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TO: Multiple recipients of list ARLIS-L ([log in to unmask])
FROM: Elizabeth O'Keefe
SUBJECT: Summary of meeting of ARLIS/NY Cataloging Disc. Group
The ARLIS/NY Cataloging Discussion Group met on Monday,
August 5, at the Watson Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The theme of the meeting, which attracted about twenty people,
including catalogers and librarians from the Met, MOMA, the
Frick, Christie's New York, the Whitney, Columbia, NYU, and
the Morgan, was the recent ALA conference in New York.
Conference attendees reported on sessions of interest to
catalogers and technical services staff. A program on database
cleanup after recon offered valuable tips on how to detect and
correct, manually or via global change, erroneous filing
indicators, obsolete field tags, missing fixed field values,
and other errata. Restructuring technical services was a topic
that came up at several different sessions. The process,
however cloaked by Orwellian terms such as "voluntary layoff"
and "professional enhancement" (i.e. doubling the work load),
seems to involve eliminating cataloging positions and/or
reducing the quality of the bibliographic records. A report
on the program on subject authorities in the nineties led
to the usual lively debate on whether LC subject headings
are just for librarians (or maybe even just for catalogers).
Several catalogers attended the session on the LC Catalogers'
Desktop and forthcoming version of the electronic version
of AACR2. One user of the current edition of the Desktop
gave it a high rating for ease of use, speed (provided you
use it on the hard disk rather than the CD-ROM), and overall
utility.
News on the standard front: a conference of cataloging
experts will be meeting next year in Toronto to discuss
whether to revise, or to re-do completely AACR. The next
editon of the Subject Cataloging Manual will contain a
policy on artistic photography. LSCH is now establishing
decades as subject headings. And perhaps the best news of
all for catalogers who have submitted suggestions for
changes to name or subject headings, but had them rejected
because the change would involve too much bibliographic
record maintenance in LC's catalog: LC is looking into
acquiring an integrated system, which would enable global
changes.
A group member who attended the RLG users group reported
that BHA is going to be a separate database in RLIN. RLG
is debating whether to expand it, or even open it to
selected contributors. When someone at the meeting asked
whther any libraries were still doing analytics, the answer
was, yes, indeed; in fact, analytics had been the topic of
a meeting of the CDG.
The next meeting of the group is planned for Oct. 30th,
at MOMA. A demonstration of their new library system,
Endeavor's Voyager system, is planned. Attendees are urged
to come primed with ideas (and possible venues) for future
meetings.
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