Search

Annual Report from the Chair: 2018

Cataloging and Metadata Committee (CMC)
Annual Report, July 1, 2017-June 30, 2018
Submitted by Tracey Snyder

Website: http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/mpage/cmc

Members

Tracey Snyder (Chair, CMC, appointed 2016), Mary Huismann (Chair, Content Standards Subcommittee, 2016), James Soe Nyun (Chair, Encoding Standards Subcommittee, 2015), Rebecca Belford (Chair, Vocabularies Subcommittee, 2018), Elizabeth Hille Cribbs (Secretary/Webmaster, 2015), Joshua Henry (Incoming Secretary/Webmaster, 2018) Christopher Holden (Editor, Music Cataloging Bulletin, 2015), Linda Blair (BIBCO Music Funnel Coordinator, 2015), Mark Scharff (NACO-Music Project Coordinator, 2015), Nancy Lorimer (SACO Music Funnel Coordinator, 2012), Susan Vita (Library of Congress Representative), Jay Weitz (OCLC Representative)

All of the subcommittees welcomed new members this year, filling vacancies left by outgoing members. On the Vocabularies Subcommittee, Casey Mullin completed his term as Chair, and Rebecca Belford began her term as Chair. CMC thanks Casey for his service and welcomes Rebecca to the committee. Joshua Henry began service as Incoming Secretary/Webmaster, acting as an apprentice to Elizabeth Hille Cribbs until he steps into the role of Secretary/Webmaster when Elizabeth completes her term in 2019.

Report on activities

Structure and operations:

The committee encompasses three subcommittees and three music-specific Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) funnels (NACO, SACO, and BIBCO), the chairs and coordinators of which serve on the committee. The three funnel coordinators also participate as ex officio members of the relevant subcommittees. The work of the subcommittees is carried out by smaller task groups coordinated by the subcommittee chairs and other members. Specific duties of the various members of the committee, subcommittees, and funnels are outlined in the CMC handbook, which can be found on the CMC website.

Subcommittee work:

Together, the subcommittees are responsible for the content and maintenance of a number of indispensable resources, including Metadata for Music Resources, Types of Composition list, Thematic Indexes list, thesaurus of musical genre and form terms (LCGFT), thesaurus of medium of performance terms (LCMPT), and comprehensive best practices documents for these two thesauri and for RDA. These resources can be accessed from the CMC website. When there are significant updates to these resources, CMC members announce this on the CMC Blog as well as in the Music Cataloging Bulletin. Subcommittees also participate actively in the development of RDA, LC-PCC PS, MARC, and IFLA LRM. See individual subcommittee reports for details of this and other work.

Funnel work:

The past year saw continued growth in the membership of the BIBCO Music Funnel and the NACO-Music Project as well as graduations to independent contributor status. The BIBCO Music Funnel coordinator, Linda Blair, attended the annual PCC Operations Committee meeting in Washington, D.C. The NACO-Music Project coordinator, Mark Scharff, performed an overhaul of the NMP directory in preparation for a new PCC-wide directory. The SACO Music Funnel Coordinator, Nancy Lorimer, worked with the CMC Vocabularies Subcommittee and the Library of Congress to vet proposals for new and revised terms for LCGFT, LCMPT, and LCSH, submitted by members of the community. The funnel coordinators and the CMC Chair reviewed a draft of the new PCC Strategic Directions document and supplied feedback to the PCC Chair. The funnel coordinators prepare summaries of funnel activities each year for MLA, which are available on the funnels’ respective pages on the CMC website.

MLA Linked Data Working Group:

The MLA Linked Data Working Group (LDWG) is an informal working group that was convened by CMC but draws its membership from across the various areas of MLA. LDWG works on various tasks in support of the Linked Data for Performed Music project that is part of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant-funded Linked Data for Production (LD4P) portfolio. This year, LDWG focused on providing feedback on the draft specifications and documents to come out of the Performed Music Ontology (PMO) project, which is developing a BIBFRAME-based ontology for performed music in all formats. This work has included reviewing modeling papers focused on works, events, and medium of performance—topics that are especially vital to successfully describing music resources. LDWG was co-chaired by James Soe Nyun and Kirk-Evan Billet from 2016 through 2017 and is chaired by Hermine Vermeij as of 2018.

Programming:

At MLA 2018, CMC sponsored three program sessions (our traditional Cataloging and Metadata Town Hall; a practical session about Linked Data; and, a session about MLA-CMC involvement in developing a program to automatically derive faceted vocabulary terms from subject headings in bibliographic records) and co-sponsored a plenary on cataloging, preservation, and discovery of radio content, proposed and sponsored by the Preservation Committee. At MLA 2019, CMC will sponsor Cataloging and Metadata Town Hall, as well as a session about representing diverse musical content in metadata models and a session about inclusiveness in developing, applying, and teaching controlled vocabularies for music (which has co-sponsorship from the Public Services Committee). CMC will also co-sponsor a session proposed and sponsored by the Instruction Subcommittee about music information literacy. CMC is in the process of scheduling and planning a series of MLA/ALA webinars for 2018-2019. This will include revised versions of the six music cataloging webinars from 2014-2015 as well as two new webinars.

Resources and communication:

CMC continued to update and improve the content, organization, and layout of the CMC website. We routinely post CMC-related business meeting notes, summaries of CMC-sponsored MLA program sessions, and reports on ALA committee meetings and program sessions, in addition to submitting this material for inclusion in the Music Cataloging Bulletin and MLA Newsletter. Recent enhancements to the CMC website enable better access to best practices documents, training materials from workshops and webinars, conference session videos and materials, and resources related to the new Music Toolkit, a program developed by Gary Strawn of Northwestern University in collaboration with the Vocabularies Subcommittee that derives faceted vocabulary terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings and adds them to bibliographic records. The CMC Handbook was also updated and is available on the site. CMC’s Secretary/Webmaster Elizabeth Hille Cribbs and Incoming Secretary/Webmaster Joshua Henry are working closely with MLA Webmaster Katie Buehner to prepare CMC website content for a migration to a new platform. The CMC Blog is used as needed for sharing documentation such as business meeting agendas, promoting events such as MLA program sessions, announcing resources such as task force reports, and detailing updates to various best practices documents, vocabularies (such as LCGFT and LCMPT), content standards (such as RDA), and encoding standards (such as MARC). The CMC Channel is used for hosting screencasts that describe the work of the CMC and demonstrate how to find and use various CMC resources as well as how to apply standards and vocabularies according to the most up-to-date practices. CMC members posted new screencasts about the work of the committee, the subcommittees, and the NACO-Music Project in fall 2017, as well as a screencast about the Music Toolkit in winter 2018. CMC members routinely field questions on electronic mailing lists about application of MARC, RDA, LCMPT, LCGFT, and more.

MLA liaison work with ALA:

The committee chair and subcommittee chairs attended ALA conferences as MLA liaisons, where they represented the perspective of the music cataloging community on ALA committees and interest groups related to cataloging (including but not limited to Authority Control Interest Group (ACIG), OLAC’s Cataloging Policy Committee (OLAC-CAPC), the Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA), the MARC Advisory Committee (MAC), the Metadata Interest Group (MIG), the Metadata Standards Committee (MSC), and the Subject Analysis Committee (SAC)) and in PCC-related sessions. Reports from relevant ALA meetings and program sessions are published in the Music Cataloging Bulletin and are also available on the CMC website.

Work with other groups:

CMC collaborates with other groups on a variety of projects. In addition to ongoing involvement with ALA, LC, PCC, and LD4P/PMO, representatives from CMC and its subcommittees and funnels worked with OLAC (participating in joint task groups with OLAC to draft RDA best practices for Playaways and to make recommendations related to select RDA elements and MARC fields, in consultation with OCLC), the MLA Working Group for Archival Description of Music Materials (reviewing and providing feedback on a draft of Archival Description of Notated Music, A Supplement to Describing Archives: A Content Standard), the MLA Emerging Technologies & Services Committee (maintaining a list of developments related to cataloging standards and vocabularies that may play into future revisions of Music Discovery Requirements (MDR)), and the IAML Cataloguing and Metadata Section (volunteering to create mappings between the UNIMARC Medium of Performance vocabulary and LCMPT).

Past goals 2017-2018

Please see the reports of the individual subcommittees for more detail on how these goals were met.

Continue to participate in explorations of BIBFRAME and other Linked Data ontologies, and contribute to the work of the Linked Data for Performed Music grant project.
We met this goal through the work of the MLA Linked Data Working Group, described above.

Continue work on development and problem-solving related to the conversion of music subject headings to medium of performance (LCMPT), music genre (LCGFT), demographic group, geography, and other controlled, faceted terms.

We met this goal through the work of the Vocabularies Subcommittee and the Music Toolkit. Provide expert comment on RDA revision proposals created by the RSC Music Working Group, ALA, and other constituencies, as well as other documents issued for community review.

We typically meet this goal through the work of the Content Standards Subcommittee, although most RDA work has been on hold due to the RDA Toolkit Restructure and Redesign Project.

Propose LC-PCC Policy Statements relating to RDA music cataloging as needed.

We typically meet this goal through the work of the Content Standards Subcommittee, although most RDA work has been on hold due to the RDA Toolkit Restructure and Redesign Project.

Contribute to continuing MARC21 developments through the MARC Advisory Committee.

Communicate with the LC MARC Office on MARC issues related to music and RDA.
We met this goal through the work of the Encoding Standards Subcommittee.

Maintain cataloging best practices documents (including RDA, LCMPT, and LCGFT best practices).
We met this goal through the work of the Content Standards Subcommittee and the Vocabularies Subcommittee.

Maintain the Metadata for Music Resources site, Types of Composition list, Thematic Indexes list, LCGFT, and LCMPT, and vet music-related terms for LCSH.
We met this goal through the work of the Encoding Standards Subcommittee, the Vocabularies Subcommittee, and the SACO Music Funnel.

Leverage committee members’ expertise by providing educational and training presentations, such as webinars and workshops, as opportunities arise.
We met this goal through MLA 2018 program sessions and the series of CMC screencasts, described above.

Collaborate as appropriate with other MLA, ALA, and music-related groups.
We met this goal through our participation as liaisons to PCC and various ALA groups and through our collaboration with various MLA and music-related groups as described above.

Goals for 2018-2019

Please see the reports of the individual subcommittees for more specific, related goals.

Continue to participate in explorations of BIBFRAME and other Linked Data ontologies, especially the Performed Music Ontology.

Continue refinement of the Music Toolkit and work on problem-solving related to more widespread conversion of music subject headings to medium of performance (LCMPT), music genre (LCGFT), demographic group, geography, and other controlled, faceted terms.

Provide expert comment on RDA revision proposals created by the RSC Music Working Group, ALA, and other constituencies, as well as other documents issued for community review.

Propose LC-PCC Policy Statements relating to RDA music cataloging as needed.

Contribute to continuing MARC21 developments through the MARC Advisory Committee.

Communicate with the LC MARC Office on MARC issues related to music and RDA.

Maintain cataloging best practices documents (including RDA, LCMPT, and LCGFT best practices).

Maintain the Metadata for Music Resources site, Types of Composition list, Thematic Indexes list, LCGFT, and LCMPT, and vet music-related terms for LCSH.

Leverage committee members’ expertise by providing educational and training presentations, such as program sessions, webinars, and workshops, as opportunities arise.

Collaborate as appropriate with other MLA, ALA, and music-related groups and PCC.

Complete migration of the CMC website to a new platform.

MLA Strategic Plan

These goals support the MLA Strategic Plan goal areas of Organizational Excellence, Value of the Profession, Education, and Technology, through CMC’s continuing commitment to excellence and its collaborations with other national and international library organizations; through the visibility which CMC brings to MLA through our liaison and other professional relationships; through the relevancy of CMC’s work to current issues in librarianship, especially CMC’s work with the developing RDA standard and the LC thesaurus vocabularies; and through CMC’s efforts to use technology to provide online training for music metadata practitioners.

Respectfully submitted,
Tracey Snyder
2018 August 2