The following are minutes from the last meeting of the
SC Art and Special Collections Catalogers Group Meeting
Getty Research Library
November 16, 2001
23 Southern California catalogers gathered on Friday afternoon, November 16,
2001, in the Getty Research Library conference room. The day was clear and
sunny and several of us arrived early to see some of the galleries, have
lunch in the cafeteria or the restaurant or just stroll around the
magnificent plaza.
Isabella Zuralski, Getty Special Collections Cataloger, had organized the
event, providing free parking for us and a delightful assortment of
refreshments to enjoy during the meeting. Alexis Curry, Catalogers Group
Chair, had prepared the agenda, however she was unable to attend. Nancy
Norris (UCLA) acted as moderator in the absence of Alexis. First order of
business was to tentatively set our next meeting for Friday, January 25.
The place is to be decided, and any offers of a meeting space will be
welcome. Next we each introduced ourselves. Institutions represented were
the Japanese American National Museum, California Institute of Technology,
the Huntington, CSU Northridge, MOCA, LACMA, UCLA, Woodbury University, and,
of course, the Getty.
Several meetings were reported on. Heather Cleary (LACMA) had recently
attended the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) conference in
Portland, Oregon. AMIA publications are now listed on the Society of
American Archivists website. Beth Deahl and Joan Benedetti had been to the
ARLIS/SC meeting in Santa Barbara and Nancy Norris had attended the
ARLIS/Mountain West meeting in Las Vegas. Both of these ARLIS chapter
meetings had been 2-3 day affairs with many wonderful programs and tours.
Nancy said it is possible that a national ARLIS conference may be held in
Las Vegas in the future and she was very enthusiastic about it based on the
chapter meeting.
A series of eclectic cataloging problems were then discussed.
Marti Pike (Woodbury U.) brought with her one volume of a set that had been
donated to her library that was unlike anything she had ever seen. The
donor had taken apart art and architecture magazines (dating from 1900-1920)
and placed the individual articles together into volumes (which he had
bound) on general topics (e.g., "buildings"). Luckily, both Getty
catalogers as well as Nancy Norris had seen this sort of individualized use
of journals. Joycelyn Gibbs (Getty) suggested cataloging as an archival
collection, with one record, with added title entries for the journals. That
is, treating the re-made journals as if they are a collection of scrapbooks
- thus think of them archivally.
David Woodruff (Getty) described an authority problem concerning a massive
sculpture of Alexander the Great's Entry into Babylon. Although the book in
hand concerned only one version of the sculpture, apparently several others
are extant and David wanted to know if the others needed to be cited and, if
so, how to differentiate them. There ensued a discussion about versions, or
"states" of a work. Arlene Zuckerman said that if there is not already
another authority record for a different version one does not have to
distinguish, but if one wants to qualify a particular work it should be by
place or medium or both. Isabella Zuralski said that the date should be
added if possible.
Nancy Norris asked David if he had had any response to his request to SACO
to approve the term "horse ballet." He said he had sent it in last June and
had not yet heard back. Arlene advised to wait until January and then email
them about it. Nancy asked Arlene how long it normally takes for SACO to
respond. She said that a decision would normally be made within 6 months.
Isabella Zuralski (Getty) gave an example of the German gallery Thannhauser
that she would like to submit to NACO. The gallery seems to have had
branches in Munich, Lucerne and in Berlin. An established authority record
in NAF refers to a gallery with branches in Munich and in Lucerne; however,
variant names are documented for a gallery Thannhauser located in Munich
only. They were extant during WWI and this could have caused name or place
changes. Arlene Z. suggested making a chart of all name changes, together
with dates. You may see a pattern.
Isabella also asked a question about the use of relator terms. Sara
Shatford Layne (UCLA) said this is an institutional choice, but one must be
aware of the implications for your OPAC software. Must let vendor know what
you want. Dorothy Auyong from the Huntington added that relator terms are
widely at the Huntington Library, and are a useful 'sorting tool' in the
browse display.
There was a question about the difference in usage between "Installations
(Art)" and "Site-specific installations (Art)." Both terms subdivide
geographically. Lynda Bunting (MOCA) said that "installation art" is used
more frequently as many installations are exhibited, but only a few are
"site specific," i.e., created specifically for a particular site.
"Installations (Art) should have a geographic subdivision if one has a book
about installations created in a particular place, i.e., "The installation
art of Brazil." However, Lynda recommends not to use a geographic
subdivision if one has a single artist monograph or exhibition catalog,
because for the most part installations can be recreated in any museum or
gallery and many of today's successful artists have homes in two or more
locations. How does one select the country of origin? Site-specific
installations (Art) should almost always be subdivided geographically
because their location is fixed."
The next agenda item was to ask about experiences with LC's Catalogers
Desktop. Heather Cleary (LACMA) has been helping LACMA staff with problems
they have had with it. Beth Deahl (Getty) said that they had tried to
implement it at the Getty, but they have been preoccupied with their
migration to Voyager since June. Catalogers Desktop kept crashing and this
made it very hard to learn. Catalogers were not that eager to change
workflow and the modules that were most desirable were the most problematic.
Sara Shatford Layne said that UCLA's system people had to be very persistent
in getting through to LC. Their problems were resolved by reloading the
licensing software. Heather Cleary confirmed that this was the way LACMA
had resolved problems they had with being able to print out displays. A web
version will be available next year.
Mary Woodley (CSUN), Metadata Librarian, brought along an attractive flyer
concerning a project she has been deeply involved with called the San
Fernando Valley History Digital Library: An Online Visual History of the San
Fernando Valley. The project received a $153,000 grant from the Institute
of Museum and Library Services. The project staff have met with over 30 SFV
local historical societies, all of whom have contributed images and other
documents. Many of the images contributed had little or no information, but
now that it is available on the web, corrections are being emailed. They
are using CONTENT DM database software. The site can be viewed at
<http://digital-library.csun.edu/>
Mary also discussed the most recent developments concerning the Dublin Core
and possible uses of a publishers' metadata standard called ONIX, which
allows much more detailed publication information (such as weight, shipping
information, prizes the book and/or the author may have received, background
info. on the author, etc.) to be included in a record. CC:DA (ALA Committee
on Cataloging: Description and Access) Task Force on ONIX International
provides a summary and links for more information.
http://www.ala.org/alcts/organization/ccs/ccda/tf-onix1.html
Nancy asked the group if they would be interested in dedicating a catalogers
meeting to discussing Dublin Core in more depth or even having a
demonstration or workshop in using DC. Everyone seemed to like this. Mary
offered to host a catalogers meeting at CSUN on the subject of the Dublin
Core. Someone suggested that maybe ARLIS/SC would like to organize so as to
reach a larger audience.
******************************************
Alexis Curry, Librarian
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Research Library
Web: http://www.lacma.org/
Email: [log in to unmask]
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