Present: Patrick Callahan, Shirley Coleman, Kevin Furniss, Liz Icenhower, James Maccaferri, Ray Schwartz, Arlene Taylor (presiding), Lydia Wasylenko (recording), guests.

Absent: Sarah Bryan, Walter Cybulski.

11:30 a.m.- 12:30 p.m. in the Capitol Hilton New York Room

Approval of the agenda. The agenda for the CFFC's June 27 and June 28 meetings was approved by Committee members present.

Review of minutes of the CFFC's meetings at ALA Midwinter in New Orleans in January 1998. Two corrections were made.

Correction to the minutes of the January 10, 1998 session, under "New Charges": it was agreed that briefing papers in progress would be continued, and that, after their completion, the relationship between briefing papers and the Web tutorials requested by ALCTS would be explored.

Correction to the minutes of the January 11, 1998 session: Shirley Coleman did bring up the previously suggested Web tutorial topic of form and genre headings. However, she did not ask to be the editor of such a Web tutorial.

There being no other corrections, the January minutes were approved as amended.

Discussion of the future of the CFFC briefing papers. It was noted that July 21, 1998 was the deadline to submit material for the last paper issue of the ALCTS newsletter, which will be made available only on the Web in the future. The CFFC needed to decide whether to continue issuing briefing papers in the Web version of the ALCTS newsletter. An alternative was to move the CFFC briefing paper series to Library Resources and Technical Services (LRTS), whose editor, Jennifer Younger, was reportedly enthusiastic about the possibility. It was pointed out that assistance would have to be provided to authors if their briefing papers were to be made into Web tutorials.

Ultimately, Committee members agreed to try to continue offering briefing papers in the ALCTS Web newsletter and to develop Web tutorials as well, with the appropriate format(s) for a given topic being chosen jointly by the author and the CFFC. Work on written guidelines for briefing paper authors, a document nearing finalization, will need to take into account the ALCTS newsletter's move from paper to an electronic format. When Arlene Taylor solicited meeting guests' reactions regarding the discontinuation of the paper version of the ALCTS newsletter, a question about archiving of past issues was raised.

Reports on Briefing Papers #12 and #13. Shirley Coleman reported that Barbara Tillett had promised to "repackage" #12, a paper on international authority control, over the 4^th of July weekend. Thus it seemed possible to meet the ALCTS newsletter's July 21, 1998 deadline. Briefing Paper #13, which will address URIs, metadata, and Dublin Core records, will be the first CFFC briefing paper issued in the Web version of the ALCTS newsletter. Ray Schwartz reported that #13's author, Clifford Lynch, had been apprised of the initial October 22, 1998 deadline. The fall-back deadline will be February 4, 1999.

Discussion of potential future briefing paper topics and authors. Briefing paper #14, on multi-lingual catalog interfaces and UNICODE, will be edited by Jim Maccaferri. The initial deadline will be March 18, 1999, and the fall-back deadline May 13, 1999. Editor Kevin Furniss is currently identifying potential authors for Briefing Paper #15, on disability technology. For that paper, the initial deadline will be July 22, 1999, and the fall-back deadline September 23, 1999. The decision regarding desirability of a briefing paper on form and genre headings (to be implemented by LC in November 1998) was deferred, pending the outcome of a Midwinter 1999 discussion forum that will review LC's initial experience. If it is ultimately determined that a briefing paper or Web tutorial on form and genre headings would be useful, a briefing paper on the subject could be "slipped into" the CFFC's "every-other-newsletter-deadline" schedule. Also deferred was a decision regarding a briefing paper about the IFLA conference on AACR2, a topic better to be discussed after issues pertaining to the structure of AACR2 have been sorted out.

11:30 a.m.- 12:30 p.m. in the Quality Hotel Melbourne Room

Discussion of the CFFC topic list and of ALA programs of interest to the Committee. CFFC members present reviewed the topic list compiled by Sarah Bryan along with her most recent bibliography. Committee members were encouraged to try to attend a program on digital object identifiers (DOIs) sponsored by the LITA Electronic Publishing/Electronic Journals Special Interest Group and a MARBI-sponsored program on 856 fields in authority records. Although the CFFC already had a "year's worth" of planned briefing papers and Web tutorial topics, there was discussion as to whether any other topic was especially timely and relevant. It was agreed that one such topic is OPAC displays (i.e., standardization and improvement thereof, guidelines for, etc.), which would be a logical #16 for the list of upcoming papers and tutorials.

Review of journal assignments for the CFFC abstracting project. All present agreed that the list of Committee members' individual journal assignments would be revised via email.

Discussion of Web tutorials assigned to the CFFC by the ALCTS Executive Committee. In an extended discussion as to how such a new responsibility could best be handled, a significant number of potential problems were identified, including the challenges of:

• finding topics appropriate for the format.
• meeting participants' needs for individualized feedback, given tutorials' interactive nature.
• obtaining technological support (e.g., JAVA programming) for authors, given tutorials' complexity and "high-maintenance" features.
• maintaining continuity over time within the structure of a committee whose members turn over regularly.
• preventing production of Web tutorials on a variety of topics from interfering with the CFFC's ongoing work of studying catalog form and function from an overview perspective, an approach traditionally more "holistic" than those of other ALA groups seeking to address very specialized aspects of the catalog. 

At the conclusion of this discussion, it was agreed that CFFC Chair Arlene Taylor would go back to the ALCTS Executive Committee at its June 29, 1998, meeting for clarification of the Web tutorial assignment. She would present the following concerns to the Executive Committee:

• the CFFC's desire to maintain its "holistic" approach to the study of catalog form and function.
• the CFFC's desire to preserve the benefits of the current briefing paper format.
• the potential problems of trying to develop and offer Web tutorials; and the question as to whether a continuing education/instructional committee might not be better suited to the tutorial task.

Discussion of the CFFC meeting time at ALA conferences. There was consensus that the Committee could probably do its work more effectively in one longer meeting rather than in the two short ones currently scheduled from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on conference Saturdays and Sundays. Incoming CFFC Chair Patrick Callahan will try to effect a schedule change, requesting a 4:30-7:00 p.m. Friday meeting time.

Respectfully submitted,

Lydia W. Wasylenko