submitted by Ethan D’Ver

Current Roster

• Ethan D’Ver, Chair (2027)
• Janice Bunker (2026)
• Andrea Cawelti (2027)
• Emma Clarkson (2028)
• David Floyd (2027)
• Jessica Grimmer (2026)
• Jeremiah Kamtman (2028)
• Kevin Kishimoto (2027)
• Anna Alfeld LoPrete (2025)
• Jennifer Olson (2027)
• Tracey Snyder (2028)
• Laura Thompson (2025)
• Hermine Vermeij (2027)
• Jeff Lyon (2024)
• Damian Iseminger, Library of Congress Representative
• Morris Levy, OCLC Representative

List of Previous Goals and Progress Made

• Continue to monitor and participate in MARC development—particularly in light of the implementation of official RDA and with an eye towards the facilitation of BIBFRAME/MARC conversion when possible—and communicate any needs for best practices or other documentation to help music catalogers implement new changes to MARC. (Goals 1.3, 2.4, 2.6)
  • In September 2023, the Chair developed the previously presented MARC Discussion Paper No. 2023-DP06 Recording Numeric Designation of Musical Expressions in the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats into a proposal. In October 2023, the Chair gathered comments from ESS and CMC on the draft of this proposal, and submitted it to MAC on November 8, 2023; after some additional revisions subsequently requested by MAC, the final version of the proposal was submitted on November 30, 2023.
  • In late December 2023 and early January 2024, the Chair gathered comments from ESS and CMC on 4 proposals and 5 discussion papers to be considered at the January MARC Advisory Committee (MAC) meeting. On January 17, 2024, the Chair submitted MLA’s official response to the papers to MAC.
  • On January 24-25, the Chair attended and participated in the virtual MAC meeting in his capacity as MLA representative to MAC, during which he presented MARC Proposal No. 2024-01: Recording Numeric Designation of Musical Expressions in the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats. The proposal was approved, so the change in MARC will take effect sometime this year. The Chair submitted a report of this meeting to the CMC Chair.
  • In late May to June, the Chair gathered comments from ESS and CMC on 1 proposal and 6 discussion papers to be considered at the June MAC meeting. On June 17, 2024, the Chair submitted MLA’s official response to the papers to MAC.
  • On June 25, the Chair attended and participated in the virtual MAC meeting in his capacity as MLA representative to MAC. The Chair submitted a report of this meeting to the CMC Chair.
  • Starting in early April, in collaboration with the Content Standards Subcommittee, the subcommittee has been developing best practices for recording MARC field 383 (Numeric Designation of Musical Work) in light of the recently approved MARC proposal submitted by MLA to expand the scope of the field to musical expressions. At the time of this report, the draft best practices are being reviewed by the two subcommittees and will be revised and released in the near future.
• Continue the Metadata for Music Resources Task Group’s ongoing maintenance and improvement of the Metadata for Music Resources site. (Goals 2.4, 2.6, 4.2)
  • In late 2023 to early 2024, the Metadata for Music Resources (MMR) Task Group prepared 7 new resources and a description for 1 previous resource for addition to the MMR. In late February, the CMC Webmaster added six of these new resources and the new description to the page.
  • The task group began discussing the possibility of adding a new category of resource to the MMR: projects which utilize music metadata.
  • In March, former Task Group leader Jeff Lyon rotated off the subcommittee. New subcommittee member Jeremiah Kamtman took over as leader; the rest of the subcommittee remains the same: Jessica Grimmer, Anna LoPrete, and Laura Thompson.
  • Since April, the Task Group has completed the initial review of the four main areas on the website, which included normalizing and enhancing descriptions of existing resources, replacing broken links where needed, and removing deprecated resources. This was passed on to the website editor to review and replace.
• Develop a plan for how the Performed Music Ontology, and linked data more generally, can start to enter into ESS’s purview. (Goals 1.3, 2.4, 2.6)
  • In November 2023, the Chair formed a new ESS task group, the Linked Data Task Group, with the primary charge of weighing in on policy and practice decisions involving the application of linked data as it continues to become more prevalent and relevant. Task group members: Hermine Vermeij (ESS, task group leader), Kevin Kishimoto (ESS, LDWG liaison), Jim Alberts (VS representative), Anthony Sharp (CSS representative).
  • From April 15-19, ESS members participated in the MLA Wikidata Working Week, hosted by LDWG. Participation in this event helped all of us improve our understanding of linked data, which helps prepare us for the increasingly significant linked data responsibilities of ESS.
• Continue to monitor the community’s need for ESS to comment and review on non-MARC metadata standards. (Goals 1.3, 2.4, 2.6)
  • No needs arose this year.
• Subcommittee presentations and meetings
  • On March 1, the Chair provided the MLA community with a summary of recent and future MARC updates, as part of the CMC Town Hall at the MLA 2024 Annual Meeting.
  • The subcommittee held a virtual business meeting on March 6. Minutes from the meeting were submitted to the CMC Chair.
• Other Activity
  • The Linked Data Task Group provided feedback to OCLC representative Morris Levy about OCLC’s WorldCat Entities for musical works and their implementation in bibliographic 758 fields. The group identified several issues, including erroneous linking and confusing dates. OCLC will continue to review the algorithms used to create work entities, and catalogers are encouraged to report problems to bibchange@oclc.org.

List of Future Goals

• Continue to monitor and participate in MARC development—particularly in light of the implementation of official RDA and with an eye towards the facilitation of BIBFRAME/MARC conversion when possible—and communicate any needs for best practices or other documentation to help music catalogers implement new changes to MARC. (Goals 1.3, 2.4, 2.6)
• Continue the Metadata for Music Resources Task Group’s ongoing maintenance and improvement of the Metadata for Music Resources site. (Goals 2.4, 2.6, 4.2)
• Develop a plan for how the Performed Music Ontology, and linked data more generally, can start to enter into ESS’s purview. (Goals 1.3, 2.4, 2.6)
• Continue to monitor the community’s need for ESS to comment and review on non-MARC metadata standards. (Goals 1.3, 2.4, 2.6)