Annual Report, July 2015-June 2016
Submitted by Casey Mullin

Members (as of March 2016):

Casey Mullin (Chair, appointed 2014), Jim Alberts (2016), Rebecca Belford (2014), Kirk-Evan Billet (2015), Reed David (2015), Matt Ertz (2013), Ralph Hartsock (2016), Jeff Lyon (2016), Jacob Schaub (2015), Ann Shaffer (2015), Hannah Spence (2015), Nurhak Tuncer (2016), Jennifer Vaughn (2015), Janelle West (2013), J. Bradford Young (2014), Nancy Lorimer (SACO Music Funnel Coordinator), Mark Scharff (NACO-Music Project Coordinator), Maarja Vigorito (LC Representative), Jay Weitz (OCLC Representative)

We thank Emma Dederick, Kenneth Kauffman, and Kevin Kishimoto, who rotated off of Vocabularies Subcommittee in March 2016. We welcome Ralph Hartsock, Jeff Lyon, Nurhak Tuncer, and Jim Alberts, who joined Vocabularies Subcommittee in March 2016.

Report on activities:

Standing task groups:

Types of Composition List Maintenance (West (coordinator), Belford, Young, Alberts)

• Prepared new entries for Sett, Entrata, Dumps, Pesem, Samospev, Carol/Carols, Glásba, Négyes/Négyesek, Oberek/Oberki, Stroph/Strophen, Trioletto(s)
• Added cross-references to 3 entries
• Made numerous modifications throughout the document to reflect RDA instruction renumbering from the April 2015 update
• Edited 22 entries to reflect the omission of instructions related to works “intended for concert performance” from the exception to RDA 6.14.2.5.2.1.

LCMPT/LCGFT Maintenance (Billet (coordinator since March 2016), David, West, Schaffer, Hartsock)

• Completed initial work on the LCMPT electronics terms, clarinets, and jazz ensembles revision projects and submitted proposals to the SACO Music Funnel; the clarinets and jazz terms have been approved in LCMPT, and the electronic terms are pending
• Began project to refine LCGFT hierarchy for Hymns, with a view to potentially defining separate terms for the texts of hymns and their music; in June 2016, it was decided that a new high-level term “Musical texts” would subsume Hymn texts, terms for texts/lyrics associated with particular vocal genres, and Librettos (the last an existing LCGFT term)

Thematic Indexes List Maintenance (Schaub (coordinator), Belford, Ertz, Mullin)

• Prepared new entries for Jenkins, Franck, Willan, Froberger, Graupner, and a minor revision for Pleyel
• Edited 20 existing entries to render the composer access points RDA-conformant
• Discussed project to harmonize MLATI with 667 fields in name authority records for composers represented on the list
• Coordinated with the CMC webmaster to correct several formatting and other errors

LCMPT/LCGFT Best Practices Maintenance (Mullin (coordinator), Young, Vaughn, Spence, Lorimer (ex officio, from Genre/Form Task Force), Ertz)

• Completed work on the revised/expanded version of the document Best Practices for Using LCMPT; the new document was released in February 2016
• After consultation with the MLA Board and Chair of the Publications Committee, revised both best practices to include Creative Commons license statements, and re-released them in June 2016; prompting this decision was a French translation of the LCMPT best practices, recently prepared by Répertoire de vedettes-matière of Université Laval

Special task group:

Deriving Faceted Music Terms From LCSH (Mullin (coordinator), Vaughn, Lorimer, (SACO Music Funnel coordinator, ex officio), Ertz, Billet, Levy, Tuncer, Lyon, Hartsock)

• Provided feedback on the LCSH-to-LCGFT mapping document for form subdivisions and fixed fields, prepared by the ALA/CaMMS Subcommittee on Genre/Form Implementation
• Began work on LCGFT mappings for general LCSH music headings; this project will be completed in phases, examining categories of LCSH headings of increasing complexity
• A new ALCTS/CaMMS/SAC working group, the SGFI Working Group on Full Implementation of Library of Congress Faceted Vocabularies, has been charged, with the main task to write a white paper advocating for current and retrospective implementation. Mullin has been appointed to chair the group

List of previous goals and progress made toward each goal:

1. Develop specifications to programmatically derive 655 fields (i.e., LCGFT terms) from 6xx and 047 fields in bibliographic records. Continue to collaborate with Gary Strawn to design a program that can be run on entire databases of bibliographic records — promotes core values of collaboration, expertise of members and access
   a. Status: ongoing (see report of activities above)
2. Issue a revised and expanded version of the document Provisional Best Practices for Using LCMPT, to incorporate the most up-to-date collective wisdom, offer more robust guidance for complex situations, and resolve issues in flux to the extent possible — promotes core values of access and expertise of members
   a. Status: completed
3. Begin projects to remediate LCMPT terms for clarinets and jazz ensembles, including providing or revising scope notes – promotes core values of collaboration, expertise of members and access
   a. Status: projects completed
4. Continue to serve as a vetting body for the Music SACO Funnel – promotes core values of collaboration and expertise of members
   a. Status: ongoing

List of goals for the next year and how they relate to the MLA Strategic Plan:

1. Prepare an operational definition for the term “cognate” (which is not defined in RDA), and prepare a complete set of working procedures for maintaining the TOC list and vetting proposed additions and modifications – promotes core values of collaboration and expertise of members
2. Complete project to add Musical texts and a complement of narrower terms in LCGFT, which will include Librettos and Hymn texts — promotes core values of collaboration, expertise of members and access
3. Investigate encoding MLATI as Linked Data and registering it as an official RDA vocabulary – promotes core values of collaboration, expertise of members and access
4. Finish developing specifications to programmatically derive 655 fields from 6xx fields and fixed field data in bibliographic records. Continue to collaborate with Gary Strawn (Northwestern University) to design a program that can–along with the 382 specifications already developed in 2015–be run on entire databases of bibliographic records – promotes core values of collaboration, expertise of members and access
5. Continue to serve as a vetting body for the Music SACO Funnel – promotes core values of collaboration and expertise of members

Respectfully submitted,
Casey Mullin
8/19/16