Submitted by Tracey Snyder
Members
Tracey Snyder (Chair, CMC, appointed 2016), Mary Huismann (Chair, Content Standards
Subcommittee, 2016), James Soe Nyun (Chair, Encoding Standards Subcommittee, 2015), Casey
Mullin (Chair, Vocabularies Subcommittee, 2014), Elizabeth Hille Cribbs (CMC
Webmaster/Secretary, 2015), 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, as well as the NMP Advisory Committee, welcomed new members
this year, filling vacancies left by outgoing members.
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 SACO Music Funnel Coordinator, working with the CMC Vocabularies Subcommittee and the Library of Congress, completed work on outstanding terms for LCGFT; proposals for new and revised terms for LCGFT, in addition to LCMPT and LCSH, can now be submitted by members of the
community.
MLA Linked Data Working Group:
The MLA Linked Data Working Group (LDWG) is an informal working group that was convened by CMC and is co-chaired by CMC members 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 Mellon grant-funded Linked Data for Production (LD4P) portfolio. This year, LDWG focused its efforts on providing MLA input to the Performed Music Ontology project (PMO). The 16 members of LDWG contributed 89 raw use cases in the areas of medium of performance, aggregates, sequence, events, and performers to the project. LDWG also analyzed further use cases from within PMO and developed requirements for further discussion. Other LDWG contributions to the PMO work included reviewing five external event ontologies and commenting on PMO draft specifications.
Programming:
At MLA 2017, CMC sponsored or co-sponsored three program sessions (one of which was a plenary) plus our traditional Cataloging and Metadata Town Hall session. We also co-sponsored (with the MLA Education Committee and the Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG)) a preconference workshop related to RDA and Linked Data, taught by Kathy Glennan. The workshop met attendance and revenue requirements, generating a profit for MLA, and attendee feedback on the workshop, related documentation, and advance instruction was very positive. At MLA 2018, CMC will again sponsor or co-sponsor three program sessions plus CMC Town Hall.
Resources and communication:
CMC made some exciting innovations in this realm in the 2016-2017 year. With tremendous assistance from MLA Webmaster Katie Buehner and CMC Secretary/Webmaster Elizabeth Hille Cribbs, we continued to update and improve the content, organization, and layout of the CMC
website. Most notably, we implemented a new FAQ page, suggestion forms for revisions to RDA and its accompanying policy statements and best practices, and a YouTube channel. The CMC chair and the three subcommittee chairs produced informational screencasts and posted them to the YouTube channel, and we intend to produce new screencasts each year. We also made improvements to the CMC Handbook, applied a Creative Commons license to our website and our various best practices documents, and continued to utilize the CMC blog and various email lists to publish/publicize business meeting agendas, reports, and other documents.
MLA liaison work with ALA:
The committee chair and subcommittee chairs attended ALA meetings as MLA liaisons, where they represented the perspective of the music cataloging community on ALA committees and interest groups related to cataloging (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)). The Music Cataloging Bulletin contains reports from these meetings, which 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 worked with OLAC (participating in a joint task group with OLAC to make recommendations related to select RDA elements and MARC fields and conferring with OCLC), the MLA Emerging Technologies & Services Committee (participating in the Music Discovery Requirements (MDR) Update Task Force and producing MDR 2), and the IAML Cataloguing and Metadata Section (volunteering to create mappings between the UNIMARC Medium of Performance vocabulary and LCMPT). Additionally, CMC worked with the MLA Education Committee and MOUG to co-sponsor a pre-conference workshop at MLA 2017, described above. Also in the past year, the set of guidelines known as Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Music) (DCRM(M)) was published, after years of work by members of CMC and the RBMS Bibliographic Standards Committee. Finally, CMC members represented the music cataloging community in a “pop-up”
meeting of the RDA Steering Committee at ALA Annual 2017.
Past goals 2016-2017
- 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. - 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. Further progress has been made in this area, and work continues under the Vocabularies Subcommittee. Additionally, the chair of the Vocabularies Subcommittee chairs a working group within ALA that has produced a white paper exploring this further.
- 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 met this goal through the work of the Content Standards Subcommittee.
- Propose LC-PCC Policy Statements relating to RDA music cataloging as needed. We met this goal through the work of the Content Standards Subcommittee.
- 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 the hands-on pre-conference workshop related to RDA and Linked Data at MLA 2017 and the new 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 various ALA groups and through our collaboration with various MLA and music-related groups as described above.
Goals for 2017-2018
- 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, and contribute to the work of the Linked Data for Performed Music grant project.
- 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.
- 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 webinars and workshops, as opportunities arise. - Collaborate as appropriate with other MLA, ALA, and music-related groups.
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.