC:DA, and solicited our comments and suggestions as appropriate.

  As reported in last year’s report, DCAG worked with John to develop two proposals related to law cataloging. The first proposal was for revising RDA 6.29.1.21, Reports of one court. This proposal has been accepted by the the JSC, and its provisions incorporated into the April 2012 revisions of the RDA Toolkit. It will greatly simplify the cataloging of law reports. The other proposal was for revising several sections of RDA 16.2.2 relating to place names in Australia, Canada, US, etc. This proposal was submitted to CC:DA in late 2010, and is undergoing further revisions.

  The DCAG listserv has also served as a forum for an ongoing discussion on how to develop a set of RDA-related online training materials, tools and resources specific to law cataloging. Various members of the Advisory Group have stepped up to serve, and are in communication with one another (in most cases by virtue of their membership in another standing Committee or Working Group) regarding the various means to work on such online aids.

  Melissa Beck, DCAG’s chair, has been serving as the primary organizer for the upcoming RDA for Law Catalogers Workshop, which will be held Saturday, July 21, 2012 during the AALL Annual Meeting (HCC Room 207). Four additional DCAG members will be instructors at the workshop: Lia Contursi, John Hostage, Patricia Sayre-McCoy, and George Prager. Paul Frank, TS-SIS Conference VIP, will be the other instructor.

  The DCAG’s list of current members and other information is available at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/descriptivecataloging/.

  CLASSIFICATION AND SUBJECT CATALOGING POLICY ADVISORY WORKING GROUP (CSCP)

  The SACO Funnel Project, The Member Question Forum Project, and the Genre/Form Project are all initiatives of CSCP, and are discussed below.

  SACO FUNNEL PROJECT

  Suzanne Graham is the coordinator of the SACO Funnel Project. This law funnel encourages law librarians to continue to develop Library of Congress subject headings and classification numbers for law-related topics. Any law librarian is welcome to submit a proposal by emailing the form to the funnel coordinator. The funnel administrators make initial assessments and adjustments before posting viable submissions to the CSCP electronic list for wider comment. Vetted proposals are refined, and the funnel coordinator submits them to SACO for consideration.

  A TS-SIS sponsored program at the AALL Annual Meeting entitled “Creating Legal Subject Headings” is scheduled for Sunday, July 22, 1:30-2:30 in HCC-Room 202. Presenters include Suzanne Graham, Paul Frank, and George Prager. A description of the program is available at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/annualmeeting/2012/programdescriptions.htm#creatingheadings. We hope that this program spurs a flurry of submissions to the funnel.

  The funnel project will be further publicized in an article that Suzanne and George are co-authoring for a pending issue of Spectrum.

  SACO Funnel Project volunteers include Kathy Lin, Cindy May, Caroline Young.

  MEMBER QUESTION FORUM PROJECT (ASK AN EXPERT)

  The coordinator is Cindy May. This project established a forum where TS-SIS members can submit questions on law classification or subject headings and have them reviewed and answered by CSCP volunteers.

  Members of this task group created a submission form, and webmaster Martin Wisneski linked it to the TS-SIS website. The link reads: “Get Your Classification and Subject Heading Questions Answered!” Submitted forms are automatically emailed to project volunteers, who then discuss the questions among themselves and provide answers. Over the course of the year the forum received and answered seven queries, generally after significant consultation. Aaron Kuperman has been especially active and helpful in crafting answers to submitted questions.

  Member Question Forum Project volunteers: Jolande Goldberg, Aaron Kuperman, Kathy Lin, Cindy May, Karen Selden.

  GENRE/FORM PROJECT

  This project is co-chaired by Yael Mandelstam and Robert Rendall. The group has been developing strategies for identifying WorldCat records for retrospective application of law genre/form terms. The plan is to add the appropriate terms to WorldCat and then get a crosswalk between the OCLC numbers and the law genre/form terms so individual libraries can globally merge these terms into their existing records. Originally the group also planned to post the strategies on the AALL TS-SIS site for libraries that prefer to run these strategies locally. However, this may need further discussion since the strategies are not foolproof, requiring careful analysis and cleanup of the search results before the terms can be globally added to the records.

  In the past year the group developed strategies for several terms, and Ed O’Neill from OCLC and Yael are currently testing these strategies on a small sample of WorldCat records. Yael is using MarcEdit and Excel to analyze and cleanup the data she receives from Ed. The process is quite challenging and will become even more demanding when the search is performed on a much larger section of WorldCat, but it should be effective.

  Genre/Form Project volunteers: Melissa Beck, Lia Contursi, Jolande Goldberg, Suzanne Graham, Joni Herbst, Tom Latuszek, Yael Mandelstam, Ellen McGrath, Keiko Okuhara, George Prager, Robert Rendall, Pat Sayre-McCoy, Sallie Smith, Jessie Tam, Christina Tarr, Sally Wambold, Caroline Young.

  OTHER CSCP NEWS

  The Classification and Subject Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group Meeting is scheduled for Monday, July 23, 7:00-8:30 in HCC-Room 301.

  Due to employment uncertainties, Cindy May will be retiring as chair effective July 1, but fortunately the extremely capable Suzanne Graham has agreed to succeed her as chair. We extend our thanks to Cindy for the excellent job she has done, and hope that she can remain active in CSCP.

  The group’s webpage includes a current membership roster, and is available at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/classification/.

  TASK GROUP ON VENDOR SUPPLIED BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORDS (VBR)

  This group is chaired by Cindy Spadoni.

  The Task Group analyzed and made recommendations on the following vendor record sets:

  1. Practising Law Institute (PLI) records for their ebook library, PLI Discover. Marketed almost exclusively for law firms, these records will be made available for free to anyone (with the product) who wants them. The group’s main recommendation to PLI was that monographs and serials be treated in a more consistent manner.
  2. Proquest Legislative Insight, a product taken over from LexisNexis. Proquest asked the Task Group to advise them on their records. Alan Keely worked with a senior cataloger at Proquest on this project. The Vendor Group’s main problem was figuring out what Proquest was using as the basis of their cataloging records–PDFs or the actual legislative documents. Proquest was also not following provider-neutral standards. VBR continues to work with the company on these records.
  3. MOML Primary Sources II, a new set of records from Gale. VBR advised Gale on what needed to be done with the records to make them provider-neutral. Gale has followed the group’s recommendations and made revisions to the records. The Task Group has also asked Gale for a chance to review a new set of records they will be creating next year for one of their new products. Gale has agreed to allow us to analyze the records when they are available (March 2013).
  4. Cassidy Cataloguing: there was a lot of discussion, centered around the Hein Online records, regarding Cassidy’s failure to follow provider-neutral standards. The agency creates a mixture of AACR2/provider neutral records. The Task Group is still working with Cassidy on the best resolution of this issue.

  The Task Group added four new members since the 2011 AALL Conference: Eric Parker (Northwestern), Cate Kellett (Yale), Andrea Rabbia (Syracuse), and Akram Sadeghi Pari (University of Cincinnati).

  VBR’s Website is at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/vendorbibrecords/.

  OTHER GROUPS

  New Cataloger’s Roundtable (Sean Chen, chair).
  Web page: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/newcatalogers/.

  Rare Book Cataloging Roundtable (Sarah Yates, chair).
  Web page: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/rarebook/.

  Heads of Cataloging in Large Libraries Roundtable (Chris Tarr, chair; Michael Maben, statistics coordinator).
  Web page: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/headsofcataloging/).

• 2010 - 2011 Cataloging Committee

  CATALOGING AND CLASSIFICATION STANDING COMMITTEE
  2010-2011 ANNUAL REPORT

  Submitted by George A. Prager, Chair

  The Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee will have its usual meeting at the 2011 AALL Annual Conference in Philadelphia, on Monday, July 24, from 7:00-8:45 A.M. The Cataloging and Classification Roundtable will also be meeting on the same day, from 4:15-5:15 P.M. The Roundtable will feature a discussion on training issues for RDA. All of the groups listed below will be meeting at the AALL Conference in Philadelphia.

  DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGING POLICY ADVISORY WORKING GROUP (DCAG).

  Rhonda Lawrence is current chair of DCAG. She has announced that she will be resigning as chair of DCAG after the Philadelphia meeting, so that a new chair will need to be found. Luckily, Rhonda will be able to remain a member of this group. DCAG works closely with John Hostage, our AALL representative to CC:DA. In the past year, John has submitted two RDA rule revision proposals to CC:DA. One proposal was to revise several sections of RDA 16.2.2 relating to place names in Australia, Canada, US, etc. John submitted it to CC:DA in early December 2010. This summer, John is working with John Attig, ALA representative to the JSC, to get this proposal finalized in accordance with CC:DA’s suggestions, so that it can be discussed by JSC in the fall. The full text of the proposal is available at: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/docs/aall3rev.pdf.

  DCAG also worked with John to develop a proposal for revising RDA 6.29.1.21, Reports of one court. RDA’s initial release continued the rather complicated practices from AACR2. DCAG’s proposal recommends that all reports not ascribed to a reporter by name have their authorized access point under the name of the court. John Hostage submitted the proposal to John Attig in February 2011, and the report has been forwarded to the JSC. The full text of the proposal is available at: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/docs/aall4.pdf.

  DCAG’s webpage is at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/descriptivecataloging/.

  CLASSIFICATION AND SUBJECT CATALOGING POLICY ADVISORY WORKING GROUP (CSCP)

  The CSCP group is chaired by Cindy May. In the last year, Cindy has worked towards a more active CSCP membership. CSCP gained three new members, and a few resigned due to time constraints or change in job duties. The group’s webpage is at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/classification/.

  The CSCP assisted Jolande Goldberg in developing a new subject heading proposal for International criminal law, and replacing the heading “International offenses” with “International crimes”. George Prager has been working with Jolande at LC on creating and revising additional subject headings in this area. Most of these changes have already been accepted by LC’s Policy and Services Division (PSD).

  Parallel to this work, CSCP also assisted Jolande in reviewing her draft for the expansion of the KZ schedule for public international law. International crimes and international criminal law have been moved out of the “K” schedule (K5000 area), and moved to KZ7000+. These changes have been incorporated into Classweb. The revised KZ schedule is scheduled to be published prior to the AALL 2011 annual meeting. The group also assisted Jolande in reviewing her drafts of the Native American indigenous law schedules.

  During the last year, CSCP has set up three new working groups: a SACO funnel project, the Member Question Forum Project, and the AALL Law Genre/Form Implementation Project (part of the Genre Terms for Law Materials Project). All three working groups are described below.

  SACO FUNNEL PROJECT

  At the end of March 2011, SACO approved the application for a SACO law funnel. Its administrators, Suzanne Graham, Kathy Lin, Cindy May and Caroline Young, developed a process for review that includes an open period for comment by all members of the CSCP electronic list. The funnel coordinator, Suzanne Graham, is working with Paul Frank at the Library of Congress to set up training for funnel administrators. Caroline Young revised an existing funnel submission form specifically for the law funnel. The group has a web page that will be posted on the SACO site and also on the TS-SIS site. It should be implemented by AALL Annual Meeting, or soon thereafter.

  MEMBER QUESTION FORUM PROJECT (ASK AN EXPERT)

  This project was to establish a forum where TS-SIS members could submit questions on law classification or subject headings and have them reviewed and answered by CSCP volunteers. Members of this task group created a submission form, and webmaster Martin Wisneski linked it to the TS-SIS website at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/classificationquestions/. The link reads: “Get Your Classification and Subject Heading Questions Answered!” Submitted forms will be automatically emailed to project volunteers, who can then discuss the questions among themselves and provide answers. Member Question Forum Project volunteers include Cindy May (coordinator), Jolande Goldberg, Aaron Kuperman, Kathy Lin, and Karen Selden.

  GENRE TERMS FOR LAW MATERIALS PROJECT (INCLUDING THE AALL LAW GENRE/FORM IMPLEMENTATION PROJECT)

  In November 2010, the Library of Congress announced the incorporation of the law genre/form terms into the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCGFT). Since the list has been published, the group has proposed several changes to the list: replacing “Commentaries (Civil law)” with “Commentaries (Law)”, and adding a new genre form term for “Arbitration rules”. PSD has indicated that they approve of both of these changes, which should appear on a weekly list later this year.

  In January 2011, CSCP initiated the AALL Law Genre/Form Implementation Project. A team of law catalogers joined forces with Ed O’Neill from OCLC to develop strategies for identifying WorldCat records for retrospective application of law genre/form terms. The first step was to develop criteria for the creation of a subset of law-related WorldCat records and the group is currently putting the final touches on those criteria. The AALL team also began working on strategies for specific terms like “Law reviews,” “Restatements of the law,” and “Casebooks,” and will soon start testing these strategies with Ed O’Neill.

  Once the terms are added to WorldCat, work will begin on a crosswalk between the OCLC numbers and the relevant terms so that these terms can be globally merged into our existing records. The group will also publicize the strategies used on the TS-SIS website for libraries that prefer to run these strategies locally.

  TASK GROUP ON VENDOR SUPPLIED BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORDS (VBR)

  The Vendor Group has been continuing its work on evaluating vendor record sets and generally working closely with vendors to improve the quality of their records. The group is currently co-chaired by Angela Jones and Alan Keely. Unfortunately, neither co-chair will be able to chair the group in 2011/2012, so a new chair or co-chairs will need to be found. Luckily, both current co-chairs will be able to remain active as members of the task group. The group maintains a wiki with information on its work, available from its Web page: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/vendorbibrecords/.

  De-duping and merging records is often necessary with vendor supplied bibliographic records. It can be a particular challenge when the records lack unique numerical data such as OCLC numbers. In late 2010 and early 2011, Yael Mandelstam, a VBR task group member, assisted Terry Reese, the developer of MarcEdit, in enhancing MarcEdit so that it now includes the ability to de-dup records on fields lacking unique numerical data.

  OTHER GROUPS

  New Cataloger’s Roundtable (Sean Chen, chair) has been relatively quiet.
  Web page: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/newcatalogers/.

  Rare Book Cataloging Roundtable (Sarah Yates, chair) has also been quiet.
  Web page: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/rarebook/.

  Heads of Cataloging in Large Libraries Roundtable (Chris Tarr, chair; Michael Maben, statistics coordinator). This group will meet as usual at the 2011 AALL Annual Meeting. It now has its Web page (still a work in progress; available at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/headsofcataloging/).

• 2009 - 2010 Cataloging Committee

  CATALOGING AND CLASSIFICATION STANDING COMMITTEE
  2009-2010 ANNUAL REPORT

  Submitted by George A. Prager, Chair
  June 22, 2010

  During the past year, the chair has been involved in updating the Committee’s membership list and Web pages, selecting new chairs for working groups, and keeping the membership informed of major developments in the world of cataloging. It has truly been an eventful year!

  The Library of Congress and some other libraries have recently released extensive training materials for the upcoming testing of RDA, the new cataloging rules. In mid June 2010, free trial access will be available to the RDA toolkit, an online suite of products for using RDA. While five law libraries will be involved in the formal testing of RDA, it is hoped that many other law libraries will participate unofficially as well. Other major changes during this last year include the introduction of the BIBCO standard record for printed textual materials, widespread use of the Provider-Neutral model for electronic monographs, continued development of genre/form headings, and updates to the MARC 21 formats (multiple 260 fields, new subfields added for field 502 to enable structured dissertation notes, addition of 588 Source of description notes, new $x for ISSN in 8XX series added entries, new codes for online and direct access in MARC 008/23 and 008/29, and additional fields to accommodate RDA).

  The 2010 Cataloging and Classification Roundtable in Denver will feature a panel discussion, entitled: Transition from AACR2 to RDA. The moderator will be Professor Sylvia D. Hall-Ellis, of the University of Denver, who is currently serving on the CC:DA Committee. Speakers will include: John Hostage (Harvard Law School, our AALL representative to CC:DA); Robert Maxwell (former CC:DA Committee member from Brigham Young University, and author of several cataloging-related books); and Robert Ellett (National Defense University, PCC trainer, RDA trainer).

  The New Catalogers Roundtable, chaired by Sean Chen, continues to be a valuable resource for newer law catalogers. It has an electronic discussion list, and also maintains a revised Appendix C, Recommended Tools, to Cataloging Legal Literature.

  The Descriptive Cataloging Policy Advisory Group was chaired in the latter half of 2009 by Yan Liao, who needed to resign due to family responsibilities. Rhonda Lawrence took over in early 2010. This group has continued to focus on issues deferred until after the first release of RDA. John Hostage and Marie Whited drafted a proposal for RDA revision for reports of a single court. After review by the group, John Hostage submitted the proposal in late April 2010 to CC-DA. The rule revision proposal will be discussed at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in January 2011. The report is available at: http://lawcataloging.pbworks.com/f/RDA6.29.1.21_single_court_decisions_20100426.pdf. DCAG has also been reviewing the recently released draft of the ISBD Consolidated Edition, and plans to issue recommendations for changes to the draft.

  The Classification and Subject Cataloging Policy Working Group (CSCP) was chaired by Brian Provenzale. As Brian will be leaving law librarianship, Cindy May has agreed to take over as chair of the group starting in July 2010. CSCP Working Group’s activities for 2009-2010 focused on two areas: First, and most substantially, an editorial group under the leadership of Yael Mandelstam has been working in cooperation with the Library of Congress’ Policy and Standards Division to prepare a list of law genre/form terms. Shortly before the 2009 AALL Annual Meeting in D.C, the group released for comments a draft of Genre/Form Terms for Law Materials. The draft was approved by the AALL Cataloging & Classification Committee in October 2009 and was sent to PSD. Since then, the editorial group and PSD have been fine-tuning several cross references and scope notes and should soon be done with the process. Once the list is finalized, the terms will be incorporated into the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials.

  Secondly, CSCP has recently begun work on a project to review problematic legal subject headings. The proposal was to create some type of forum where TS-SIS members can submit questions on subject headings and have the problems reviewed by CSCP, who would then recommend a course of action either to the member or to SACO. The consensus in the group was that CSCP could and should handle these requests, and that a wiki or some kind of web site should be established for it. The next step for the coming year will be to recruit a sub-group of CSCP members to help design and run the forum. Toward that end, Brian Provenzale and Cindy May have created a test wiki for discussion at the CSCP meeting in Denver.

  The Task Group on Vendor-Supplied Bibliographic Records, chaired by Angela Jones, continues to evaluate record sets and to post evaluations to the group’s wiki. This year a record set evaluation has been added for the ABA Archive Microfiche Collection. An evaluation of the HeinOnline Taxation and Economic Reform in America collection has been started and will hopefully be completed before the AALL conference. Several reviews have been modified as information about those sets has changed. In addition, task group member Alan Keely has worked closely with Hein in the preparation of the records for the ABA Archive collection.

  Another addition to the group’s wiki has been the document “Adding OCLC numbers to vendor records,” written by group member Yael Mandelstam. This document contains instructions for libraries wishing to insert OCLC numbers into MARC records, which may be done provided that the vendor makes available a crosswalk from the vendor record number to the corresponding OCLC number.

  The task group has also worked in various ways to help vendors and law libraries implement the guidelines stated in the Provider-Neutral E-Monograph Record Task Group Report. The group initiated communication with several database maintenance vendors (Marcive, LTI, Backstage) regarding their capabilities to merge “duplicate” records into one P-N record.

  The VBR Group has engaged in an ongoing dialog with Gale over the Making of Modern Law: Trial records. Gale is being encouraged to distribute final records to their customers only after the records have been loaded into OCLC, and also to follow P-N cataloging standards.

  The group has also been communicating with CALI about updating the links in the MARC records provided by OCLC.

  The Rare Book Cataloging Roundtable, chaired by Sarah Yates, held its third meeting at the AALL 2009 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Sabrina Sondhi, special collections library at Columbia, wrote a report on the meeting, which can be found on page 37 of the spring 2010 issue of the newsletter of the Legal History & Rare Books SIS, LH&RB.

  All of the above advisory and task groups will meet at Denver during the 2010 AALL Annual Meeting.

• 2008 - 2009 Cataloging Committee

  CATALOGING AND CLASSIFICATION STANDING COMMITTEE
  2008-2009 ANNUAL REPORT

  Submitted by Karen A. Nuckolls, Chair

  Wave upon wave of changes took place this past year and will continue through the coming year in the cataloging world. With RDA making its entry on the horizon, and the economic downturn surrounding the law library community, everyone has had to adjust (and continue to adjust) to the fluctuations in cataloging and classification.

  The chair was kept busy making sure that the standing committee members were being informed about RDA’s release, field 440 being made obsolete, RDA/FRBR cataloger scenarios, OCLC records policy (later withdrawn), full draft of RDA, genre terms, PCC neutral records, and JSC meeting outcomes.

  Beacher Wiggins, Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access, Library of Congress, accepted an invitation to attend the Cat/Class Roundtable to address the RDA testing process. We have five law libraries participating: Chicago; Columbia; Emory; Northeastern; and Stanford. The complete list of testers may be found at: http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/rda/test-partners.htm.

  While most subcommittees had a quiet year, a few had some activity to report. The Descriptive Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group, chaired by Ann Sitkin, continued to wait for the release of RDA, which was delayed.

  The Task Group on Vendor-Supplied Bibliographic Records continues to evaluate record sets and to post evaluations to the group’s wiki. This year, the group added evaluations for HeinOnline Legal Classics, HeinOnline World Trials, LLMC Digital, and the LexisNexis U.S. Serial Set Digital Collection.

  The group has corresponded with different vendors on various issues. Gale agreed to do authority control processing on the MARC records for Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926. The members also corresponded with Cassidy Cataloging concerning the issue of cataloging e-resources as reproductions versus born-digital publications.

  The Task Group has also done some informal consulting and answering questions from the law library community. It is fortunate to have two members who were also on the Provider-Neutral E-Monograph Task Group. The group has been asked recently by several libraries to provide feedback for provider-neutral ebook records that they had cataloged using the new provider-neutral guidelines.

  A crosswalk for getting current OCLC numbers into original MOML records was developed by several staff at Fordham Law Library and uploaded to the Task Group’s wiki.

• 2007 - 2008 Cataloging Committee

  CATALOGING AND CLASSIFICATION STANDING COMMITTEE
  2007-2008 ANNUAL REPORT

  Submitted by Jean M. Pajerek, Chair

  The Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee and its sub-groups have had another busy and productive year.

  A topic that received a lot of attention from the members of the Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee at the annual meeting in New Orleans last July was the work of the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, which at that time was still in progress. A small task force was appointed to draft testimony to be submitted to the Working Group on behalf TS-SIS. As it turned out, most of the testimony ended up being written by members of the TS-SIS Executive Board, but it was submitted on time. Once the LC Working Group’s draft report became available in Nov. 2007, a few of us were asked by Mary Alice Baish, Acting Washington Affairs Representative, to draft a response on behalf of AALL. AALL’s response to the Working Group was submitted in Dec. 2007. Documentation related to the LC Working Group’s activities, including AALL’s response to the draft report, can be found on the TS-SIS website at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/bibliographiccontrol/.

  The two advisory groups constituted in 2006 continued their work during 2007/2007. Ann Sitkin agreed to continue to serve as chair of the Descriptive Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group, which is involved in reviewing draft sections of RDA (Resource Description and Access) and formulating responses from the law library perspective. The group initially conducted its discussions via email, but the complexity of the issues led to the creation of a wiki. During the past year, the group reviewed RDA chapters 6 and 7, which include most of the rules for legal materials, and solicited comments from the TS-SIS membership. AALL’s recommendations were forwarded to the Joint Steering Committee (JSC) for RDA via ALA’s representative to the JSC. Information related to this group, including its charge and membership list, may be found at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/descriptivecataloging/.

  The Classification and Subject Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group was chaired by Chris Tarr of UC Berkeley during 2007/2008. During the past year, the Group’s activities focused primarily on their ongoing project to assist in the creation of LC authority records for law genre headings, using the second edition of Bill Benemann’s Genre Terms for Law Materials: a Thesaurus as a starting point. The group has developed a wiki to facilitate their work. Further information about the group’s work, including a link to the law genre project wiki, may be found at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/classification/. Special thanks go to Yael Mandelstam of Fordham University for her tireless dedication to this project, and to the Inherently Legal Subject Headings Project (http://www.lawlib.duq.edu/ILSH/).

  The Task Group on Vendor-supplied Bibliographic Records was formed in the fall of 2006; after a bit of a late start, it too continued its work during the past year. We had problems recruiting a chair for the group, but in Nov. 2007, Angela Jones of Southern Methodist University agreed to serve as chair. Under Angela’s capable leadership, the group has reviewed sets of bibliographic records for CALI, BNA, MOML, and the Westlaw/Lexis records from Cassidy Cataloguing. The group has been approached by the ALA Catalog Form and Function Interest Group about the possibility of a joint wiki for vendor records. Members of the task group consider this to be a good idea, with a lot of potential for collaboration and sharing of information. The task group has already set up a wiki for its own use where members are documenting their important work. More information about the group, including a link to their wiki, may be found at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/vendorbibrecords/.

  Leadership of the New Catalogers’ Roundtable was assumed by Dan Blackaby of Western State University. The New Catalogers’ Roundtable web page may be viewed at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/newcatalogers/. The Round Table’s current project is to compile a list of “essential” Law Library Journal articles related to cataloging, in celebration of LLJ‘s centennial volume.

  Sarah Yates continued as leader of the Rare Book Cataloging Round Table. Sarah is currently in the process for forming a task group to “assist the Bibliographic Standards Committee (BSC) of ALA’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Section in the compilation of two handbooks of cataloging examples to accompany Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) (2007) and Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Serials) (forthcoming).”

  The Cataloging Workshop proposal developed by Monica Kauppi (Columbia University) and Chris Tarr was approved by AMPC in fall 2007. Shortly thereafter, Monica had to withdraw as co-coordinator, and a new co-coordinator (Brian Provenzale of Stanford University) was recruited. The workshop is actually over-subscribed, indicating a high demand for this kind of continuing education. We also fielded an inquiry from the education chair of ALA’s ALCTS as to whether non-law librarians would be able to take the workshop, another indication of the high level of interest.

• 2006 - 2007 Cataloging Committee

  CATALOGING AND CLASSIFICATION STANDING COMMITTEE
  2006-2007 ANNUAL REPORT

  Submitted by Jean M. Pajerek, Chair

  At the request of the Chair of the Technical Services Special Interest Section, one of the first things we accomplished was to formalize the membership of the Committee by asking those interested in serving to actually sign up as members. This gave us a list of interested members to draw upon when setting up task groups and other sub-groups of the Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee. The Committee had 80 official members in 2006/2007.

  Shortly after the 2006 annual meeting in St. Louis, the Task Group on Controlled Series Access in Law Library Catalogs was established, with Robert Rendall of Columbia University as chair. The group was charged with examining the issues surrounding controlled series access, in response to the decision made by the Library of Congress in April 2006 to cease providing controlled access to series headings in bibliographic records. The group’s report included recommendations for libraries wishing to continue providing controlled access to series, as well as recommendations for libraries that do not wish to do so. The task group decided almost unanimously to endorse continued controlled access to series titles in cataloging records. The group’s report is available at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/controlledseriesaccess/.

  Two new advisory groups were constituted. The Descriptive Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group has as its charge to:

  1. Advise and make informal and official recommendations to the TS-SIS Executive Board regarding AALL positions on national descriptive cataloging policies and standards, including development and revision of cataloging and metadata codes.
  2. Advise and make informal recommendations to the AALL Representative to CC:DA on national descriptive cataloging policies and standards, including development and revision of cataloging and metadata codes.
  3. Advise and make informal recommendations to the Law Library of Congress catalog liaison and to the Library of Congress/Cataloging Policy and Support Office representative to AALL regarding descriptive cataloging policies and practices.

  This group is heavily involved in reviewing draft sections of RDA (Resource Description and Access) and formulating responses from the law library perspective. The current chair of this group is Ann Sitkin of Harvard. More detailed information about the group, its mission and its activities is available at:http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/descriptivecataloging/.

  The charge of the Classification and Subject Cataloging Policy Advisory Working Group is to:

  1. Advise and make both informal and official recommendations as required to the TS-SIS Executive Board regarding AALL positions on Library of Congress classification schedules and subject cataloging policies and standards, including development and revision of classification schedules, and subject cataloging policies and practices.
  2. Advise and make informal recommendations to the AALL Representative to the ALA Subject Analysis Committee (SAC) on subject cataloging policies and standards.
  3. Advise and make informal recommendations to the Law Library of Congress catalog liaison and to the Library of Congress/Cataloging Policy and Support Office representative to AALL regarding subject cataloging and classification policies and issues.

  This group is presently in the process of reviewing the second edition of Bill Benemann’s Genre Terms for Law Materials: a Thesaurus in anticipation of LC’s eventual implementation of these terms in bibliographic and authority records. They have also undertaken the task of reviewing Marie Whited’s draft revision of the KF1 form table. The current chair of this group is Ellen McGrath of SUNY Buffalo, who is completing former chair Robert Rendall’s term. More detailed information about the group, its mission and its activities is available at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/classification/.

  In the fall of 2006, the Task Group on Standards for Vendor-supplied Bibliographic Records was formed. Its charge is to:

  1. Develop guidelines for vendors to assist them in following PCC’s MARC Record Guide for Monograph Aggregator Vendors (http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/vendorguiderevised.pdf)
  2. Offer to assist vendors who wish to produce cataloging metadata, by a) encouraging them to provide sample bibliographic records for evaluation; b) assist vendors in preparation of specifications for contract cataloging; c) recommend changes and revisions as appropriate (list illustrative, not prescriptive)
  3. Develop ways to encourage vendors to make arrangements with authority control vendors, e.g. MARCIVE, to supply current authority data for the cataloging produced.
  4. Develop and disseminate evaluations/reviews of the cataloging data to TS-SIS members

  Terri Saye of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill currently chairs this group. Their report can be viewed at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/vendorbibrecords/.

  Monica Kauppi of Columbia University has assumed leadership of the New Catalogers’ Roundtable as its facilitator. In this role, Monica has arranged for an email list to be set up to enhance communication among the Round Table’s members; enlisted the help of several very experienced, nationally recognized law catalogers to serve as consultants for the group; and has established a web presence that will serve as a resource for the group, possibly incorporating a blog and/or wiki at some point in the future. She has also updated an important bibliography of resources for law catalogers that had not been updated since 1997. The New Catalogers’ Roundtable web page may be viewed at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/newcatalogers/.