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Content Standards (including CC:DA): ALA Annual Report 2019

Washington, DC, June 21-24, 2019

Reports from:

  • OLAC Cataloging Policy Committee (CAPC)
  • RDA Pre-Conference
  • RDA Update Forum
  • Bibliographic Conceptual Models Interest Group
  • ALCTS Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) ALCTS/LITA Authority Control Interest Group (ACIG)

Reported by: Mary Huismann (St. Olaf College), Chair, Content Standards Subcommittee

OLAC Cataloging Policy Committee (CAPC)

The OLAC CAPC meeting was held on Friday, June 21, 2019. The majority of the meeting was devoted to liaison and task force reports; since these reports will be published in the September issue of the ​OLAC Newsletter​ only selected highlights appear in this report.

  • The 2020 OLAC Conference, celebrating OLAC’s 40th anniversary, will be held in Columbus, Ohio, October 14-17, 2020. The conference host is OCLC, and most meeting sessions will be held at OCLC.
  • The Nancy B. Olson Award was presented at the Membership meeting to Bruce Evans. Congratulations, Bruce!
  • ALCTS Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) Liaison (Kelley McGrath)
    • CC:DA has not been as active in the absence of RDA revision proposals due to the freezing of
      the RDA Toolkit.
    • English RDA text is now stabilized so translation and policy statement work can begin. o Kelley provided some highlights of the NARDAC report provided to CC:DA report:
      • Develop of the Toolkit’s visual browser has been suspended and replaced by breadcrumb navigation
      • Guidance chapters have been added
      • Changes not able to be incorporated into stabilized text will likely come back as
        proposals
      • The projected end of the 3R project is early 2020
      • Consult available resources for more information: PCC OpCo presentations, RSC
        presentations, and the RDA Toolkit YouTube channel.
    • Bob Maxwell is chairing the CC:DA 3R Task Force. This group will assist NARDAC with
      feedback on issues, etc.
  • MARC Advisory Committee (MAC) Liaison Report (Cate Gerhart)
    • MAC will be considering OLAC-sponsored proposal 2019-05 “Subfield Coding in Field 041 for Intertitles and Transcripts in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Form” (the proposal may be viewed at ​https://www.loc.gov/marc/mac/2019/2019-05.html​)
    • LC is forming a MARC/RDA Working Group to explore whether any changes to MARC are required for the new RDA text. Cate will be serving on this group.
  • LC Report (Janis Young)
    • LC will launch new a product line at the LC Pavilion and shop featuring the slogan “Librarians
      – the original search engine”
    • LC-PCC Policy Statements continue to be frozen while the 3R Project continues
    • The Policy and Standards Division (PSD) and the Cooperative and Instructional Programs
      Division (COIN) have merged to form a new division called the Policy, Training, and
      Cooperative Programs Division (PTCP). Judith Cannan is the chief of the new division
    • Changes for Macedonia (to “North Macedonia”) and Swaziland (to “Eswatini”) are mostly
      complete
    • A new ClassWeb interface is on the way and will be demonstrated at the PCC at large
      meeting
    • Work on the “Multiple Subdivisions” (SMH H 1090) project continues
    • Two new instruction sheets have been issued: SHM H 1629.5 (Forenames and Surnames)
      and CSM F 177 (Translations). The latter instruction sheet is not new, only relocated so it is
      easier to find
    • The moratorium on LCDGT proposals continues.
  • OCLC Report (Jay Weitz)
    • The ​News from OCLC​ was distributed.
  • MOUG Liaison (Autumn Faulkner)
    • MOUG will meet in conjunction with Music Library Association in Norfolk, Virginia in 2020
    • The group is currently seeking a social media coordinator and a fund-raising coordinator
  • Unified Best Practices Task Force (Marcia Barrett)
    • The group is currently working on the fourth draft of the merged best practices documents
      with the goal of providing clear and consistent content (i.e., without contradictory
      instructions)
  • OLAC Video Game Vocabulary (Rosemary Groenwald)
    • Page views for the vocabulary and records remains high
    • A group will be formed to carry on the maintenance and revision of the vocabulary.
  • Objects Task Force (Julie Moore)
    • The draft has gone to the task force advisors for comment by July 15; from there the draft will be given to CAPC for comment and approval, with the goal of publication in September 2019.
  • MLA/OLAC Task Force for Single-Title Audio Formats (Bruce Evans)
    • The first task facing the group is to decide the scope of the project; it was initially envisioned
      to cover audio formats but could be expanded to cover video formats

      • The meeting concluded with a discussion of a proposal to change the term “CAPC
        Intern” to another term.

RDA Pre-Conference

James Hennelly (​Director, ALA Digital Reference​) and members of the RDA Steering Committee (RSC) hosted another hand-on RDA Toolkit workshop on Friday, June 21. This workshop explored the new RDA Toolkit by using RIMMF 4 (“RDA in Many Metadata Formats”).

Deborah Fritz, creator of RIMMF, provided an introduction to the latest version of the tool optimized for use with the new RDA text. The group then walked through two simple examples together before breaking into specialized work led by individual table leaders. Specializations included static single works, appellations, aggregates, diachronic works, and representative expression elements.

RDA Update Forum

The RDA Update Forum was held on Saturday, June 22. The RDA Forum is co-presented by ALA and NARDAC and is the official information channel from NARDAC to the ALA community. The forum included presentations by Stephen Hearn (ALA representative to NARDAC), James Hennelly (​Director, ALA Digital Reference​), Thomas Brenndorfer (NARDAC representative to the RSC), and Kathy Glennan (RSC Chair).

Update from NARDAC (Stephen Hearn)

Slides from this presentation were not available at time of writing, but may be posted to the NARDAC website presentations page (​http://rda-rsc.org/northamerica/presentations​).

  • Stephen reviewed NARDAC membership and organizational roles
  • 3R Project
    • NARDAC has been busy with projects from the RSC, including dealing with
      pseudo-elements and appellation
    • NARDAC has also been reviewing feedback from the CC:DA 3R Task Force
  • Community document review
    • Reviewed an ORDAC document regarding conferences, an application profile compiled
      by EURIG, and a document from ARLIS-NA regarding the term “curator.”
  • Presentations
    • NARDAC members have been actively presenting at conferences, serving as table leaders for the RDA pre-conference.
  • Proposal process
    • Under discussion, but is expected to be quarterly o The present process is not sustainable
  • Work yet to do
    • Community decisions
    • Application profiles
    • Policy statements
    • Bridges to non-RDA entities and metadata (i.e., anything not addressed in RDA)
      • Subjects
      • Work groups
      • “Categories of …” vocabularies

Update from ALA Publishing (James Hennelly)

  • Work remaining on the 3R Project
    • Translations
      • Work is underway on seven translations, facilitated by new software and
        infrastructure
    • Policy statements
      • Building shells for policy statement groups
      • Evaluating viability of past policy statements and rethinking new structure
      • Formed a policy statement group with various national libraries to test and
        develop best practices
      • Noted that policy statements are the “great unknown” and could be the hardest
        part of the entire 3R Project
      • Have to determine what is a usable set of policy statements, and when is there
        enough to move forward
  • Release notes
    • Release notes will be used to track revisions in RDA
    • Will report only things that affect practice (e.g., not typos, broken links, etc.) o Will utilize a free compare service to compare archived PDFs
  • Releases
    • August
      • Will include fixes to established features and will also mark the debut of release notes
    • December/January
      • Slated to include a translation (or portion of one) and a small set of policy
        statements for testing purposes
  • Orientation
    • Free online webinar was offered in May 2019 (recording and slides available on the RSC
      Presentations page: http://www.rda-rsc.org/sites/all/files/Getting%20a%20Handle%20on%20the%20New% 20RDA%20Toolkit%20rev.pdf​)
    • Two paid webinar series will be offered this summer (and repeated at a later date)
      • New concepts
      • Specialized topics
    • Webinar for teaching RDA after 3R (designed for LIS) in late August
    • Other offerings to include online demonstrations of the beta Toolkit site, resources via
      the RDA Toolkit YouTube channel, in-depth e-courses
  • Exploring the beta Toolkit site? Send feedback!

Update from the RSC (Thomas Brenndorfer)

  • Described some of the work of the RSC, including access point element pages, shortcut relationships for aggregates, work groups, and more

Stable but not Unchanging: Next Steps for the Beta RDA Toolkit (Kathy Glennan)

Slides available on the RSC Presentations page (​http://www.rda-rsc.org/sites/all/files/Glennan%20Stable%20but%20not%20unchanging%2022%20June%202019.pdf​)

  • Glennan reviewed the 3R Project timeframe; we are currently in the “Stabilization phase” (April 2019-?)
    • RDA no longer under continuous revision
    • Stabilized text for others to start their work
    • Changes can still be made, but cannot have a significant impact and must be approved
      by the RSC
    • This phase ends when the beta site becomes the official site
      • Countdown clock does not start yet!
  • When will the beta site become the official site?
    • Although the RSC work is mostly complete, need to work on the next pieces (translations, policy statements, application profiles)
    • Will only become the official site when
      • All translations are complete (or nearly so)
      • Sufficient policy statement content
      • Agreement by RSC, RDA Board, and RDA copyright holders
      • Hopefully sometime in the first half of 2020
        • Then the countdown clock starts!
  • A framework for proposing RDA changes is in progress by the RSC
    • Expected to retain three major ways to suggest changes
      • Formal proposals/responses
      • Discussion papers/responses
      • Fast track proposals (no community consultation required)
    • Goals are for a more streamlined, transparent process
    • Hope to have an interim procedure in place by August 2019
    • ALA proposals will come from CC:DA (discussion/vote); the ALA representative will take
      the proposal to NARDAC (discussion/vote), then the NARDAC representative forwards
      the proposal to the RSC (discussion/vote)
    • NARDAC will work with CC:DA, the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing, and the Library
      of Congress to collect information for NARDAC, who will prepare the final North
      American response
    • Final decisions are made by the RSC

Bibliographic Conceptual Models Interest Group

The Bibliographic Conceptual Models Interest Group (formerly the FRBR Interest Group) met on Sunday, June 23. The session featured two presentations concerning differences between the WEMI entities definitions in IFLA LRM and BIBFRAME. The slides were not available at the time of writing.

WEMI Entities in LRM (Pat Riva, Concordia University, Montreal)

  • Riva began with a brief look at the evolution of the IFLA models that were consolidated to form
    the Library Reference Model (LRM)

    • Inconsistencies resolved
    • Insights from cross-community work with CIDOC CRM o Definitions re-worked to make them non-circular
      • Definition for “work” has an emphasis on content, with boundaries between similar works determined through bibliographic or cultural conventions
    • Subject relationships
      • These are unchanged from FRBR and FRSAD
  • Representative expression
    • This is a new work attribute
    • Representative expression reflects the essential characterization of the work; values are taken from a representative or canonical expression of the work
    • Chosen attributes depend on the category of the work
      • Source expression(s) for each attribute may vary, with criteria determined by
        cataloging standards
  • Manifestation statement
    • This is a statement that appears in an actual manifestation, deemed to be significant for users to understand how the resource represents itself
      • All transcribed data is a kind of statement
      • Generally typed by cataloging rules according to desired granularity
  • Summary of WEMI attributes
    • There are 18 attributes
      • Work: 2
      • Expression: 8
      • Manifestation: 6
      • Item: 2

Share-VDE Highlight on Data Modeling (Tiziana Possemato, Casalini Libri)

  • The Share-VDE initiative is a library-driven initiative to establish procedures for
    • The identification and reconciliation of entities
    • Conversion of data to linked data
    • Creation of a virtual discovery environment based on the three-layer structure of the BIBFRAME model
  • Share-VDE aims to establish an effective and concrete environment for the use of linked data by
    libraries within a global context

    • Membership includes over twenty libraries, including an LD4P cohort
  • Share-VDE entities model draft
    • Incorporates a new “SuperWork” class that represents the highest level of abstraction
    • Meant to aggregate or group functional or near equivalent bf:Work clusters
    • Several issues to consider (e.g., instance vs. manifestation, etc.)
  • Closed with the concept of nomen; unsure how this concept would be used in the model.

ALCTS Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA)

CC:DA met on Saturday, June 22 and Monday, June 24, 2019. The CC:DA ​blog​ contains the full ​agenda and links to various documents and reports.

Chair’s report of CC:DA motions and other actions since ALA Midwinter (Amanda Ros)

Report from the Library of Congress Representative (Kate James)

  • The full report may be viewed at http://alcts.ala.org/ccdablog/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/LC-2019-02.pdf​. A document covering all LC activities is available at the “LC at ALA” website (​https://www.loc.gov/librarians/american-library-association/annual/lc-update/​)
  • There will be special tours and events at the Library during the conference
  • The former Policy and Standards Division (PSD) and Cooperative and Instructional Programs Division (COIN) have been merged into a single division, Policy, Training, and Cooperative Programs (PTCP) headed by Judith Cannan
  • A draft instruction sheet for art genre/form terms will be published this summer, after which
    PTCP will begin to accept proposals for new/revised terms
  • PrePub Book Link (PPBL), the software that replaces ECIP Traffic Manager, launched in May. The
    new software allows creation of a MARC record from submitted data
  • Approximately sixty catalogers will join the BIBFRAME Pilot Phase Two; several catalogers from
    LC’s Overseas Offices are among the new participants.

Report of the ALA Representatives to the North American RDA Committee (NARDAC) (Dominique Bourassa, Stephen Hearn)

  • The full report may be viewed at https://alcts.ala.org/ccdablog/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/NARDAC-2019-02.pdf
  • NARDAC represents the North American region on the RSC
    • Dominique Bourassa serves as NARDAC chair
    • Thomas Brenndorfer is the NARDAC representative to the RSC
      • Kate James is the back-up representative to the RSC, LC Representative, and also serves as a member of the RSC Core Team as Examples Editor
    • Dominique Bourassa and Stephen Hearn are the ALA representatives to NARDAC
    • Kate James and Damien Iseminger serve as LC representatives; Damien also serves as NARDAC Coordinator of Web Content
    • NARDAC conducts regular virtual meetings to stay informed of RSC activities and Toolkit
      development
  • Outreach activities
    • The RDA Update Forum at ALA is now a standing venue for reporting by ALA’s NARDAC representatives to the ALA membership
    • The NARDAC chair collected feedback on the beta Toolkit from the CC:DA 3R Task Force and forwarded them to the RSC
    • NARDAC members have reviewed and provided feedback on documents from the other regional RDA communities
    • NARDAC has been working in an advisory role to the RSC regarding the 3R Project
      • Some activities include reviewing the RDA appellation elements, how to handle “pseudo-elements” (i.e., sub-types of elements such as musical or legal works with specialized options)
    • NARDAC members presented at various meetings and venues (presentations are available on the RSC Presentations webpage)
  • RDA activities (RSC)
    • There have been some RSC membership and governance changes
      • Honor Moody was appointed Examples Editor, to begin January 1, 2020 after Kate James’s term ends in December 2019
      • The dormant RSC working groups (including the Music Working Group) were
        disbanded

        • Only the Technical Working Group and the Translations Working Group will continue as standing groups
        • Future working groups will be convened as needed
          • An Applications Profile Working Group is planned
          • Creation of an Archives Working Group is on hold
  • 3R Project Highlights
    • There have been three major releases affecting content, display and functionality since Midwinter
    • The English text has been stabilized; this was the RSC’s highest priority and was accomplished in the April release
    • With the text stabilized, derivative product development (e.g., translations, policy statements, RDA examples, supplementary materials) can begin
    • Work on outstanding issues will proceed as long as it does not disrupt the stabilized text o Feedback will continue to be collected through the Toolkit’s “Submit Feedback” link
    • Outreach activities include ALA pre-conference workshops, presentations, and webinars
  • The next RSC meeting will take place in Santiago, Chile, the week of October 21, 2019.

Report from the PCC liaison (Everett Allgood)

  • The full report may be viewed at http://alcts.ala.org/ccdablog/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PCC-2019-2.pdf
  • PCC has formed the Task Group on Metadata Application Profiles (MAPs), charged with helping the PCC to understand the issues and practices associated with the management of MAPs
  • Phase I of the limited use of ISBD punctuation in bibliographic records has been implemented; this allows omission of terminal periods in descriptive fields
    • Consult the guidelines available on the PCC website: https://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/documents/guidelines-terminal-periods.pdf
    • Phase II, which will allow omission of punctuation between subfields of descriptive fields, will launch after Annual
    • The NACO CJK Funnel has started a clean-up project to review and update approximately 80,900 differentiated CJK personal name authority records that contain multiple non-Latin references
  • The work of the Standing Committee on Applications was entirely focused on ISBD and other punctuation in the MARC record
  • The Standing Committee on Standards is working on the next steps in forming an advisory NACO group, considering alignment of BIBCO/CONSER instructions for surrogates, and working with RBMS on the standard record
  • The Standing Committee on Training is working on modules for LRM training and revision of the NACO series training

Report on the CC:DA 3R Task Group (Bob Maxwell)

  • The Task Group performed a systematic examination of the beta RDA Toolkit; feedback was submitted to the RSC. The RSC was responsive to some feedback (e.g., adding a guidance chapter on “User Tasks”) but less responsive to others (e.g., opaqueness of language)
  • The group identified many topics that the RSC tagged for future consideration:
    • Guidance for formation of access points, either for RDA or for an application profile o Consideration of the term “resource”—this term appears to be used differently throughout RDA
    • Consider a closer alignment of RDA objectives and principles with those of the IFLA Statement of International Cataloguing Principles
    • Offer of assistance to the RSC with merging of “pseudo-element” instructions with the main instructions if possible (e.g., instructions for musical, legal, religious works) o Summarization of content: does this belong at the expression or work level?
    • Cardinality restrictions: do these work for monographs (e.g., WEM Lock applied to diachronic monographic works or the WE Lock applied to aggregating monographic works)?
    • Treatment of illustrations: “illustrator” relationship moved to manifestation level but “illustrative content” remains at expression level

Report from ALA Publishing Services and Presentation on RDA Toolkit changes (James Hennelly)

  • Much of the report contained information presented at the RDA Update Forum (​see above report​)
  • Accessibility testing for the beta Toolkit is being performed by an external company; the report is expected soon
  • The December/January release will hopefully contain some translation and examples of policy statements for testing purposes

RSC Presentations and discussions around the theme “RDA in English is stable: now what?”

  • Introduction (Kathy Glennan, RSC Chair)
    • Glennan provided an overview of where the Toolkit stands at present o RDA text is being marked up for the release note process
    • Text stabilization allows work to begin on translations, policy statements, examples, etc. o The RSC will serve as gatekeeper for what changes can be made to the stable text
    • Basic Information about the Translation Process (James Hennelly, Director, ALA Digital Reference)
      • The seven translations in the current Toolkit will need to be ready in order for official approval of the beta Toolkit
        • Translation work began with RDA Reference (in the Registry); currently working on the element set and then will be moving on to RDA instructions
      • The process uses several tools and software for translation
        • Everything in the content management system is parallel between languages (e.g., all files use the same IDs across languages)
    • Basic Information about the Policy Statement Development (James Hennelly, Director, ALA Digital Reference)
      • Noted that policy statement development will be extremely challenging, and a is a great unknown at this point
        • One of the major challenges is how to transition from “old” to “new” policy statements
      • Has formed an advisory group with representatives from several national libraries and the RSC to create best practices for policy statement development
      • The plan is to generate files of page structure and shell for each potential policy statement; groups will need to build shells on their own if they want policy statements in a different place
      • The baseline usability for a basic set of policy statements has not yet been determined
    • Policy statement development from the British Library perspective (Thurstan Young, British Library)
      • Created a mapping of current policy statements to their new locations
      • Current policy statements related purely to decisions on instructions
      • Plan to re-examine the original thinking behind the current policy statements and look at overlap with contributed content (e.g., workflows)
      • Plan to provide policy statements for new elements or for where there’s no match in the beta Toolkit
    • RDA in MARC (Thurstan Young, British Library)
      • Young made a proposal to the RDA Board to look at these needs in a comprehensive way across organizations in order to avoid duplicated effort; the Board approved
      • The NDMSO RDA/MARC Working Group is expected to begin work in September and finishing after Midwinter 2020
      • One challenge will be the shrinking MARC real estate available
      • Another possible area of work would be vocabularies
    • Application Profiles – Customizing RDA for Local Applications (Gordon Dunsire, RSC Technical Team Liaison Officer)
      • Slides from the presentation may be viewed at http://www.rda-rsc.org/sites/all/files/Dunsire%20Customizing%20RDA%20for%20local%20applications%20June%202019.pdf
      • Application profiles
        • Dunsire reviewed the definition of an application profile, and noted that the profile can also include the preferred recording method
        • For a structured application profile, a tabular layout is common
          • Row = specified element
          • Column = profile characteristic of element
        • A nested profile builds up levels of description, as was found in AACR2
          • Can be built by profile inheritance
          • Can be visualized as “building blocks”
        • The RSC will not provide in-depth application profiles; individual communities will need to do this
      • Local vocabulary encoding schemes (VES)
        • Provides controlled values for an element
          • preferred label (structured description)
          • notation (identifier)
          • IRI
        • Local VES must be compatible with the semantics of the RDA element scope/coverage
        • Local VES should also be mappable to the RDA VES (if there is one)
          • Local term/concept is broader, narrower, or equivalent to the RDA concept
      • Local string encoding schemes (SES)
        • Specifies how a string value of an element is constructed
          • Values of other elements (variable)
          • Boilerplate (fixed)
          • Order (fixed)
          • Punctuation/delimiters (fixed)
        • Example of a string would have elements recorded in a specified order (e.g., authorized access point for place “Main Street (Washington, D.C.)” includes preferred name of place + punctuation + authorized access point for place + punctuation)
        • For string de-construction, it’s possible to reverse-engineer a string into its original values
          • Use of punctuation is problematic because there aren’t many symbols
          • Use of label prefixes would make the data not user friendly or browseable
        • Local SES may contain non-RDA elements because the output is just a string
        • Customizing RDA requires management
          • Organization of development and maintenance
          • Documentation
          • Synchronization with changes in RDA
        • Dunsire ended his presentation with the question, “Now what?”
    • Future processes for changes to RDA (Kathy Glennan, RSC Chair)
      • The proposal process is not as well developed as hoped for at this point in time
      • Changes not only include instructions but also RDA reference, elements, definitions, scope notes, guidance chapters, resource tab documents, registry, etc.
        • Does not include examples! (there will be a different process for that)
      • The RSC still expects to have a formal proposal/response structure and a fast-track proposal, funneled through the regional organizations
        • The RSC may farm out some work to regional or specialized groups
        • Proposal process will be more streamlined, and CC:DA will need to figure out how to make this work with NARDAC
        • Fast-track proposals may not be widely publicized
          • Minor changes (e.g., fixing typos, etc.) require no RSC intervention and will not be tracked
      • NARDAC will need to figure out how consultation among its constituents will work (e.g., how will feedback on a EURIG proposal be collected?)
      • The RSC will be asked for a decision on a proposal process by August 1
        • CC:DA 3R Task Force is willing to assist with testing this process

Non-Human Personages and New RDA: Considerations for the LC/NACO Authority File (Kate James, LC)

  • Slides were not yet available at time of writing
  • James noted that she was speaking from her perspective as an LC cataloging policy specialist, not in her RDA role
  • A white paper on non-human personages will be posted this summer; this presentation contains a preview of the issues discussed in the paper
  • Functional Requirements (FR) models and RDA
    • The FR models were consolidated into LRM in 2017
    • A change in RDA’s underlying conceptual model (the FR models) necessitated the change to LRM as the new conceptual model
    • Alignment of LRM and RDA does allow differences that respect the principles of the model; for example,
      • “family” as a subtype of collective agent is in RDA, though it is not in LRM
      • “res” not implemented in RDA
  • Person entity
    • A comparison of various definitions of “person” shows that RDA originally aligned with FRAD, which allowed persona/identities that have relationships with works; LRM definition is closer to the FRBR and Merriam-Webster definitions that reflect “reality”
      • Note that LRM allows for human beings “assumed” to have lived
  • Non-human personages
    • This is the term suggested by the Working Group to describe an individual that is not a human being—a fictitious character, real animal, spirit, deity, angel, or other non-human being
      • Does not include unnamed groups (e.g., groups of unnamed croaking frogs whose sounds are recorded are excluded)
      • LRM approach: non-human personages are included with res
      • RDA approach is trickier: cannot include with res, since RDA did not implement it; cannot include as part of RDA entity since the entity is limited to other entities defined in RDA
        • Definition of person excludes non-human beings
  • Possible practical solutions
    • Ground rules for this exercise
      • Accept the model!
      • Instructions for identifying subjects are outside the scope of RDA
      • Instructions are not meant for “the weirdest book you’ve ever cataloged”
      • Relationships must be accurate to serve users and to create good linked data
    • Implications for the name authority file
      • Name authority records for non-human personages cannot be coded RDA
        • non-human personages cannot have agent relationships to works or expressions
        • Since these are outside of RDA, instructions for identification of non-human personages cannot come from RDA or LC-PCC PSs
    • How to make it work
      • Keep existing name authority records in the file
      • Allow new name authorities for individual non-human personages as needed
    • Keep fictitious groups and places in LCSH
      • LC could write a new manual of instruction for constructing headings for non-human personages
      • Develop new MARC description convention
        • Source code for 040 $e and 075 $2

Discussion of Future CC:DA work

  • The Virtual Participation Task Force work will continue, however, the group needs a new chair
  • The 3R Task Force will continue its work, and is willing to lend assistance to NARDAC/RSC as needed
  • A task force will be formed to review the CC:DA procedures document
  • A task force will be formed to investigate training needs in a broad sense, realizing that other stakeholders have training groups (e.g., PCC, ALCTS)

Announcement of the next CC:DA Meeting

  • The next CC:DA meeting is scheduled to be held at ALA Midwinter in Philadelphia, PA on January 25 and 27, 2020.

ALCTS/LITA Authority Control Interest Group (ACIG)

ACIG met on Sunday, June 23, 2019, celebrating the 35t​ h​ anniversary of the founding of the group. The meeting featured a panel of speakers on the theme “Welcome to LAC/Bienvenue à LAC: A New Bilingual NACO Partner.” As of this writing, slides are not yet available on ALA Connect.

Janis Young opened the meeting with the LC update, which largely mirrored the report given at the OLAC CAPC meeting (​see report above​).

A History of Bilingual Cataloging at LAC Continues (Sarah Stacy, Library and Archives Canada)

  • Library and Archives Canada (LAC) was formed in 2004 by a merger of the National Library of Canada and the National Archives, though bilingual cataloging has been happening for over forty years
    • Bilingual cataloging was mandated by an official act in 1969
    • A task force on cataloging standards was formed in 1972
    • Authority records and subject headings are assigned in both languages
    • Launched AMICUS in 1975; the system allowed links for parallel authorities
      • AMICUS retired in 2018, and LAC is now using OCLC WorldShare
      • A new OCLC WorldShare Record Manager module was created for Canadiana, the French language authority file
  • Initially wanted to recreate each catalog record in the opposite language, but this proved to be unsustainable; instead links are created
  • LAC is pleased with the implementation of OCLC WorldShare and wants to actively participate in this new international shared environment.

Transition to NACO: Managing English and French Files at LAC (Hong Cui, Library and Archives Canada)

  • Cui noted the transition milestones toward becoming a NACO member
  • Several examples of authority records were shared:
    • English and French equivalent records
    • Language neutral records
  • Guidelines were developed to determine when two records are created
  • LAC data in Canadiana records includes:
    • 016 with the Canadiana number o 042 authentication code
    • 7XX linking field
    • New fields
      • 065 Other classification number (with $2 fcps)
      • 682 Deleted heading information
  • Summary analysis of authority records
    • Canadiana authorities in AMICUS
      • 100: 499,957
      • 110: 192,971
      • 111: 18,442
      • 130: 22,164
    • Canadiana names: language profile
      • English: 83,824 (11%)
      • French: 84,118 (12%)
      • Language neutral: 565,592 (77%)
    • 194, 428 LAC English records matched to NACO file
      • Exact 1XX match: 129,533 (other matched by normalization or with 4XX)
      • 449,731 LAC English records not matched
  • Staff training utilized the “train the trainer” approach for WorldShare and NACO

Parlez-vous NACO? Authority Training at LAC (Dominique Bourassa, Yale University)

  • Bourassa remarked on her first outing as a NACO trainer
    • Three training sessions for LAC
      • Music team training sessions held in both languages
    • Identified differences in practice between NACO and Canadiana
    • Recruited reviewers from various NACO funnels to help with specialty review
      • Reviewers were initially concerned by the updating of “perfectly good records;” however, this was necessary to add mandated Canadiana fields

A National Library Joins the NACO Program!: LAC and NACO Documentation (Paul Frank, LC)

  • Frank began his presentation with a humorous dramatization of a phone call from LAC inquiring about joining NACO
    • The last time a national library joined NACO was in 2004 when the South American national library came on board
      • Only English language records were contributed, however
  • Bilingual headings are accommodated in 7XX
    • Can contain equivalent names/uniform titles from different thesauri or equivalent names/uniform titles in a multilingual thesaurus
  • OCLC WorldShare Record Manager prompts for a record number when a 5XX is entered, pushing NACO farther down the linked data path
  • DCM Z12 contains the Canadiana project instructions

RDA Linked Data Forum

The RDA Linked Data Forum was held on Monday, June 24. Slides are available at the RSC presentations webpage: http://www.rda-rsc.org/sites/all/files/Dunsire%20RDA%20Linked%20Data%20stuff%20June%202019.pdf

RDA Linked Data Stuff (Gordon Dunsire, RSC Technical Team Liaison Officer)

  • RDA Reference and GitHub releases
    • The latest release available on GitHub: Release 3.2.0, April 2019
      • What’s new: “contributor” shortcut relationships between manifestation and agent were amended to agents who create expressions in place of agents who create works
  • Short-cuts
    • Definition: Element or property that represents s linked chain of two or more other elements
      • “Element” refers to RDA; “Property” refers to linked data
    • Previously, this short-cut was only represented by a diagram in the original Toolkit
      • “Manifestation has work manifested;” the short-cut bypasses the expression level
    • New Toolkit short-cuts simplify aggregates
      • “Manifestation has contributor agent to aggregate agent;” the aggregated expression not recorded
    • After examination and interpretation of the LRM, a decision was made that the creator of the work applies to every expression of the work, the “get out” clause to shorten the chain
  • Element hierarchies
    • All elements belong to a well-defined and well-formed semantic hierarchy; nothing exists in isolation from anything else
    • Results in 13 x 13 high-level relationship matrix
      • 13 entries linked to 13 entities
    • Full matrix hierarchy under construction (only current through December 2018)
    • Semantics support the “smart” machine processing of RDA data
  • Data inheritance
    • Works entirely through machine inferencing
      • Data is automatically “inherited” up a hierarchy
  • Database Implementation scenarios
    • Linked data (RDF)
      • Entities and vocabularies linked by IRIs
    • Relational data
      • Entities linked by (local) identifier
    • Bib/authority
      • Compound entities linked by authorized access points
    • Flat file
      • Compound entries with no links (e.g., catalog cards)
    • These implementation scenarios are being reviewed and recast in light of the new Toolkit
      • It is hinted at, but not explicit, that the new Toolkit is entirely ready to implement as linked data.