Catalogers Group

Minutes

January 8, 2001

Present: Beth Feinberg, Caroline Miller, Eliezer Chammou, Gia Aivazian, Janice Matthiesen, Jean Rashedi, Jeff Morehead, Joan LoPear, Louise Ratliff, Luiz Mendes, Rebecca Aiken, Renée McBride, Rita Stumps, Sylvia Mariscal, Valerie Bross

This was the organizational meeting of the Catalogers Group, which John had proposed creating during his July interview.

The group could have the following potential functions:

A. Communication

A chance to share info and find out what's going on elsewhere in a large department, in terms of cataloging practices, projects, etc.

Informal sharing of what we learn from conference attendance

B. Continuing education forum

Keep ourselves up to date with MARBI changes, CSBs, AA2, changes in NACO/SACO, DRA, etc.

We could bring in "guest speakers" from outside our department, e.g. preservation, acquisitions

Cross-training or teaching each other things that only some us know at present, e.g. CORC and e-resource cataloging

C. Problem solving

Bringing cataloging problems/questions for peer advice

D. Recommending cataloging policy

An opportunity for input on ACC agenda items

Chance for John to use department staff as a sounding board: "I am thinking of doing X-help me to see implications/ramifications"

Individual initiative: are there cataloging practices or workflow improvements Catalogers Group members can think of and would like to propose?

E. Personal development

With (eventual) rotating monthly chairs, members could get experience leading meetings, setting agendas, and that might be good preparation for chairing groups for UCLA, ALA, etc.

People who have committed to making a presentation to a professional organization might want the opportunity to practice in front of peers & receive suggestions for improvement.

Those present affirmed their desire to see such a group exist.

Schedule: In the future, we normally will plan to meet 2:30-3:30 on the 2^nd and 4^th Thursdays of the month. Owing to scheduling difficulties, the next three meetings will be Jan. 19, Feb. 15, and Feb. 22.

Attendance: The group agreed that librarians and section heads in the department would regularly attend the meetings. Note: Interested support staff could pick and choose which meetings they would like to attend, based on having seen the agenda topics that will go out via email in advance of the meetings.

Minutes: Members will take turns writing minutes. Renée volunteered for the next meeting. Afterwards, we could go alphabetically by last name from her point in the alphabet. Trading turns with people to accommodate schedules, etc. is okay. People writing minutes would email them to John for review and distribution to the department. The minutes could be stored on a web page, for our benefit and possibly also that of catalogers at other institutions.

Ground rules: The group supported the following:

--One person speaks at a time (no "sidebar" conversations)

--No question is stupid

--Give reasons for things (That way when someone disagrees they are only disagreeing with an idea, not the person. Also, it's good to know the reason why something is being advocated; this gives others a chance to think of other ways to achieve the underlying goal.)

--Respect each other's opinions

--Stay on topic

--Maintain positive, constructive focus

--Be timely with minutes

Finally, the group brainstormed a list of potential agenda topics for future meetings:

--CORC

--Multiple Versions

--ACC agenda items (an ongoing supply)

--Reproductions (local & national cataloging policies for all formats: photocopies, microforms, digital and video reproductions)

--Series decisions practices, esp. local ones for monographic sets

--Potential use of macros with our cataloging client

--Enhance (local policies)

--Diacritic & special character display & editing in the cataloging client (& OPAC display)

--The "fast track" report Valerie recently wrote

--In Process records

--How to search in other databases for helpful cataloging information (could expedite the cataloging process):

LC's Voyager

AltaVista

Google

Lexis-Nexis

NLC Authorities via AMICUS

International library catalogs on the web

--The Nov 2000 bibliographic control conference

LC calls for comments on the work of the topical discussion groups

The presentations themselves

--Aggregators task group (John)

--E-versions task force (John)

--What we are going to do with the series training we recently got from Judy Kuhagen

--Input on YRL Cat Dept's homepage-contents & format

--Overview of in-house workflow

--Web LCC pilot test experiences (at least 6 dept staff are participating)

Compiled by John