Core Authority Control Interest Group

LITA/ALCTS Authority Control Interest Group meeting notes ALA Annual Chicago, Sunday 6/30/13 1pm

  • 1.  LITA/ALCTS Authority Control Interest Group meeting notes ALA Annual Chicago, Sunday 6/30/13 1pm

    Posted Jul 18, 2013 02:47 PM

    Brief meeting notes from the ALA Annual 2013 meeting in Chicago of the Authority Control Interest Group, held Sunday, June 30, 2013. There were approximately 100 people in attendance at the meeting.


    The main topics for the meeting at ALA Annual in Chicago were “Authority Control of relationship designators in RDA”, and “Authority Control in data repositories and digital projects”. We had four presentations with five speakers, with the presentations lasting approximately one hour 45 minutes. The speakers were:


    Janis Young (Senior Cataloging Policy Specialist, Policy and Standards Division (PSD)) gave her regular semi-annual report from Library of Congress, including updates on authorities projects, staffing changes at LC, and updates to tables and documentation. Current projects include changes to fictitious/legendary characters, LCSH headings for crimes, and the moving image genre/form terms.


    Chew Chiat Naun (Director, Cataloging and Metadata Services, Cornell University) reported on his experience as part of the PCC Relationship Designator Guidelines Task Group. The group was formed in June 2012 and submitted a report of recommendations (http://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/rda/RDA%20Task%20groups%20and%20charges/PCC-Relat-Desig-TG-report.rtf). The group dealt with such issues as open vs. closed vocabularies, working with specialized communities, codes vs. terms, limitations of the MARC format, and FRBR implementation.


    Chelcie Juliet Rowell (Digital Initiatives Librarian, Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forest University) reported on a recent research project she was involved in while at UNC-Chapel Hill studying controlled vocabulary use, knowledge and perceptions by different types of users. A survey was sent to DATANET and data repository stakeholders (not necessarily libraries) and conclusions were reported from the survey results so far.


    Jeremy Myntti (Head of Cataloging & Metadata, University of Utah) and Nate Cothran (Vice President, Automation Services, Backstage Library Works) reported on the collaboration between Univ. of Utah and Backstage Library Works to automate a solution for bringing authority control to digital library metadata. In addition to standardizing headings, the process adds links from the metadata records to Library of Congress’ Linked Data Service. They walked us through the project, explaining methodology, problems they ran into, and statistics and reports from the project.


    A brief Q&A session followed the presentations. Presentations are available on ALA Connect in the Authority Control Interest Group Community.


    There was a business meeting after the presentations for committee members and anyone else who wished to attend. The group decided to abolish the specific designations for members-at-large as they were no longer needed, and discussed recruiting liaisons from other organizations in addition to the Music Library Association liaison. Elections were held for the members-at-large and secretary positions. No one ran for vice-chair, but one was appointed after the meeting. The committee discussed possible topics and speakers for the ALA Midwinter program in Philadelphia.