- Welcome
Bill Fietzer welcomed all members and guests to the meeting.
- Introductions
All members and guests in attendance introduced themselves by stating their names and institutional affiliations.
- Announcements
Judy Ahronheim reported that the 2003 ALA annual conference will be held jointly with the conference of the Canadian Library Association in Toronto, and that the committee may perhaps need to plan ahead even further in order to present programs and hold meetings.
Fietzer said that he had followed up on the discussion at Friday’s committee meeting about the suggestion for an ALCTS-wide committee on standards. He talked to both Carlen Ruschoff and Charles Wilt about the protocol for moving this suggestion forward. Fietzer will be part of the agenda of the ALCTS board meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 16, at which he will propose a task force to study the feasibility of establishing a standards committee. Tentative volunteers for any such task force were Ahronheim, Wayne Jones, and Cecilia Preston.
Ann Sandberg-Fox, who serves on the ALCTS Fundraising Committee, reported that no money has yet been approved for any ALCTS programs at Annual 2001. One of the goals is to collect funds so that honoraria may be given to speakers, for which the committee is investigating corporate sponsorships, mostly vendors and publishers.
- Library of Congress Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium
Sandberg-Fox reported that the conference was a year in the planning, originally focusing on cataloging, subject access, and current standards, but eventually being broadened to include metadata and more.
The conference lasted two and a half days, Nov. 15-17, 2000. About 30 papers were presented, followed by commentaries and panel discussions. The keynote speech was given by Michael Gorman, and the after-dinner speech by Clifford Lynch. There were five main topics:
- Library cataloging and the web
- Current library standards
- Future directions
- Experimentation
- Partnerships
The main goal was to bring representatives together from the various interested communities (e.g., libraries, vendors), and to develop a concrete action plan that LC would initiate. Sandberg-Fox gave brief summaries of some of the papers. They were followed by breakout sessions on eleven topics, with each group assigned the task of coming up with recommendations, which were then presented to all attendees. These recommendations are available on the conference’s website
(
http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/recommendations.html).
An action plan will be developed, focusing on both short-term (12-18 months) and long-term (3-5 years) projects. LC hopes to have the plan developed by Apr. 2001.
The multiple versions (aka multiple manifestations) issue was addressed to some extent at the conference, and there may be a special forum on this topic in the future, sponsored by LC. Sandberg-Fox noted that there already is a PCC Task Force on Multiple Manifestations of Electronic Resources
(http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/tgmuler.html), as well as the CC:DA Task Force on an Appendix of Major and Minor Changes (when and when not to make title changes), the latter of which was to meet later in the day
(
http://www.ala.org/alcts/organization/ccs/ccda/tf-appx1.html). It was noted that the CC:DA task force is dealing with the AACR rules specifically, and not with the multiple versions issue broadly.
Fietzer recommended that NRMC members check out the conference site
(http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/),
partly so that the committee might determine which issues it might want to address once LC has repackaged the comments into an action plan. Cybercasting of the conference is still available on the site, and the proceedings are to be published by this summer (edited by Sandberg-Fox), with a sale price of about $10.
- Old business
- NRMC reorganization
The three alternatives are to keep the old organization as is, to adopt the recommendations of the Task Force on Review of NRMC Structure, or to move to an ad hoc task force system (as we have been operating under since the summer). Keith Powell and Jones spoke favorably of the ad hoc task force option, saying that it produces a lean and efficient method of operation in which the committee is able to be more focused and to respond quickly to issues as they come up. Ahronheim said that a certain amount of formality in procedure and organization is necessary, for example in order to produce a charge for the committee and to produce membership lists and other documents. The structure recommended by the Task Force on Review of NRMC Structure — i.e., maintaining only the Outreach, Programs, and Standards subcommittees — was also discussed, and there was some feeling that these could be task forces instead of standing committees.
Jones moved that all subcommittees be eliminated and that the NRMC change to a pure ad hoc task force model. The motion was carried.
- Current task forces
There are currently two task forces at work: one dealing with the bibliography and one dealing with the program for Annual 2001. Fietzer will be formulating their charges and sending them to the committee via email.
- New business
- IFLA 2001
Mary Woodley and Ahronheim agreed to be part of a task force which will contact Mary Larsgaard about NRMC’s possible participation in an IFLA 2001 event.
- Preconference 2000
Jones reported that the book based on the proceedings of the metadata preconference at Annual 2000 is currently in production at ALA Editions. The title will be Cataloging the Web: Metadata, AACR, and MARC 21. It is scheduled to be published by summer 2001.
- Adjournment
Fietzer adjourned the meeting, thanking all for attending.
