MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
CATALOGING AND METADATA COMMITTEE
Business Meetings, MLA Annual Meeting 2017, Orlando, Florida
Agenda with links available on CMC Blog at: https://cmc.wp.musiclibraryassoc.org/
THURSDAY February 23, 11:00 am-12:25 pm
1. Introduction and announcements (Snyder) 11-11:10
a. Adjustments to agenda
1. Tracey Snyder called the meeting to order at 11:01 and issued a friendly reminder about etiquette during the business meeting.
2. There was one adjustment to the agenda: Tracey announced that Lisa Hooper will join the CMC at the beginning of Saturday’s meeting to talk about the feedback from Kathy Glennan’s pre-conference workshop and MLA’s contract agreement with ALA about more possible CMC-sponsored webinars and/or e-courses.
b. Thanks to outgoing members
1. Tracey announced that there are no outgoing members.
c. Welcome to incoming members
1. Tracey announced that there are no incoming members, but Nancy Lorimer has agreed to serve a second term as the SACO Music Funnel Coordinator.
d. Administrative business
i. Documentation
1. CMC annual reports 2016
a. Tracey announced that the CMC annual reports are available to view on the CMC website.
2. CMC roster 2017-2018
a. Tracey announced that the CMC roster will be made available to view on the CMC website.
3. CMC calendar
a. Tracey announced that the CMC calendar has been enhanced and is available to view on the CMC website.
ii. Announce upcoming program sessions (Friday)
A. Tracey highlighted CMC meetings and programs sponsored by the CMC: Today, 2/23, at 3:30 the Encoding Standards Subcommittee will meet; on Friday, 2/24, at 9:00 the Plenary will cover ontologies, BIBFRAME, and Linked Data for Performed Music, at 11:00 the NACO, SACO, and BIBCO business meeting will be held, at 1:30 the Vocabularies Subcommittee will meet, at 3:30 there will be a program session about music ontologies that will include a pre-recorded presentation from a member of the DOREMUS team from France, and at 4:30 the CMC will have their Town Hall meeting that will include updates on special topics and an open discussion period, including a special IFLA-RLM presentation and summary of the MLA Linked Data Working Group (LDWG); on Saturday, 2/25, at 11:00 a.m. the Content Standards Subcommittee will meet, and then at 1:30 the CMC will have their second half of the committee-wide business meeting. Additionally, there will be metadata-focused sessions that will present work with special materials from Latin America and Canada, such as the Technical Services Interest Group sessions Friday at 11:00 and 3:30.
iii. Announce CMC openings and deadline for applications (Friday)
A. Tracey announced that there are openings on all three subcommittees. Those interested were invited to submit a brief statement of interest by email to either Tracey or the relevant subcommittee chair by Friday evening.
2. Brief reports
a. Subcommittees 11:10-11:25
i. Content Standards (Huismann)
A. Mary Huismann announced that there are several openings on the Content Standards Subcommittee (CSS) and encouraged those that are interested to apply. She reported that CSS continued the maintenance of the RDA Best Practices and reviewed the FRBR-LRM (Library Reference Model) and provided commentary on it for a CC:DA task force (on which Mary also served). Jennifer Olson worked on a joint task force with OLAC regarding a guide for best practices for cataloging Playaways. Mary also met with ALA’s Director of Digital Reference, James Hennelly at ALA Midwinter to talk about the RDA Toolkit 3R project and its impact on the MLA RDA Best Practices, and she continued work with Elizabeth, Tracey, and James on MLA Best Practices in the RDA Toolkit. The CSS also worked with Valerie Weinberg to comment on specific LC-PCC PSs for chapters 2, 6, and 7, and she published reports for this as well as a summary of the updates that will be occurring as the RDA Toolkit is being updated. Finally, Mary did a screencast about the CSS for the CMC website. For information about these projects and more, Mary invited anyone who is interested to attend the CSS business meeting on Saturday, 2/25, at 11:00 a.m.
ii. Encoding (Soe Nyun)
A. Jim Soe Nyun reminded everyone that the Encoding Standards Subcommittee (ESS) meeting will be held today at 3:30 p.m. in Salon 5. He reported that previous years were heavy with MARC development, and the first part of this year involved finishing a project regarding defining $3 and $5 of the 382 field and defining
the proper value types for the 008 field, position 20. The ESS also worked on a proposal for clarifying the 028 field’s use for distributor numbers that was co-sponsored with OLAC, and they worked on re-working the examples involving the 382 field. The ESS worked on a proposal to make the 384 field repeatable, and
that proposal was fast tracked. The ESS continued their maintenance of the Music Metadata Resources site, and Jim attended meetings of the relevant ALA groups. The reports from those meetings are available online for anyone wishing to view them. Jim invited anyone who is interested in learning more about these projects and what ESS is doing to attend their meeting today at 3:30.
iii. Vocabularies (Mullin)
A. Casey Mullin announced that the Vocabularies Subcommittee (VS) will meet tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. and that the meeting will cover the work of all five of the task groups under the VS umbrella. Casey reported that the Types of Composition maintenance group, with assistance from others, devised a working definition for cognates (in the form of new language for the MLA RDA Best Practices) as well as adding several new terms to the list. Casey reported that the Thematic Indexes List (MLATI) working group made a few new additions to the list as well as modifications to some previously established entries. The VS might be working on projects around the terms list in the Performed Music Ontology as well as other possible projects, and the VS group will do a post mortem about that work and what might come next. The VS meeting will also address the work that the subgroup that works on the LCMPT and the LCGFT has done in the past and will continue to do going into the next year. Casey also attended meetings at ALA Midwinter and reports from those meetings are linked from the VS agenda. An ongoing major project involves the effort to derive faceted music terms from encoded MARC data, including deriving 655 fields from legacy form-genre data and deriving 382 fields from legacy medium data. That project will involve liaising with Gary Strawn.
iv. Tracey noted that next year MLA’s annual meeting is very early and ALA Midwinter is late. ALA Midwinter won’t happen until after MLA, and she wondered how this will impact us and the reports from the
subcommittee chairs. Mark suggested that it might be good because the MLA CMC leaders might have the opportunity to polish everything for ALA.
b. Working group 11:25-11:45
i. MLA Linked Data Working Group (Soe Nyun & Billet)
A. Jim Soe Nyun started with explaining that a group (LDWG) came about to give MLA to way to give input to LD4P grant work; 16 people formed LDWG.
Kirk Evan Billet noted that the plenary will go into more detail, but the primary thing that the group did was come up with 89 raw use cases for medium of performance and specific events (23 were for medium of performance, 10 aggregates, 8 sequence, 22 events, 15 performers, and 11 other). A subset of volunteers also worked on various ontologies for event coverage and explored how those ontologies would work for meeting the needs of music catalogers. When discussing where the LDWG group goes from here, Jim noted that the work has not concluded. The Performed Music Ontology project will go on until the end of June. Tracey noted that LDWG will stay together that long and then review the project afterwards. Jim replied that even after the bulk of what LDWG needed to do is done, such as finishing the use cases, giving reports, and offering comments, there are lots of potential tasks that will need to be done that can be done outside of the LDWG structure. That linked data work might be good fodder for some of the other subcommittees like Vocabularies or Content Standards as well as the more traditional route of the Encoding Standards Subcommittee. Nancy Lorimer chimed in that there are lots of vocabulary aspects and modeling work to be done as well as other tasks like training and teaching people what is being done.
c. Additional reports 11:45-12:25
i. CMC Secretary/Webmaster (Hille Cribbs)
A. Elizabeth Hille Cribbs reported that she transcribed 2016 CMC meeting minutes from Cincinnati, Ohio, and posted it for CMC members; she posted various revisions, documents, and reports from CMC officers and persons on behalf of the Committee, Subcommittees, Task Forces, and PCC Funnel groups; she submitted revisions to the RDA Toolkit MLA-BPs on behalf of CMC for 2016 April and August updates and the 2017 February update (these revisions included modifying the link to the Supplements to RDA Best Practices for Music Cataloging document to make it a universal link); she moved the CMC blog to WordPress platform, including moving all blog entries over, and re-tagging and re-adding contributors; and she is currently participating in an ongoing ALA-based RDA Toolkit User Task Force group. The goal is to restructure the RDA Toolkit to improve the user experience for users of the RDA Toolkit. Elizabeth has
collected user stories from CMC members and attended the meeting held in November to determine what tasks should take priority. More work will be forthcoming.
A follow-up question was asked about the timeline for the RDA Toolkit, and Mary Huismann and Kathy Glennan chimed in to mention that the projected date of April 2018 is currently posited and that the restructure is currently the priority as opposed to the redesign right now. Tracey added that it’s not too late to add your own user story to the ones Elizabeth has collected, and Elizabeth offered to resend the link to where the user stories are being collected for the RDA Toolkit User Task Force group.
vii. OCLC (Weitz)
Jay highlighted that 15 libraries in 12 states were chosen for “Small Libraries Create Smart Spaces” project to train librarians for community participation and engagement. Jay also emphasized that OCLC recently acquired Relais International to provide resource sharing to consortia and OCLC also introduced Tipasa, and Interlibrary Loan Management system.
SATURDAY February 25, 1:30 pm-3:25 pm
New Business
1. Pre-conference workshop debrief 1:30-1:40
A. Lisa Hooper came and discussed the participant reaction to Kathy Glennan’s RIMMF pre-conference workshop. There were 30 paid attendees plus 3 coaches. The attendees did advance work and the attendees took ownership of how prepared they were. Doing the advance work paid dividends during the workshop
in the form of confidence from the attendees. Lisa thinks that based on the feedback she received the flipped classroom model went well, and the participant feedback was extremely positive, with the only suggestion for improvement involving possibly having one more coach on hand to assist with the hands-on training activities. Participants enjoyed having a long stretch of hands-on time. Kathy commented that the interest seems good but also suggested that it might be good to work at at the chapter level to train this way as well. X-athons are something that the RSC is willing to support, documentation is available, and Kathy is also available for consultations as needed to continue this, but Kathy feels that this particular training is not conducive to the online environment. Lisa summarized that the extensive preparation and training for this particular event went extremely well and thanked everyone involved for their hard work.
B. Lisa reported that MLA negotiated a new contract to host more webinars with ALA Editions. MLA is responsible for 2-4 webinars in 2017, and Lisa suggested that the CMC assist with webinar content and planning soon after MLA.
C. Lisa also reported that within the MLA Education Committee the Educational Outreach Subcommittee will soon be dissolved, and that working groups will be taking over the tasks assigned to the committee, although she said that Sonia is the only one assigned to a specific working group so far (for e-courses). Lisa and Tracey agreed to stay in touch regarding the ALA contract and CMC’s involvement with webinars and educational opportunities.
2. MLA 2018 program planning—Bring ideas! 1:40-2:00
A. Casey Mullin suggested a program involving the deriving project, and he suggested that inviting Gary Strawn to talk would be a good idea because he’s a good presenter and he created the program. Kirk-Evan Billet concurred and suspected that this would be a good way to teach music catalogers to run the conversion programs and communicate with their systems people.
B. Brad Young suggested bringing Richard Smiraglia to discuss open linked data and to talk specifically about a project that looks at the role of classification in analyzing open linked data, especially with respect to musicological literature. He also suggested that inviting Steven Miller or Patrick LeBoeuf might be a good idea. Tracey noted that there’s lots of interest in ontologies and that feedback from the Friday morning plenary has been really positive, and she suggested inviting Yves Raimond to speak about The Music Ontology. Jim Soe Nyun also suggested a session about the soon-to-be finalized Performed Music Ontology.
Tracey noted that some of these topics might have plenary potential. Jim noted that scheduling of meetings and program sessions next year will not follow the usual pattern.
C. Kimmy Szeto suggested presenting something about the progress of ontologies. He noted that there seems to be some anxiety about the progression and he suggested a session that might do more to bridge the reality between the progress and the training and tools that can be used. Casey Mullin noted that a session or sessions like these might be a good place to show mockups of what the editors look like, and Damian noted that BIBFRAME 2.0 will be tested in a pilot program beginning in June at the Library of Congress. When Tracey asked if Damian might be willing to present that product, Damian noted that it depends on what he’s advised to share. Casey and Kathy Glennan noted that the closeness of the timing with ALA Midwinter might allow the LC to release more information in time for MLA. Tracey mentioned an LD4P project at Cornell inputting native linked data for a collection of popular music LPs.
D. Kathy Glennan suggested programming content on RDA-related ideas, such as the 3R project, the impact of LRM on authority control, the treatment of aggregates, and she suggested making sure something is addressed on LRM. Tracey suggested that topics like these might make good Town Hall fodder, and Damian noted that progress on BIBFRAME 2.0 could definitely work for Town Hall.
E. Mark Scharff suggested a session on how to get your data ready for linked data.
3. Training/information needs 2:00-2:10
a. Screencasts?
1. CMC members proposed possible topics for screencasts including using Gary Strawn’s authorities toolkit, performing music authority work, providing occasional updates on topics such as terms, subfields, and possibly a screencast on how to propose form/genre terms. Feedback was positive on the initial set of screencasts.
b. Webinars?
1. CMC discussed various ideas for webinars. Possibilities proposed included tapping Morris Levy to lead a webinar for cataloging librettos, tapping Mark Scharff to design a webinar for creating music authority records or how to draw the levels of relationships for music-related serials and other materials, tapping Anne Adams to lead a webinar for cataloging sheet music, creating a webinar for rare materials cataloging as suggested by Rebecca Belford, creating a webinar for odd or unusual materials cataloging, and possibly revisiting/revising earlier topics such as cataloging music scores and/or sound recordings. Tracey suggested
possibly compiling a webinar of various topics, similar to lightning talks, and some CMC members suggested that another forum might be better for conveying that information, such as screencasts. Webinars should be
aimed at a broad audience. Basic instruction is useful, such as previous introductory music cataloging e-courses and webinars.
c. Workshops?
1. See above. Kathy suggested holding X-athons at chapter meetings.
d. FAQ/Blog/website?
1. The consensus of the CMC group is that the FAQ page seems to be helpful for members, but CMC members observed that the the FAQs must be maintained to keep them helpful.
2. Casey Mullin noted that building out member-generated content such as screencasts on the MOUG website is a goal for next year, so they’ll be working on a process for vetting submissions. Tracey asked if there was a timeline for this, and Casey said that this will be ongoing and that something might go up in the next year. Jean Harden agreed that this is a great idea because people who need this information don’t always come to MLA meetings, so screencasts, visual aids, and other member-generated content seems like a good way to meet those needs.
4. Best Practices documents—make earlier versions available on website? 2:10-2:15
A. Regarding the RDA Best Practices and archiving best practices, Jean Harden suggested that MLA come up with a note (or a watermark suggested by Casey) to put on the top of superseded documents to indicate that they have been replaced by a more recent document, and Rebecca Belford suggested also adding a link to superseded versions with the current version. Brad and Jean suggested that CMC submit items retrospectively to the MLA Archive. Tracey concurred that it would be a good idea to work on this in the next few years and plans to collaborate with recent CMC chairs.
5. Subcommittee special topics 2:15-2:45
a. Content Standards (LRM; RDA Toolkit Restructure and Redesign)
1. Tracey asked if there were follow-up discussions that Mary Huismann would like to have about Content Standards Subcommittee issues, and Mary responded that since a lot of the topics are not necessarily strictly
CSS, they will need to talk in more detail about how to handle this. Thom Pease asked a question about popular music in LRM, to which Chris Holden responded that the performer is a relationship and not an attribute, and all agents are considered creators, not just Work-level composers. Damian Iseminger noted that in the 3R project treats LRM entities as equals. In RDA there’s a hierarchy, but in LRM that’s not the
case, and in ontologies like BIBFRAME, most interest is at the Expression level. Everyone is first among equals at that level, and Tracey noted that people should be pleased with the loosening of the representative expression concept in the new LRM draft, as this should resolve some problems.
b. Encoding (cultivating BIBFRAME/Linked Data expertise)–to be addressed
c. Vocabularies (generating genre/form and MOP data from LCSH)–to be addressed
Tracey closed the meeting by offering thanks to everyone. The main meeting was adjourned at 2:50 p.m., at which point the Executive Session began and member appointments and assignments were discussed.