IFLA Cataloguing Section

IFLA 2004, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Report submitted by Glenn Patton and Bill Garrison (ALA representatives to the IFLA Cataloguing Section)

The 70th General Conference and Council of IFLA was held, Aug. 22-27, 2004, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Gunilla Jonsson of the Royal Library of Sweden chaired the activities of the Cataloguing Section with Judy Kuhagen of the Library of Congress serving as secretary.  Patrick LeBoeuf of the Bibliothèque national de France serves as the Information Officer.

A major topic at the Buenos Aires conference, both for the meetings of the Cataloguing Section and for the section program was the second of the IFLA Meetings of Experts on An International Cataloguing code.  This second invitational meeting was held at the Universidad de San Andrés on August 17-18, 2004 in Buenos Aires.  There were 45 participants in this meeting representing 14 Latin American and Caribbean countries with an additional representation from 6 countries on the Planning Committee.  A web site for the meeting (including listerv-based sharing discussion papers and online discussion preceding each regional meeting) can be found at <http://www.ddb.de/news/ifla_conf_index.htm> .  This 2nd meeting explored the same set of five topics as the first meeting held in Frankfurt, Germany last year (personal names, corporate names, seriality, treatment of multi-volume/multi-part works, and uniform titles/GMDs/forms of expression) in the context of various cataloguing rules.  Participants were able to view the draft Principles document that was produced after the meeting in Frankfurt and had access to discussion papers prior to the meeting.  The participants in the Buenos Aires meeting recommended some minor changes to the principles that resulted from the Frankfurt meeting.  The participants from the 1st meeting will also be sent the recommendations of and minor changes from the 2nd meeting for comment and discussion.  One additional conference has been planned to precede the IFLA Conference in Seoul, Korea (2006).  Two additional conferences (one possibly at the Biblioteca Alexandrina in Egypt in 2005, and one preceding the IFLA Conference in Durban, South Africa in 2007) are being investigated.

There is a mandate from the IFLA Governing Board to have each group within IFLA reviewed.  The process will begin after the conclusion of the Buenos Aires conference.  The Cataloguing Section will be reviewed during the first round.  The review will consist of gathering statistical information (number of members, number of attendees at section meetings, etc.) and of each group reviewing itself in light of its strategic plan.  As a result, the Cataloguing Section spent a good deal of time during its second meeting discussing its strategic plan and how it was fulfilling each of the goals and action items in its plan.  The Cataloguing Section's Strategic Plan may be viewed at  <http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/annual/sp13-04.htm> .

The Section also discussed a proposal sent by the Chair and Secretary of the Section to revise and set up procedures for membership on the Section's review groups.  The Section approved the proposal for the nomination, selection and terms of service.  The new proposal was sent to the Coordinating Board of Division IV for discussion and will be implemented during the coming year.

The Cataloguing Section's Open Programme had the theme "Developments in Cataloguing Guidelines."  There were 3 papers presented.  First, Barbara Tillett reported on the 2nd IFLA Meeting of Experts on an International Cataloguing Code.  Subsequently, Lynne Howarth from the University of Toronto summarized the results of the worldwide review of the report from the section's Working Group on the Use of Metadata Schemas.  Lastly, Carol van Nuys of the National Library of Norway reported on a project that she and her colleagues are conducting on the National Library's Paradigma Project that applies FRBR to a web-archiving project.

During the past year, Patrick LeBoeuf served as the editor of  SCATNews.  Two issues were published and are available at <http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/scatn/SCATNews21.pdf> and <http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/scatn/SCATNews20.pdf> .

A further report on the IFLA CDNL Alliance on Bibliographic Services (ICABS) was given at the end of its first year after taking over the work of the former IFLA core program on Universal Bibliographic Control and International MARC (UBCIM).  ICABS announced that the former UBCIM publications series will be continued under the title "IFLA Series on Bibliographic Control."  ICABS also provided funding for the ISBD-FRBR mapping project that was conducted by Tom Delsey and is discussed below under the FRBR Working and ISBD Review Group reports.  More complete information about ICABS and its activities, strategic plan and reports may be found on IFLAnet at <http://www.ifla.org/VI/7/icabs.htm> .


Activities of the Cataloguing Section continue to be focused in 5 working groups.

The FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) Review Group continues to be chaired by Patrick LeBoeuf.  The group provides a place within IFLA for the support and development of the FRBR conceptual model.  During the last year, the group established several working groups.  The Expression-Entity Working Group was formally charged and has just begun its work with a report anticipated at the end of 2004 or early 2005, and the Working Group on Continuing Resources was also formally charged.  In addition, the FRBR Review Group formed the following: the Working Group on FRBR/CRM Dialogue that is working with the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) to harmonize the work of FRBR conceptual model and the CIDOC CRM that provides definitions and a formal structure for describing the implicit and explicit concepts and relationships used in cultural heritage documentation (see: <http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/index.html#>  ) and the Working Group on Teaching and Training whose work has not yet begun.  In addition, the FRBR Review Group recommended in Buenos Aires that the Cataloguing Section and the Classification and Indexing Section formally charge and appoint the Working Group on Subject Relationships and Classification.  The FRBR Review Group hopes that its work will be invigorated during the coming year as a result of the completion of the mapping of the overall ISBD structure to FRBR that was completed by Tom Delsey during 2004.

The Working Group on Guidelines for OPAC Displays has basically completed its work.  It sent a document out for worldwide review during 2004 and has submitted its report to the Cataloguing Section.  Some minor revisions remain to be completed, and the Working Group hopes to have the guidelines published by IFLA during 2005.

The Section's Working Group on a Multilingual Dictionary for Cataloguing Terms and Concepts (chaired by Monika Münnich) continued its work.  Guidelines for inputting definitions and terms were finalized.  As of the Buenos Aires conference, the database contained all English language definitions found in the glossary of AACR2, all German translations of the AACR2 glossary definitions, and all ISBD definitions.  During the coming year, entries for the terminology in FRBR will be entered.

The Working Group on Anonymous Classics completed its work during the year on the second edition revised of Part 1 of Anonymous Classics, a list of uniform headings for European literatures, which is now available on IFLAnet at <http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/pubs/AnonymousClassics2004.pdf> .  Work continues on a solution to gathering similar information from other parts of the world.

The ISBD Review Group (chaired by John Byrum, Library of Congress) met twice during the Buenos Aires conference.  The group reviewed almost all of the issues raised during the worldwide review of ISBD(ER).  The review group will see a revised version of ISBD(ER).  The ISBD-FRBR mapping that was completed by Tom Delsey was approved and endorsed.  The group decided not to consider the issues that were raised by this mapping until it has completed work on a consolidated ISBD.  Several study groups have work in progress as well.  The Series Study Group has almost completed its work.  The Future Directions Study Group is focusing its work on the consolidated ISBD.  Production of a consolidated ISBD will be a top priority for this group during the coming year.  The ISBD(A) Review Group will continue working with Gunilla Jonsson serving as chair.  There was also some discussion of expanding the ISBD with XML schema rather than prescribed punctuation, but the ISBD Review Group would like to postpone working on this until a consolidated ISBD is available.

The Cataloguing Section also continues to be involved with the Working Group on Functional Requirements of Authority Numbering and Records (FRANAR), an effort of the IFLA Division of Bibliographic Control, chaired by Glenn Patton (OCLC).  The group is preparing a draft report that will be distributed sometime this year for worldwide review and is also working on a second document that will address the issue of numbering.

Barbara Tillett attended the second section meeting and announced that a division-level group similar to FRANAR will be appointed for subject authority records.

The 71st IFLA General Conference and Council will be held in Oslo, Norway, August 14-18, 2005 with the theme: Libraries: a voyage for discovery.  There will also be a satellite meeting, August 11-12, 2005 in Järvenpää, Finland that will have FRBR as its theme.

Future IFLA meetings are now planned as follows:

2005 - Oslo, Norway (August 14-18)
2006 - Seoul, Korea (August 22-28)
2007 - Durban, South Africa (dates to be announced)
2008 - Québec, Canada (dates to be announced)

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