ALA Annual Conference June 1997

Minutes

June 28, 1997

Present: Arlene Taylor, Rosann Bazirjian, Shirley Coleman, Walter Cybulski, James Maccaferri, Mitch Turitz, Ray Schwartz, several guests.

Absent: Jane Greenberg, Lydia Wasylenko

I. Preliminaries

Minutes from Midwinter Conference were approved. Agenda for meetings at Annual conference was approved.

II. General Business

A. Summary of Topics

Lists of possible briefing paper topics was distributed. Members were asked to keep these in mind while discussion continued.

B. Suggested Journals

Mitch Turitz made a recommendation to add Library Hi Tech News to the list. Pat Callahan agreed to review this title. Also to be added is Technicalities, which will be reviewed by James Maccaferri.

Other titles that will be assessed for possible inclusion are:

Journal of Internet Cataloging (Arlene)
Catalogue & Index (Arlene)
Ariadne (Pat)
Knowledge Organization (Walter)
Alexandria (Ray)

There are some new incoming committee members and interns. Journal assignment will be done by e-mail after the conference.

Mitch asked if there were any listservs that should be monitored. Several were identified and committee members assigned to monitor for relevance. They include:

LCCN (Arlene)
Acqnet
Call-L (Pat)
Dig-Lib
Ex Libris (Walter)

C. ALCTS Meta Access Task Force (Mitch)

A recommendation was made that a digest of ALA and other library-generated information on Metadata and Metaaccess be made available for citing on web sites. In addition, existing committees should be charged with information gathering and the citing of this information. CFFC was mentioned as a possible candidate for this task.

If CFFC were to be charged with this task, the present scope of the committee might need to be broadened. It is already broader than its present charge, going beyond the catalog as represented by MARC records and AACR2. Ray raised the question of whether the charge allows for expansion. It is pretty broad, although written in a traditional way. The committee felt that it was not necessarily restrictive as written.

The CC:DA Task Force on Metadata is scheduled to meet after this meeting. Pat suggested that CFFC wait and see what ALCTS does about this. Until we are asked, we don't have to do anything, but we should be thinking about it.

III. Briefing Papers

A. Paper #11 has gone to press, to be published in July, 1997.

Paper #12 is to be written by Barbara Tillett on the international aspects of authority control. She will rework her presentation from the conference. A September 19 deadline was discussed, with paper to be published in Vol. 8, no. 6 (Nov. 1997)

Paper #13 is to on URIs and Metadata as a follow-up to the program. A November deadline was discussed, with publication in Vol. 9, no. 1 (Jan. 1998). Possible authors might be Stu Weibel, Rebecca Guenther, or Carl Lagoze. Ray will work on this.

B. Future topics

IFLA International Conference on AACR2 in October in Toronto--perhaps a paper on the next step after this conference. What does it mean for what we are doing now?

System architecture--this would combine several topics from the list. Might include PICS. Possible author, Stu Weibel.

Form genre headings and how they affect the catalog--Arlene brought this topic as a suggestion from the Form Genre Implementation Committee. David Miller is a potential author for this paper. A prototype index has already been created. Arlene would edit this paper if topic is selected.

Multi-lingual interface--UNICODE--James would edit.

Present: Arlene Taylor, Rosann Bazirjian, Jane Greenberg, Shirley Coleman, Walter Cybulski, Ray Schwartz, several guests

Absent: Mitch Turitz, James Maccaferri, Lydia Wasylenko

I. Guidelines for Briefing Papers

A general discussion took place. Main points discussed include:

It is important to stress early contact with the author by both the ALCTS Newsletter editor and the CFFC editor. The author should be put in contact with the editor of the briefing paper.

The CFFC editor should communicate with the committee. Near final papers should be available for other committee members to read and make commments.

Jane will ask Dale about the recommended citation style.

How does Dale like to receive copies of paper? Jane indicated that he prefers a copy by e-mail, followed up by a hardcopy.

We should include a stronger statement about copyright issues and the role of release forms.

Jane will gather more ideas, then draft a document and send it out to committee members for comment.

II. Meeting Times

A discussion of alternative meeting times was next. The general consensus was that 11:30-12:30 was a better time, preferably on Sunday and Monday. It may be necessary to change the days to Saturday and Sunday for Midwinter.

III. Program Report (Ray)

A. CFFC Program:

Good comments were received from attendees. There was standing room only, with 350 chairs in the room instead of 400. All 450 handouts were gone so probably close to 500 people attended.

The program was advertised in the LITA and ALCTS Newsletters, Cognotes, and 25-30 listservs. The ALCTS office was very helpful in getting the program publicized.

B. RUSA Program: Latest Fashion in Catalogs

CFFC was not mentioned as co-sponsor, although they did indicate that RUSA was co-sponsor of our program. There were fewer attendees than for CFFC's program.

Four speakers spoke about the current state:

ILS--evolving next generation; Technical Services perspective, detailed rather than theoretical.

IU Library School: opposite end -- theoretical, user behavior, and how to apply it to the development of the catalog.

Clifford Lynch -- webizing of the catalog; purposes, drawbacks, awareness in implementation process.

UCLA -- theoretical; user behavior and OPACS today; still difficult to use; card catalog concepts; do not reflect current generation; research on user information seeking

IV. New Business

Should we plan another program or wait a year? It is too late for Annual Conference 1998. We need to start planning at Midwinter in New Orleans if we want to do a program in 1999. PICS (a syntax for translating Metadata on the web) will be a big topic by that time.