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----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Concerning the Library of Congress' proposed revisions in cataloging of art materials and the ARLIS/NA Cataloging Advisory Committee's proposed response. About 6 weeks ago Daniel Starr posted a message to the list inviting comment on the CAC's proposed response to LC's proposed revisions in cataloging of art materials. Whether we were all in perfect accord with the Committee's response or the matter got lost in the hustle and bustle of "the holidays", there wasn't any discussion on the list. I checked the AUTOCAT archives and there was, I think, one message on the subject. Presumably the CAC's message was sent on to LC as it appeared in Daniel's posting of 12/7/1999. All of us in art librarianship (not just catalogers) owe the CAC a debt for their reasoned, point-by-point consideration of LC's revisions and for its timely submission to LC before the 1/1/2000 deadline for comment. They argue for more flexibility in assigning geographic and chronological subject headings. I wonder whether they'll fall on deaf ears. A group of catalogers at the institution at which I work talked over the subject for an hour one morning last week. I'll admit that I had to look up "syndetic" in a dictionary, and that my review of H1250 jogged my memory on a few things. Here are some of the things we said: LC's proposed revisions are very much true to form - promoting economy, specificity and conformity with general subdivision order. But they stray from the trend toward natural language in subject headings. Change in assignment of headings for time period. Agree with LC and CAC that the assignment of broader headings such as Drawing$y20th century is not justified when a more specific heading such as Drawing, Cubist is assigned. The CAC's proposed addition of chronological subdivisions to headings such as Painting, Baroque$zSpain is a good idea, and we wondered how many other such headings there are. Any suggestions? Can Art, Abstract$zUnited States$y21st century be far off? The more extensive list of free-floating century subdivisions is something many of us have wanted for years. We think the fight to retain geographic subdivision with the headings Art, Ancient and Art, Medieval is an important one because it supports the use of natural language in subject (and keyword!) searching. (Where's that study of search strategies when we need it!) A recent search in the RLIN books file turned up many LC records for Art, Ancient# with 043 fields as follows: 043 e-it--- 94 clusters 043 e-gr--- 67 clusters 043 aw----- 84 clusters We even wondered whether the effort to view the Ancient and Medieval qualifiers as stylistic ones might be extended to Modern. Few catalogers feel comfortable assigning the term Modern to art of the 17th and 18th centuries. How about (nudge nudge, wink wink) Painting, Modern$zFrance$y19th-20th centuries? Will our catalogs become a confusing mess to our users just when they were beginning to learn the basic format of LCSH for art? Will we be able to make any global updates to alleviate the problem? Workshops for catalogers to adapt to the changes are a very good idea. Sorry for this somewhat rambling comment on a subject that deserves greater clarity. Any takers? Mark Bresnan Frick Art Reference Library [log in to unmask] __________________________________________________________________ Mail submissions to [log in to unmask] Administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc) to [log in to unmask] ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance: http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/arlis-l.html Questions may be addressed to list owner at: [log in to unmask]