TS CSCP Meeting

The TS-SIS Classification and Subject Cataloging Policy (CSCP) Advisory Working Group met on July 16, 2007 at 5:15 PM. Despite the late hour during a busy, condensed AALL conference, there were 32 attendees. That high level of interest was a pleasant surprise to me as acting chair. People went off to borrow more chairs from nearby meeting rooms.

Many thanks to Denise Glynn, who graciously agreed to take minutes, which will appear in the September/conference issue of TSLL. I will give just a quick summary of the meeting here.

Announcements:

*If you would like to become a member of CSCP, contact Jean Pajerek.

*If you have an idea for a program proposal for AALL in Portland next year on a topic having to do with classification or subject cataloging, the CSCP would be willing to assist in polishing your proposal. Contact Ellen McGrath. Deadline is soon!!!!

*Yael Mandelstam is looking for volunteers to assist in cleaning up FAST headings. Contact Yael for details. Check out this website on FAST: http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/fast/

KF1 form table proposal: The changes to the KF1 form table proposed by Marie Whited were briefly discussed at the TS Cataloging and Classification Standing Committee meeting earlier in the day. The general sense of that group was that the changes are wonderful and will help to simplify use of the table, as well as training new law catalogers to use it. All were in awe of the amount of research Marie had done in putting the proposal together. (We missed seeing you in New Orleans, Marie!)

Genre terms: The majority of the one hour meeting time was devoted to the discussion of this project. The CSCP has been working on an update to Bill Benemann’s Genre Terms for Law Materials. It had been requested by AALL’s ALA SAC representative, Yael Mandelstam, as a contribution to LC’s project to establish genre terms in LCSH.

Jolande Goldberg (LC) filled the group in on this project. LC’s plan is to establish authority records for each genre/form heading in field 155, which will correspond to the 655 in bibliographic records. As part of the pilot project, LC will begin adding music genre terms to the authority file in early September 2007. CSCP will aim for late November 2007 to have the law genre terms ready to add to the authority file. Yael Mandelstam will create a wiki, in order to streamline the process of creating the list of law genre terms and to open it up to wide participation by all interested law catalogers. Yael will include explanatory information about the standards for creating law genre terms, as well as the mechanics of contributing to the wiki. (Thank you Yael!) The genre term authority records will replace subfield v form subdivisions.

General subject update from LC from Jolande:

*LCSH and pre-coordination will remain, but simplification quest continues
*Experimenting with social tagging
*Possibility exists of linking genre authority records to the classification form tables; would require harmonization of form tables
*Experimenting with allowing computer to generate cutters; result has been some triple cutters which are now allowed
*Change of LCSH to Insanity (Law) necessitates cleanup of related LCSHs
*Looking into changes to Ecclesiastical law

For more details, see Report of AALL Representative to ALA/ALCTS Subject Analysis Committee (SAC):

http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/representatives/2007/sac2007.htm

CSCP website (including KF1 form table documents):

http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/classification/

CSCP annual report:

http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/cataloging/classification/annualreport/2007.htm

Stay tuned—you will be hearing more from CSCP!