Music Library Association Annual Meeting 2024
Cataloging and Metadata Committee
Encoding Standards Subcommittee Business Meeting
March 6, 2024, 2:00-2:55 pm Eastern Time
Minutes prepared by Janice Bunker
Attendance: Ethan D’Ver (chair), Janice Bunker, Hermine Vermeij, Andrea Cawelti, Morris Levy
(OCLC), Kevin Kishimoto, Anna LoPrete, Damian Iseminger (Library of Congress), Laura
Thompson, David Floyd, Jessica Grimmer, Jennifer Olson
Excused: Jeff Lyon
Opening (meeting began 2:02)
Ethan, as chair, welcomed everyone and had the Subcommittee members introduce themselves. He asked that Subcommittee members keep their video and audio on and to speak freely. He asked guests to raise their virtual hands when they wanted to speak, and to turn on video and unmute when called upon. He asked everyone to abide by the MLA Code of Conduct. The 2023 minutes were approved.
Chair’s Report (D’Ver)
There were some membership changes over the course of the year. D’Ver first sent love and thanks to Jay Weitz, as he retired in June. He welcomed Morris Levy, the new OCLC representative. The Subcommittee has room for a few new members; also, there is an opening on the MMR task group since Jeff Lyon is rotating off. The deadline to express interest is end of day March 7. Please email Ethan D’Ver or Rebecca Belford.
D’Ver mentioned his MARC Advisory Committee Reports, linked below.
MAC Report, June 2023
MAC Report, January 2024
LC Liaison Report (Iseminger)
In an addendum to the MAC reports, Iseminger said that he also participates in the meetings of MARC review group and NDMSO was asked to review those proposals. Iseminger gave the news that the Music Division and Recorded Sound Section have been testers of BIBFRAME but activity was minimal. Recently they were asked to do a test of BIBFRAME with the Performed Music Ontology. They are working with Stanford to try to simplify medium of performance. Two Music Division catalogers and two from NAVCC will catalog as normal, and when the record is loaded into BIBFRAME, 382s will be transferred in as PMO. The kickoff meeting for this project will be tomorrow (March 7). Hopefully this will help solve the aggregated issue from an operational perspective. Someone asked whether there was a plan for evaluation. Iseminger said they plan to meet monthly to discuss. They will be using LCMPT as vocabulary plus some value vocabulary terms that describe role of instrument, and some for size of ensemble. This will provide the opportunity to test outside vocabs as well and to see what works in MARVA and what doesn’t. Another question was whether LC is talking about additional thesauri for use for musical instruments, or would this be a supplement? Iseminger said that actual instrument terms will be LCMPT and supplemental vocabs are from PMO, like role and size. Someone asked if there was discussion of crosswalk between BIBFRAME and MARC for this supplemental vocab? Iseminger was not sure if that had been addressed yet. He thought that if the test goes well, they may move forward with crosswalk. He also cautioned that this is a different animal than 382. The LC wants people to use PMO and they want to future-proof the ontology.
Task Groups Reports
MMR (Metadata for Music Resources) TG Report (Thompson):
This year, the task group wrote descriptions for 8 additional resources and added them to the website. D’Ver clarified that the Yale music cataloging pages have not been included because in the past things that talk about traditional cataloging have been considered out of scope. He suggested that this issue could be further discussed.
LD (Linked Data) TG Report (Vermeij):
This task group was just charged recently. It is meant to complement LDWG as an official body to react to proposals; more information is forthcoming.
New business, not in any particular order
Duration:
The question was asked whether duration should move out of 300 $c. Another idea was to get indicators defined for 306. Some background was given. In 2022, a way to move total duration out of 300 $a and have 306 accommodate total duration along with duration of parts was discussed. The decision then was to hold off until RDA developments were completed, but that group is still working. Therefore, it is probably best to table it for now.
The RDA Working Group is talking about a reconceptualization of duration, since the 300 field talks about physical description and extent and content. The Working Group is trying to view 300 as a field dealing with various extents, whether physical or otherwise. It may turn into a process like constructing an access point.
Best practices for application of field 383:
The change was approved to allow for recording numeric designations for musical expressions in authority and bib records. However, we need to be careful about what we are doing here. Is there a need to put out a best practice statement? The overall feeling was that yes, we do need one, because many catalogers aren’t clear about where the lines are. Some well-worded clarification would be helpful. One example in the proposal was a generic $o arranged, in which case we would not want a specific number to be added in 383. A best practice document could also clarify when or if we would use 383 for original work when cataloging or creating authority records for expressions. “Because we can doesn’t always mean we should.” A possible parameter could be to consider whether a work has a representative medium of performance that users consider to be classic, which may indicate that a numeric designation of that might correspond to the work rather than expression. Since there are 2 different types of identifiers, we may not want to go down the road of adding a numeric designation of musical work to a record for an expression. For example, Liszt arranged his own compositions with a catalog number for original and different catalog number for arrangement. Overall, the CSS perspective is ‘don’t cross the streams’, meaning use one and only one in the same record unless it’s an aggregate and contains both.
The Subcommittee will continue the discussion over email and wiki to come up with an interim best practice statement, with implementation on the usual MARC updates timeline.
Duplicate data in 348 $c and 546 $b:
An issue from the Ask Anything session at MOUG was brought up, regarding duplicate data in 348 $c and 546 $b. A preliminary discussion has begun about the possibility of moving 546 $b data to 348 $c for scores in OCLC. Someone commented that if the term isn’t staff notation, a lot of systems won’t display it from 348 $c. Others feel that though historically we have tied up display with MARC, we shouldn’t, because it’s not really a cataloger concern. There is the possibility to copy it over so it lives in 2 places, because it is valid in both places. Current instructions say to prefer 348 so in reality it isn’t “valid” in 546 any longer. As a clarification, OCLC is currently planning on moving the data from 546 $b to a properly coded 348 $c, rather than copied. Some background: There was a strong objection to explicitly prohibiting use of 546 $b, which resulted in the use of ‘preferred’. A side issue was aired about the 4-digit codes in the field which don’t point to the correct data. Discussion on this topic will continue elsewhere.
Should LD TG look into OCLC linked data additions to MARC records?
In reference to the Work issue: OCLC is trying to model work strings and ‘linkiness.’ The LD TG met with the OCLC person spearheading the project; he seems to be lacking info on music stuff.
OCLC is planning to mine ‘uniform title’ data for inclusion. A question was asked about more formal feedback from ESS and MLA. The answer: It would absolutely help! The rollout of linked data in OCLC doesn’t mean it’s set in stone. If you have comments, please contact Morris Levy (especially anything we can share before his meeting).
Meeting adjourned 2:56