Music Library Association

Cataloging and Metadata Committee (CMC)

Content Standards Subcommittee (CSS)

Business Meeting

Monday, March 15, 2021, 12:00-1:25 pm

Via Zoom – Meeting Slides

Members present: Linda Bagley, Ben Barba, Kristi Bergland, Janice Bunker, Reed David, Chris Holden, Ivan Kaproth-Joslin, Casey Mullin, Chuck Peters, Hannah Spence, Jay Weitz

Members not present: Monica Figueroa, Jacob Schaub, Michelle Urberg

1. Welcome & introductions

• The Chair welcomed members and audience observers and reminded everyone of the “Conduct during meetings” statement from the CMC Handbook and the MLA Code of Conduct.

2. Minutes

• Minutes of the previous meeting were approved, with the correction of one typo in a member’s name.

3. Chair’s Report (Knop)

• Membership
  • Two members joined the committee in 2020
    • Linda Bagley
    • Jacob Schaub
  • Three members completed terms in 2021
    • Kristi Bergland
    • Monica Figueroa
    • Michelle Urberg
  • The chair reminded attendees that applications for the committee were still being accepted.
• Liaison reports
  • Since most meetings normally covered by the Chair did not occur or took place online and open to the general public, the Chair attended only CC:DA in an official capacity. Full reports are available here and also in the Music Cataloging Bulletin:
    • Annual 2020: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14gijeUDQu6JY9MV666Fc4w-QI_SkO8TY
    • Midwinter 2021: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xs04ArgXZHKNgD2pc-4YUVfhIy50013N

4. LC Liaison Report (Holden)

• LC spent much of the year adapting to pandemic situations.
• BIBFRAME training has continued with the participation of music catalogers.
• Discussions have begun about training for the new RDA and how it will be applied in a BIBFRAME environment.
• Full report: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v5uvZA62VaYYajpEcg2AcgsW3NIQTTz4

5. Electronic Score Working Group Update (Peters)

• Cataloging task group now part of a larger Electronic Scores Working Group.
  • Charge to create draft best practices and a discussion paper
  • Literature and outline created
  • Pandemic and shifting duties slowed work

6. RDA Best Practices (Knop)

• Current status
  • Shells for the MLA Best Practices were generated in the Toolkit in mid-February and the first test batch of pages is on the development server. ALA Publishing is investigating some technical problems.
  • The Chair has been working directly in the Toolkit CMS to add content while the process is experimental and in flux, but hopes to have the process stable enough to hand routine updates over to the CMC webmaster after the next release.
• RDA Policy Statement Writers Group news
  • This is an semi-informal group that meets monthly, with the ALA Publishing director for the Toolkit, the RDA Steering Committee Secretary and Technical Liaison, and representatives from the Library of Congress, British Library, MLA, and the Rare Book and Manuscript Section of ACRL attending regularly.
  • The LC rep reports that LC hopes to begin working on external documentation after the April Toolkit update.
  • RBMS is currently reviewing a draft of a consolidated, RDA-friendly version of Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials as a preface to including DCRM guidance in the Toolkit.
• Supplements
  • Version 1.81 of Supplement 1 was released in October 2020. It was an errata update correcting an error in the mapping chart for 007 byte 13 and some $2 codes in examples.
• Changes in the new Toolkit
  • The structure is nonlinear so we can’t make any assumptions about how people will get to the instructions.
  • Space is a concern, since any statement over 11 lines will trigger a scrollbar.
    • Long statements cause visual clutter in the right rail.
    • All policy-writing bodies currently working in the new Toolkit came to the conclusion that examples aren’t workable with these display constraints, but will have to be moved to other documentation.
• Discussion of “Follow LC-PCC PS” handling in the Best Practices in the new Toolkit
  • Four basic options: direct people to LC-PCC PS via text only; repeat or rephrase the LC policy statement; link to the statement in the LC-PCC PS landing pages in the Toolkit; or insert the text into the BPs via content reference.
  • Suggested policy: for simple do or do not apply LC-PCC instructions, simply restate that in the Best Practices; for more complex instructions, link or insert via content reference.
  • Questions from discussion:
    • What would using a link look like from the user perspective and how hard would it be to get back to where you were?
      • Links would go to the standalone policy statement pages accessible through the top navigation menu. Content references would be seamlessly incorporated into the text on the current page, so the process would be invisible to users.
    • Do the “Apply” or “Do not apply” options ever change and would restating those in our own words create a possible maintenance problem?
      • It’s possible, but in most cases where we have diverged from LC-PCC PS it’s been to encourage more rather than less detail. However, LC does intend to provide some sort of edit report to detail policy statement changes, so that’s something we can monitor.
    • If a link is opened in a new window, does it occupy another user seat?
      • Probably not, because the standalone PS pages are supposed to be open access, but not 100% certain.
  • Other observations:
    • Between the link and the content reference, in some situations the right rail real estate issue might be more of a usability challenge than the extra click from a link.
    • LC plans to move lengthy policy statements to workflow documents to help with the space issue.

7. New Business (Knop)

• Future RDA tasks
  • Addressing pending issues
    • There is a spreadsheet of reported issues dating back to the Toolkit freeze in 2017.
      • Some of these are now moot as they were specific to the old Toolkit.
      • Others are moot for now as they deal with examples, but will need to be addressed when additional documentation is created.
    • Pending issues can be worked into revisions.
  • Filling in content gaps in the new Toolkit
    • For the most part, this is extending patterns for existing Best Practices statements so that similar options for similar elements are in parallel in the nonlinear context of the new Toolkit.
  • Creating external/workflow documentation
• Field 348 in authority records: draft statement
  • Current DCM Z1 guidelines call for this information to go in field 381. There was a general consensus that if we use standardized terms, it’s better to use field 348 rather than 381, as 381 is more of a grab bag.
• Supplement 2 updates
  • The Best Practices in the new Toolkit will be referring more frequently to Supplement 2 as there is no equivalent to Appendix D in the old Toolkit, which is what we generally pointed to for ISBD punctuation guidance.
  • During BP review the issue of the PCC guidelines for minimally-punctuated MARC came up. The next update to Supplement 2 should include minimally-punctuated examples (and commentary when necessary) for libraries wishing to follow those guidelines.
  • The possibility that additional revisions would be needed to accommodate the forthcoming new version of ISBD was mentioned.
    • The IAML liaison to IFLA said that, based on current drafts, little or no change to the content of the supplement should be required.

8. Adjournment