Core Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) 2024 Annual Meeting
June 29th and July 1, 2024

Report by Chelsea Hoover, Chair, Content Standards Subcommittee, MLA Liaison to CC:DA

The annual summer meeting of the ALA Core Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) took place in San Diego on June 29th and July 1, 2024. The full meeting agenda, including links to reports from the NARDAC, MARC Advisory Committee, and Library of Congress representatives, is available on the Core CC:DA Public Space on ALA Connect.

Of primary interest to music cataloging in the first half of the CC:DA meeting was the discussion of the CC:DA Task Force Response to Review ISBD for Manifestation. (The ISBD for Manifestation (ISBDM) is the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ (IFLA’s) draft guidance for describing the Manifestation entity as it relates to the IFLA Library Reference Model.) In its draft response to ISBDM, the CC:DA Task Force discussed its recommendations for improving the functionality, accessibility, usability, and consistency of the ISBDM standard. Recommendations of particular interest to music catalogers were CC:DA’s recommendations that ISBDM work closely with music experts from the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centre’s Cataloging and Metadata Section and the Music Library Association’s Content Standards Subcommittee to finalize terminology and ISBDM framework related to musical works, expressions, manifestations, and items. Kathy Glennan, chair of the CC:DA Task Force Response to Review ISBD for Manifestation and vice-chair of CC:DA, noted that the value vocabulary terms in the ISBDM Extent of Aggregated Content, which currently includes terms such as “recorded song” and “performed song”, would especially benefit from review by experts from the MLA and IAML cataloging communities.

Aside from the discussion of the issues the CC:DA Task Force found with ISBDM, Kate James of OCLC also commented that the ability to list all the titles for a resource that lacks a collective title was absent in ISBDM. Someone else mentioned that the instruction for listing titles in a resource without a collective title exists in ISBD Consolidated (2021 update) 1.1.5.2. But it was noted that if this instruction is added to ISBDM, guidance would be needed on what punctuation to use when recording the separate titles. In addition, it would be useful to add an example of this type of resource to the complete examples section of ISBDM.

Following discussion of the CC:DA Task Force Response to Review ISBD for Manifestation, Amanda Sprochi, chair of CC:DA, motioned to have CC:DA vote on the Task Force Response document. CC:DA unanimously voted in favor of the response document.

The second half of the CC:DA meeting included guest presentations from Jamie Hennelly, the Director of the RDA Toolkit, and Renate Behrens, the chair of the RDA Steering Committee (RSC). Jamie gave updates in his presentation (linked in the CC:DA agenda in the first paragraph) on the most recent RDA Toolkit release work, including a completed Community Resources space and translations of the Alternative Guidance menu (which Jamie described as the RDA Toolkit’s “Orientation page”), as well as a Drupal Site update that involved a merge of the ALA RDA Toolkit and RSC websites. Jamie noted that the incentive for the website merge was to provide a one-stop shop for all RDA-related resources and news. He also gave updates on Official RDA translation work for various languages, including Spanish and Arabic, which he said were nearing completion. He added that updates to Catalan, Italian, and Hungarian translations should be in the Toolkit in the coming year. Jamie concluded his presentation by announcing that the Toolkit will be updated and released three times a year this next year (in the months of February, June, and October) instead of four to allow more time for proper processing of language translations.

In Renate’s presentation (also linked in the CC:DA agenda) entitled “How to Implement RDA”, Renate discussed how RDA has attempted to help meet the needs of various cataloging communities. She opened her presentation by discussing the hierarchical relationships between RDA, the Library Reference Model, and the International Cataloging Principles to show where RDA fits within the world of cataloging standards. She also discussed the hierarchical relationship between RDA and application profiles, such as the Metadata Guidance Documents (MGDs) and policy statements, which provide guidance on how to implement RDA when describing resources.

Renate continued her presentation by describing how RDA offers many possibilities for different user communities. But she emphasized that for these possibilities to be useful to various user communities, especially international communities, RDA cataloging standards must be compatible and follow the same models and principles.

Because RDA is now more of a framework standard than a set of rules, Renate noted that the new Toolkit can seem more difficult to use and is consistently geared towards linked data applications, which can make it difficult to use in day-to-day work. She therefore emphasized that application profiles developed within individual cataloging communities are extremely crucial. Renate also noted that when individual cataloging communities develop their own community application profiles, it is important that they set common and realistic goals on what policies are most needed in their guidance documents. Renate finally stressed the importance of discussing new RDA concepts as a cataloging community and working with RSC to establish policies for these new concepts.

There was widespread confusion following Renate’s presentation about the relationship between ISBDM and RDA. This confusion stemmed from the fact that Renate had listed ISBDM as an application profile for RDA on a slide at the beginning of her presentation when there had been no mention of RDA anywhere in the ISBDM documentation. There was therefore consensus among CC:DA members that IFLA needed to make the relationship between RDA and ISBDM more explicit in its draft guidance on ISBDM. Also following the presentation, Renate noted that RSC was working on further developing the International Cataloging Principles and that worldwide review on this developing documentation would be forthcoming next year.

At the conclusion of the second half of the meeting, Amanda Sprochi noted that an Extent Working Group within RSC had drafted a discussion paper on the development of extent elements in RDA. Amanda made a motion to form a short-term task force to prepare an official CC:DA response to this discussion paper by mid-September 2024. CC:DA unanimously voted in favor of forming a task force, and the meeting was adjourned.

Addendum, August 8, 2024: Following the CC:DA annual summer meetings, the Music Library Association Cataloging and Metadata Committee and Content Standards Subcommittee drafted a response document to ISBDM, which mirrors many of the same concerns mentioned in the CC:DA Task Force Response to ISBDM in regard to the value vocabulary terms in the ISBDM Extent of Aggregated Content. The task force to prepare an official CC:DA response to the RSC Extent of Working Group proposal was also formed a week after the annual meetings, and Chelsea Hoover is currently serving on the task force as MLA liaison.