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CMC Business Meeting Report 2020

MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

CATALOGING AND METADATA COMMITTEE

Business Meetings, MLA Annual Meeting 2020, Norfolk, Virginia

THURSDAY February 27, 11:00 am-12:25 pm

1. Introduction and announcements (Snyder)    11-11:15

  • Tracey Snyder called the meeting to order and reminded those present to sign the attendance sheets.
  • Tracey called attention to the printed copies of the agenda for those that had not already printed them. She also reminded everyone that the agenda is on the CMC Blog.
  • Tracey pointed out that she and Joshua Henry are recording the meeting for note taking purposes. Tracey reminded everyone to use the microphone to help with picking up audio.
  • Tracey read the Code of Conduct from the CMC Handbook.
  • Tracey reminded everyone that reports and agendas can be found on the new CMC website, which can be accessed even when clicking on the link for the old website due to the URL redirect that is now in effect.
  • Introductions were made around the table for all of the officers present.
a. Adjustments to agenda.

i. There were no adjustments to the agenda.

b. Thanks to outgoing members

i. Tracey announced that Mary Huismann, Chris Holden, Linda Blair, Nancy Lorimer (not in attendance), and herself are ending their terms on the committee, and she thanked them for their service.

c. Welcome to incoming members

i. Tracey welcomed new members Keith Knop, whoever will replace Chris Holden as the Music Cataloging Bulletin Editor, Casey Mullin, Beth Iseminger, and Hermine Vermeij (moving from Incoming Chair to Chair).

d. Administrative business

i. Documents (on new CMC website!)

1. CMC annual reports 2019 on CMC Reports page

2. ALA Annual 2019 and ALA Midwinter 2020 reports on CMC Reports page; FYI no ALCTS at ALA Midwinter 2021

a. CMC’s role for ALA Midwinter is up in the air.

3. CMC roster 2020-2021 (CMC Rosters page updated after MLA)

4. CMC Handbook (includes CMC calendar) on CMC Groups page

5. New CMC website

a. Tracey thanked Joshua, Katie Buehner (MLA Web Manager), and Elizabeth Hille Cribbs (past CMC Secretary/Webmaster) for all their work on the new website.

b. Further improvements to organization, usability, and accessibility are coming. PDFs will likely be converted to HTML (many already have been). Stay tuned for possible user testing sometime in the next year or so.

c. Check out the site-wide search feature. “Show me everything that mentions Sinopia.” “Where’s that report that mentions Zooniverse?”

d. Check out the new “CMC Essentials” panel on the homepage. Quick access to our popular products–best practices, etc.

e. Revised MMR page has had an initial round of updates (fixing old links, etc.) and may continue to evolve. Thanks to Ethan D’Ver, Casey Mullin, and Chelsea Hoover for their work on this.

f. Check out the new top FAQ on the renamed FAQ & HELP page, with a submission form for people to ask music cataloging questions without having to subscribe to MOUG-L or MLA-L. This will be promoted to a more generalist audience. Mark Scharff asked how to handle broad questions that come through–should they be shared or published in the Music Cataloging Bulletin? Tracey said that this is a question that will be taken into consideration. Hermine Vermeij suggested that the form state that the submitter’s privacy will be protected, which will encourage people to submit questions. Tracey agreed that this is important.

ii. Announce program sessions and business meetings

1. Tracey announced the following meetings and sessions sponsored by CMC during MLA’s Annual Meeting, and encouraged everyone to attend the sessions as they were available to do so. The second CMC Business Meeting will be Saturday at 1:30 pm, which will be all discussion topics in comparison to the current meeting, which will be reports plus some discussion. The Encoding Standards Subcommittee meeting will take place on Thursday at 3:30 pm, the Vocabularies Subcommittee meeting will take place on Friday at 1:30 pm, and the Content Standards Subcommittee meeting will take place on Saturday at 11 am. The PCC Funnels (NACO/SACO/BIBCO) meeting will take place on Friday at 11 am. Daniel Pitti and Lynnsey Weissenberger will present “The People, the Music, and the Context: New Frameworks for Discovering Relationships in Cultural Heritage Collections,” on Thursday, February 27 at 1:30pm – 2:55pm, and this presentation is co-sponsored by the CMC, Archives and Special Collections Committee, and Digital Humanities Interest Group. The CMC, Instruction Subcommittee, and Reference and Access Services Subcommittee are co-sponsoring “Toward Mutual Enlightenment: An Information-Sharing Forum for Catalogers and Public Services Librarians” on Saturday, February 29 at 9:30am – 10:25am. Tracey encouraged everyone to bring laptops if possible, and reminded everyone that it is not a streamed session. The Cataloging and Metadata Town Hall will be held on Friday from 4:30-5:55, which will have brief presentations from chairs, a few special topics including BIBCO Music Funnel retrospective, RDA, and linked data.

iii. Announce CMC openings and deadline for applications (Friday)

1. Tracey announced that there were openings on all of the subcommittees for interested persons. The application does not need to be formal. Applications must be in writing and should state: 1) your specific interest with regards to the subcommittee(s) to which you would like to apply and your order of preference of subcommittees; 2) your cataloging/metadata background; and 3) your abilities to meet CMC service expectations. Applications must be received via email or posted to the bulletin board at the MLA conference by end of day on the Friday of MLA. (Email is preferable, and early submission is very helpful.) Decisions regarding appointments are made at the end of the MLA conference and communicated to the applicants in the week or so following the conference. Look at CMC Blog posts to understand responsibilities. Give background of who you are if you have never been a part of CMC.

2. Brief reports and meeting teasers

a. Subcommittees                            11:15-11:30

i. Content Standards (Huismann)

1. Mary Huismann reported that the new version of the RDA best practices Supplements are on the CMC website. More information about the best practices’ developments will be given at the CSS Business Meeting and CMC Town Hall as well as CSS’s involvement with OLAC to develop best practices for single use media. The CSS Business Meeting will discuss how CSS would like best practices to function in the future, especially with more concrete information about the policy statement writing and the new RDA Toolkit.

ii. Encoding Standards (Peters)

1. Karen Peters reported that the task group for revising the MMR page worked over the past year and made an initial round of edits. The task group looking at cataloging inefficiencies worked over the past year, and more information will be given at the ESS Business Meeting about their work. ESS did not propose MARC changes, but some will come down the pike because of LC’s work on BIBFRAME to MARC conversion, which also touches on inefficiencies. The changes from Beta RDA will continue to give work for ESS, and there are already proposals to address some of those changes.

iii. Vocabularies (Belford)

1. Rebecca Belford reported that Vocabularies Subcommittee (VS) also functions under a task group model. The Types of Composition list maintenance group worked on several term proposals. The Thematic Indexes group had five submissions and two additions. The Vocabularies Maintenance group established the term Studio Recordings, and canceled the filmed and televised terms from LCGFT. The Best Practices group released the new versions for LCGFT and LCMPT in July 2019. Rebecca encouraged everyone to look at the ALA Midwinter reports. She pointed out the interesting sessions on Wikidata and other vocabularies-related topics that she reported on. Rebecca highlighted discussion topics for the VS Business Meeting, including a report from Jeff Lyon’s work on the Music Toolkit, the plural form of certain terms in the Types list, and gendered voice terms in the LCMPT.

b. Pan-CMC work with other groups                    11:30-11:50

i. Music Discovery Requirements: work with MLA Emerging Technologies & Services Committee (Snyder)

1. Tracey reported that MDR2 was published January 2018. Starting in 2018, a volunteer from each of the three CMC subcommittees maintains a running list on the wiki of changes to content standards, encoding standards, vocabularies that may impact the MDR, and the CMC chair will check in annually with the ETSC chair with a summary of changes and recommendation on whether/when the MDR needs to be updated again. No updates will not occur this year, but we have on our radar changes affecting LC vocabularies and MARC 38X fields. Tracey pointed out that CMC expertise is central to MDR.

ii. Metadata standards for audio and video: work with NISO (Urberg)

1. Tracey gave an update on Michelle Urberg’s behalf who couldn’t be at the meeting. The NISO Audio and Video Metadata Standards Working Group has met continuously since August 2019. Over the past 6 months of work, the group has discussed in depth media types to consider, defined objectives of the project, identified standards to consider, listed relevant stakeholders, and developed a hierarchy built on the top level categories of bibliographic, technical, semantic, and administrative metadata. The next steps include fleshing out example records using the hierarchy and developing use cases for our different stakeholder groups. With these examples and use cases in place, the next months will be devoted to trying out the “best practice” information in the records against the users in the use cases. Note, that the scope of this project has honed in particularly on electronic formats rather than physical formats. If anyone wants or needs more specific information about the details of this work, I am happy to share it. If anyone has feedback about particularly challenging issues you are facing with vendor metadata, with creating metadata for your OPAC or discovery layer, or other issues that I have not even thought of, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Email is best: maurberg @ gmail.com.

iii. ISBD revision: work with IFLA ISBD Review Group (Holden)

1. Chris Holden reported that ISBD is being revised and is ongoing until 2022. He reminded everyone that ISBD is more than punctuation. He stressed the distinction between inputting data and displaying data. The update will be for a larger array of resources and will partially align with the LRM model. The review group had a reformation, causing the timeline to be pushed back. A draft should be ready by August 2020. Open for review in late 2020 until early 2021. There is an ongoing debate about how closely ISBD will align with LRM, but the debate has been shelved for now. There are two separate task forces, one working to update the content of ISBD and one to align ISBD with LRM manifestation elements in particular. More updates will be available later this year.

iv. Best practices for chronological terms and MARC 046: work with ALCTS CaMMS SAC Subcommittee on Faceted Vocabularies (Belford & Mullin)

1. Rebecca Belford asked Casey Mullin to discuss the work that the SAC Subcommittee on Faceted Vocabularies (SSFV) has done on best practices for chronological data. As Chair of SSFV, Casey reported that the best practices document primarily gives guidance on MARC 046 fields in bibliographic records but could be used in authority records as well. The task group has developed all of the content, but they are refining it before sending it out for review. Will go to the full SSFV for review and then SAC for approval. There will be a discussion of when it would be appropriate to send to MLA for review. Casey requested that we adhere to the SAC chain of review. Casey believes that it could be open for comments between sometime this spring and ALA Annual. Casey said that it is intended for all formats. Rebecca then discussed the topics of interest to music from the document, including how to record data in the 046 for dates associated with expressions, editions, date of creation of aggregates, and dates of aggregated works in a compilation; also various usages of the 045 and 046 fields; and finally how natural language comes into play for early music that don’t have decade subdivisions. Rebecca and Casey stated that they cannot get into specifics because the document is still in draft form. Casey also mentioned that he is waiting for the right time to ask that the Music Toolkit extract data from 045s to create 046s. Looking at a MAC proposal to create new subfields that could distinguish work and expression dates. Rebecca did ask for clarification about the document’s use for authority data. Casey said that the document is focusing on bibliographic records instead of authority records but that the SSFV could advocate to PCC to use the document to hopefully inform future work for authority records. Tracey asked how catalogers could stay involved. Casey clarified that questions will be funneled through Rebecca to SSFV. Hermine asked if the document will cover music or if CMC will need to supplement. Casey said it should cover all areas, meaning there should not be a need for CMC to produce a supplement.

c. Working group                                11:50-11:55

i. MLA Linked Data Working Group (Vermeij)

1. Hermine Vermeij reported that the working group could not test PMO in Sinopia in 2019 as planned because of continued delays in the software development; however, Hermine did attend meetings on Sinopia. Hermine thinks that the end of the development cycle is near and testing should be able to take place in spring 2020 once the application profile is complete. Hermine’s tenure as chair is over, and Kevin Kishimoto is taking over. Hermine explained that the Performed Music Ontology (PMO) is a linked data ontology that was created by Linked Data for Production (LD4P), and Sinopia is the linked data editing tool being developed by Stanford for the LD4P project. Tracey said the initial objective of the working group was to evaluate PMO and then test it; however, difficulties with Sinopia did not allow them to test it. Tracey said to talk to Kevin for further questions. Tracey thanked Hermine for her service.

d. Additional reports                             11:55-12:15

i. NACO-Music Project (Scharff)

1. Mark Scharff reported that the Funnels have a meeting tomorrow for those interested. There is not a formal agenda; however, he would like to hear ideas of how to move forward. Looking forward to discussions about coming developments especially with beta RDA. Mark said that there were three new individual members, two new institutional members, and some retirements, which means there was not a big change in membership. PCC decided to create an online directory for statistics. There have been two rounds of self-reporting using the online directory. He believes that it is a good mechanism for Mark to see any problems and has enhanced communication. The work on changed series slowed down a bit due to members moving institutions. The NACO-Music Project is gradually moving toward members becoming independent.

ii. SACO Music Funnel (Lorimer)

1. Beth Iseminger reported on behalf of Nancy Lorimer. This is Nancy’s last report as the SACO Music Funnel coordinator. She thanked those that contributed. Nancy noted how LCGFT and LCMPT were in their infancy when her tenure started, but they are now thriving. Nancy mentioned that there is international interest in both vocabularies. She is currently working on submission by the National Library of New Zealand for a Maori musical term that is challenging biases in LCMPT. Nancy has been contacted by a radio station that uses LCGFT, who wants to expand LCGFT for its purposes. She noted that a majority of term proposals are coming from the Library of Congress or the University of Washington. She noted that the funnel will be encouraging more people to submit. Nancy suggested that VS look at the best practices, specifically about the efficacy of using music LCSHs in addition to LCGFT and LCMPT. Beth mentioned that Nancy’s report includes further details. Mark Sharff asked that we give Nancy a round of applause for her tremendous hard work.

iii. BIBCO Music Funnel (Blair)

1. Linda Blair reported that when PCC changed the statistics reporting, it changed the BIBCO Music Funnel workflow. The funnel kept its own statistics, because the BIBCO reporting cannot zero in on music. Since the change, it is possible that people are forgetting to report, which might contribute to lower numbers for the past year. There were no new members that were added; however there were many members that became independent. Linda was specifically happy about Regina Shapiro becoming BIBCO independent, because she creates many popular music records, helping to diversify the types of music represented by BIBCO music records. Linda said that she has enjoyed her five years as the BIBCO Music Funnel Coordinator. Tracey thanked her for her work.

iv. CMC Secretary/Webmaster (Henry)

1. Joshua Henry reported that the past year was spent migrating all of the CMC website content from the YourMembership platform to the WordPress platform. Joshua pointed out that one of the best features will be having all of the documents in HTML. Most of the documents are still in PDF; a timeline will be created to convert all of the documents to HTML. A decision will need to be made whether we want to still provide the PDF versions of documents. Joshua will also continue to work on making the website meet accessibility standards. Members can contact Joshua with any questions about the website or corrections that need to be made. Joshua mentioned that Katie Buehner is rotating off as MLA Web Manager, so he will be in contact with the new MLA Web Manager. Tracey thanked Joshua for his work during the past year.

v. Music Cataloging Bulletin (Holden)

1. Chris Holden reported that there were twelve issues published since the last MLA annual meeting. The index for the 2019 issues was also published in 2020. He has been submitting the issues to the MLA Archives. He noticed that there is a gap in the archive from 1982-1993. He is working on making scans for the archives. When he is done, the MLA Archives will have the entire fifty year run of MCB, which will remove the onus on any institution to keep any physical copies of the MCB. He mentioned that his term is coming to the end, and he will work with the new member to make a smooth transition. Chris suggested that the answers to the cataloging questions that come in through the FAQ & Help section of the website can also be published in MCB. Chris said that he enjoyed his time as MCB editor. Everyone gave him a round of applause for his hard work.

vi. Library of Congress (Vita)

1. Damian Iseminger reported on behalf of Sue Vita and pointed out that the report is available online for people to read. Damian is part of the Policy Statement Task Group at LC, which is revising the RDA policy statements for the Beta RDA. The work is ongoing, and the tentative timeline is to get the policy statements in RDA Toolkit by October 2020. This timeline could change based on developments with Beta RDA, particularly due to addressing issues with string encoding schemes. The Bibliographic Access section of the Music Division is heavily involved with BIBFRAME development along with catalogers in the Recorded Sound division. Testing the PMO is slow, but ongoing. Damian is also a member of the MARC Advisory Group at LC. LC might be considering a new policy on conventional collective titles. LC might also revise how they review subject proposals. Karen Peters asked if the policy statements are slowly going to appear in the Beta Toolkit or if they will all be done in October. Damian said that the script is not set for policy statements and best practices in the Beta Toolkit. Damian will go into more detail at CSS and VS Business Meetings. Mark asked if LC’s cataloging output has been affected by the policy statement development. Damian said that they have been able to keep up, speaking at least from Damian’s section. He said that they went from 7000 records to 10000 records, because of a minimal cataloging project. Damian thanked CMC for advancing LC’s work by helping to develop vocabularies and best practices.

vii. OCLC (Weitz)

1. Jay Weitz passed out print copies of his report. Jay drew attention to OCLC’s release notes for all products over recent years. Since mid-2018, OCLC has written release notes for WorldCat validation. Over the past few months, OCLC has released WorldCat matching updates and deduping release notes. These notes were written internally, but now they are available on OCLC’s Librarian’s Toolbox. Updates to MARC authorities will be made available in the next few weeks. An OCLC release notes will be devoted to this topic. Jay urged to not use updates until the date specified by OCLC and the Library of Congress. Jay mentioned the Mellon Grant for linked data initiatives was awarded last month to OCLC. Funding will be matched dollar for dollar by OCLC. Jay will keep everyone informed on the progress of the project, and more information can be found on page one of his report. Jay discussed the ability to control the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus headings in Record Manager; in Connexion, you will see $0 for these. More information can be found on page two.

3. Future of ALA Midwinter and ALCTS and what it means for CMC        12:15-12:25

a. Tracey first thanked Damian for his kind words and voiced her appreciation of the Library of Congress’s willingness to work with CMC. Tracey then clarified who just gave reports for the benefit of those new to CMC.

b. What does the potential merger of ALCTS with LITA and LLAMA mean for CMC? What does it mean if ALA Midwinter goes away entirely? Should we send liaisons to ALA Midwinter 2021?

i. Tracey mentioned that Hermine and the subcommittee chairs will have to discuss this and make the final decision.

ii. Tracey clarified who liaises to which committees at ALA: the Vocabulary Subcommittee chair liaises to the Subject Analysis Committee (SAC), which has discussed having virtual meetings between ALA meetings, but the details need to be ironed out; the Content Standards Subcommittee chair liaises to the Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA); the Encoding Standards Subcommittee chair liases to MARC Advisory Committee (MAC).

iii. Karen Peters said that an announcement will be made at ALA Annual about MAC. Karen believes that there will need to be another meeting if ALA Midwinter goes away.

iv. Mary Huismann said there was a discussion of contingency plans for CC:DA. This will be the hot topic at ALA Annual. CC:DA has charged its Task Force on Virtual Participation to investigate options for virtual meetings and/or attendance.

v. The vote on whether to merge will happen in March.

vi. Mark Scharff suggested making initial queries in MLA about tech support that could be provided for liaisons, because some of them might not be tech savvy and should not have to rely on their institutions for help. Rebecca Belford mentioned that this topic came up at the SAC meeting at ALA Midwinter. She did clarify that SAC will not meet at ALA Midwinter 2021.

vi. Tracey says given uncertainty, that CMC might just have to make a tough choice for budgeting purposes, but Beth Iseminger suggested being generous with money requests could be a good idea since the money could be used for traveling or tech support.

viii. Damian Iseminger asked about virtually meeting asynchronously, and wanted to know if Kathy Glennan had any comments on that possibility since she serves on the RDA Steering Committee, which has conducted virtual meetings asynchronously. First, Kathy believes that ALA should provide tech support instead of MLA. Although ALCTS might go away in ALA Midwinter 2021, there will be a meeting in October in Baltimore, and she suggests making a budget proposal to them for that meeting. Kathy will be glad to talk with anyone at any time about asynchronous meetings. The RDA Steering Committee uses BaseCamp. Karen Peters asked for overall evaluation. Kathy said it is a work in progress, and it is a matter of preparation and time management during the set number of days for the asynchronous meeting.

ix. Audience member asked for clarification about how the possible merger will affect MLA. Tracey says that is what needs to be figured out. Kathy expects CC:DA and SAC to continue, and MAC should not be affected since it is not under ALCTS.

x. Damian mentioned that NARDAC (North American RDA Committee) has had trouble communicating with CC:DA. He asked Mary Huismann if she knew if there was any discussion of changing some of the communication protocols. Mary agreed that it is an issue, but she has not heard of any discussion to address it.

4.Closing remarks

a. Tracey asked that everyone think about ideas noted in the agenda before the next meeting. She asked people to consider applying to become a member, and asked that everyone give a round of applause for all members whose term is over. Tracey then adjourned the meeting.

 

SATURDAY February 29, 1:30 pm-2:55 pm

1.  Introduction (Snyder) 1:30-1:35

  • Tracey Snyder called the meeting to order, and read the Code of Conduct from the CMC Handbook.
  • She issued a friendly reminder to those speaking to speak into the microphone for the benefit of those in the room and for recording purposes.
  • Tracey thanked all those who submitted applications to join CMC. She has received their applications even if she has not responded; applicants should not worry if they do not hear back for a couple of weeks, because CMC has to review the applicants and then send their recommendations to the MLA President for approval.
  • Introductions were made around the table for all of the officers present, as well as guests Michelle Hahn, who was joining virtually, and Sonia Archer-Capuzzo, both of whom will contribute to discussions for certain agenda items.

2. MLA 2020 program—reactions to content, meeting times, etc.        1:35-1:50

a. Tracey thought that there was good engagement at the co-sponsored session “Toward Mutual Enlightenment: An Information-Sharing Forum for Catalogers and Public Services Librarians” that occurred in the morning. Tracey asked for reactions to that session and to all other CMC meetings and related sessions.

i. Kirk-Evan Billet said that he liked the Toward Mutual Enlightenment session, because it provided the opportunity to communicate with public service librarians that technical service librarians do care about how users interact with the data. Mark Scharff agreed, but he suggested that the discussion tables not be separated by ILSs; rather, he thought it would be beneficial to not have a delineation for table grouping in order to foster discussions that can be more universal instead of worrying about the mechanics of certain ILSs. Hermine Vermeij said that it would be very beneficial to have ILS vendors at a future session so they can hear what their users need for a better functioning ILS. Ethan D’Ver also liked the session, and thinks that it could be very fruitful for it to occur every year as part of the Town Hall or some other session. Tracey talked with Hermine and Angela Pratesi directly after the session about having it every year or every other year, but they were not sure whether to wait a year due to other ideas already generated for next year’s meeting or to keep up the momentum and plan a session for next year’s meeting. Tracey did a straw poll about whether we should do it next year or wait two years, and there was support for both ideas. She then stated that she was happy with the number of people in attendance at the session. Tracey took another straw poll about whether the session should be longer. It was agreed that the next session should be 85 minutes rather than 55. An audience member mentioned that it was difficult at the session to talk about a subject for only five minutes.

ii. Kevin Kishimoto liked the “The People, the Music, and the Context: New Frameworks for Discovering Relationships in Cultural Heritage Collections” session, because it showed how other people are using linked data.

iii. Tracey asked if anyone had reactions to the Town Hall – Joshua Henry mentioned that he would have liked more time to ask questions for the heavy topics such as the new RDA Toolkit and aggregates, but he wasn’t sure if there was a good solution. Tracey pointed out that fifteen minutes were allocated for questions but various circumstances limited that time. She suggested that maybe we need to be more vigilant about staying on schedule. Casey Mullin mentioned that he talked with a public service librarian who attended in hopes of hearing topics that were friendly to non-catalogers but that, unfortunately, did not happen. He mentioned this to remind everyone of the audience’s needs. Tracey suggested that maybe each presentation should aim to try and tie in the topic to public services. Rebecca Belford also struggles with how to solve the issue of balancing brief reports and heavier topics. She mentioned that she thought that Town Hall was originally intended for catalogers. She suggested a possibility of somehow splitting the session, having a small part for non-technical services librarians and a larger part for technical services librarians. Tracey strongly believes that the Town Hall is for catalogers that cannot attend the meetings, particularly those that are new to the profession. Kathy Glennan, as a former CMC Chair, remembers struggling about where reports should be given and trying to avoid duplication. She asked if we have looked into who has come to the meetings as a means of trying to answer this question. Tracey did say that they have tried very hard to make sure that reports given at various meetings are short and function as a teaser. Jay Weitz suggested that in the light of the Toward Mutual Enlightenment session, that we could create a hybrid CMC Town Hall that can meet the needs of technical service librarians and public service librarians. Rebecca suggested making the Town Hall the teaser rather than the first CMC Business Meeting. Mark Scharff said we would need to think about whether the Town Hall should be streamed if we go with Jay’s suggested model, which would partially be a forum discussion and, therefore, not very beneficial for those just watching. Damian Iseminger reminded everyone that the business meetings used to be closed which is why there was the Town Hall. He suggested not reading reports at the meetings, rather have members read the reports beforehand in order to be informed for a fruitful discussion at the meetings. Casey said we could follow other models such as ALCTS, which has a presentation and then a meeting, enabling us to go more in-depth for agenda items. Mark Scharff said that business meetings opened up long before the Town Halls were created. He is hesitant to follow Damian’s suggestion, because he believes that the content at meetings needs to be understood by new members. Beth Iseminger suggested taking a survey of what members prefer as to the content and structure of meetings at MLA annual. Hermine suggested taking a straw poll; most members wanted to not have the reports read at the meetings. An audience member that is new to the profession mentioned that he would be willing to read reports ahead of time. Kathy mentioned that the Town Hall has existed in some form for awhile but not called Town Hall. Kathy mentioned that the possible changes with ALA Midwinter and ALCTS will change CMC’s Business Meetings. Tracey mentioned that asking people to read many reports beforehand might be difficult for some, especially when there are so many other things to take care of when coming to a conference. Hermine agreed but added that giving brief oral reports could be just as problematic in regards to understanding all the information needed to have a discussion. Anne strongly agreed that information is repeated too much between the meetings. Jennifer Olson wondered if the reports can be more accessible before the meeting or if an executive summary could be made. Tracey clarified that reports are given two weeks before the conference, and that it might be possible to make an executive summary. Mark agreed with Kathy’s comment about how CMC’s meetings will be affected by the changes at ALA. Mark thinks we might need to wait for the possible changes and then decide what should be done. Rebecca mentioned that subcommittee chairs spend a lot of time writing reports for ALA, but maybe the reports could happen more often. Jean Harden would like an executive summary as a way to remind her what she read in the report. Tracey needed to bring the topic to a close, but concluded that executive summaries could be useful and that we will need to keep in mind our audience for the meetings and sessions.

b. Tracey asked that everyone complete the MLA conference survey when prompted after MLA. She noted that it is very valuable to get feedback in order to plan for future meetings.

c. Tracey asked that presenters upload their presentations when prompted after MLA. She suggested that in addition to Humanities Commons, which is tricky to search, CMC could just make the Google Drive folder with the Town Hall files publicly visible and put it either on the blog or a page on the website. Tracey asked if that is too much work, and Joshua said it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. However, Tracey does not want to reinvent the wheel or create unnecessary work. She concluded that Hermine, as the new CMC Chair, and Joshua would need to discuss if it is worth it or if it is too much work.

3. MLA 2021 program—bring ideas for topics, speakers, etc.            1:50-2:05

a. Tracey introduced the idea of having an informal session of cataloging specific materials, together in real time, such as PDF scores (best practices might be developed for these before the next annual conference). Tracey conducted a straw poll, and the results indicated that it might be something to consider.

b. Tracey reminded everyone of some ideas that were posted on the CMC Wiki, such as metadata and usability, which centers around whether users value and can use the metadata that we create, and metadata and accessibility, which centers around how screen readers struggle to read online catalogs or how voice recognition software struggles to produce metadata/catalog records. Tracey opened the floor to discussion.

i. Michelle Hahn suggested having a live demo of screen readers to inform us how catalogs can be problematic for screen readers and then discussing how institutions have handled this in the past and how approaches have changed over time. Tracey asked if Michelle would be willing to present. Michelle might know of people that could present or she could help present, especially to discuss how ISBD punctuation affects display. Kristi Bergland wondered if the presentation should be user-focused, cataloger-focused, or both, and she said that she would be willing to help with the presentation. Joshua said that his institution had thought of addressing the issue of screen readers, so he would be willing to help with the presentation. Kathy mentioned that RDA has addressed some of these issues with the RDA Toolkit. Kathy has also done some work at her institution, which she would be happy to share. Mark suggested looking at ergonomics as a possible tie-in to this subject.  Tracey asked if speech recognition would be worthwhile, and many people believe that it would. Tracey and Ann Churukian may be able to address this topic. Tracey suggested that CMC focus on a presentation for accessibility and wait on a presentation for usability.

c. Tracey mentioned that there was an idea to present on LD4P2 (Linked Data for Production 2) and possible future grant (LD4P3), but she believes that it should be presented as a Town Hall subject instead, because unforeseen obstacles could mean there is not enough for a full program session presentation by the next conference.

d. Hermine asked Kathy if we could have a pre-conference with RDA next year. Kathy says that we could but worries about having certain things in place for a pre-conference to be fruitful.

e. Karen reminded everyone about the ESS Business Meeting, which discussed having a session over cataloging inefficiencies. She was not sure if it should be a presentation at a program session or more briefly mentioned at the Town Hall. Tracey thoughtit would be better to have as a Town Hall topic.

f. Mark suggested finding someone that would be willing to test the RDA Beta Toolkit and then give a presentation or poster session. Tracey thought it would be a Town Hall topic.

g. Circling back to the topic of an RDA pre-conference workshop, Tracey thoughtthat next year would be too soon, and many people agreed. Kristi also mentioned that the proposal deadline for pre-conference workshops is in June, which is another reason to hold off since that is fast approaching.

4. Training/information needs, e.g. ISBD, new RDA                  2:05-2:25

a. Screencasts

i. Tracey said there are tentative plans to start doing these again now that the new website is official. She briefly mentioned some of the ideas for screencasts, including how to submit the proposal form for a new LCGFT or LCMPT term, demonstration of encoding for 33x and 34x fields following the OLAC and MLA recommendations, demonstration of how MLA Best Practices function in the new RDA Toolkit, discuss common trends in shared cataloging that do not conform to MLA Best Practices, e.g. using “$c ℗&©2019” in the 264_4 instead of “$c ℗2019, $c ©2019,” etc. Damian asked what the optimal length for screencasts is. Tracey said that it is five to ten minutes. Tracey asked if screencasts will be useful, and some said that they would. Ethan D’Ver suggested having a screencast for 3xx field use for sound recordings. Linda Blair liked the idea for dates. Mark suggested having a screencast about how to update old records. Damian suggested a screencast for how to figure out what the record label name is for sound recordings.

b. Webinars

i. Tracey said that we will update the 2014 and 2015 RDA webinars, but we need to wait for policy statements and best practices to be in place. Tracey asked if Sonia had any comments. Sonia said that the Education Committee is always looking for new ideas. She reminded everyone that teachers get paid for doing webinars or e-courses. Kristi said that ALA does a good job giving tech support for the webinars and e-courses. Rebecca suggested having a webinar or e-course for rare materials although a webinar series might be more accessible.

c. Community-sourced documents? Should we vet and host? Overlap with MOUG?

i. Tracey reminded everyone that the idea of CMC hosting community-sourced documents was introduced when Keith Knop shared a home-grown cheat sheet on MLA-L. Tracey specifically asked Michelle if she had thoughts on if MOUG would like to host these documents instead. Michelle said she hesitates to have MOUG do that, because the organization is focused solely on OCLC products, but there could be many products that people might want to share community-sourced documents for. Tracey mentioned that maybe CMC could add them to the website with a disclaimer that CMC has not vetted the information for accuracy. Damian mentioned that we should ask the MLA Board if posting documents would be an endorsement of CMC. Rebecca agrees that a disclaimer would be important, and she worries about the format of documents. Mark mentions the old MLA Clearinghouse worked in the same manner, but we would need to think of how it will work. Michelle asked if the RDA Toolkit has a disclaimer for similar documents. Kathy said that there is not, but there is a general understanding that those documents are not RDA official. As an example of CMC pointing to documentation created by the music cataloging community outside of CMC, Tracey quickly mentioned that a link to Yale’s music cataloging website was added to the CMC website in the FAQ & Help section.

5. Pan-CMC ideas, overflow time, wrap-up                     2:25-2:40

a. Core Competencies for Cataloging and Metadata Professional Librarians—should we write a music-specific supplement?

i. Tracey reminded everyone that this was a topic deferred from 2019, and will remain on hold pending further discussion of the purpose and audience.

b. Pomp and circumstance

i. Hermine gave Tracey a gift and card from the committee to thank her for her service, and everyone gave Tracey a round of applause.

ii. Tracey thanked everyone and adjourned the meeting.