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Minutes of the AJL RAS Cataloging Committee Meeting

Fairmont Olympic Hotel, Seattle, Wash.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

In attendance: Elhanan Adler, Sarah Barnard, Lenore Bell, Sharon Benamou, Joan Biella, Benjamin Fryser, Yossi Galron, Janet Heineck, Uri Kolodney, Marina Korenberg, Barbara Kemmis (Guest), Heidi Lerner, Stanley Nachamie, Jasmin Nof (Chair), Nancy Sack, Adam Schiff, Marlene Schiffman, Avrom Shuchatowitz, Rachel Simon, Aaron Taub (Vice-chair, recording), and Galina Teverovsky.

The meeting was called to order and facilitated by Jasmin Nof, RAS Cataloging Committee Chairperson.

Committee Business (1)

The minutes of the 2009 AJL RAS cataloging committee meeting were approved.

Old Business

LC’s use of non-Roman headings/references in authority and bibliographic records:

Joan presented a brief update on LC interim guidelines document regarding the ongoing addition of non-roman headings/references to name authority records.  She stated that LC and the Judaica library community continue to provide Hebraica references in authority records.  Joan said that she puts $c information (titles and other words associated with the name) in the non-roman reference but not $d (dates).  However, there is no mandatory practice since no official guidelines have been released yet from the Library of Congress Policy & Standards Division (PSD).  A survey on non-roman authorities will be sent to various stakeholders, and PSD plans to compile the survey results.  In the meantime, catalogers are advised to continue providing Hebraic references.  Joan cautioned against correcting references from the OCLC pre-population project since future guidelines might require fixing them another way.

Judeo-Arabic Table

Heidi and Joan reported on the development of the Judeo-Arabic romanization table.  Some 4 or 5 years after the development of the Ladino Romanization table, Heidi and Joan decided to develop one for Judeo-Arabic.  Given the wide variety in pronunciation, they felt that a vocalized table would be quite difficult, if not impossible.  It was therefore decided to make the table a consonantal one, in keeping with the NISO standard for Arabic, which also does not use vowels.  Few comments were made on their proposal.  It was released in the Cataloging Service Bulletin.  Later, it was submitted to the Committee on African and Asian Materials (CCAAM) at ALA.  They have now approved the table, which will be posted soon on the ALA/LC romanization tables website: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html.  A colleague in the Middle Eastern Librarians Association (MELA) did provide comments.  Of course, titles in vocalized romanization can always be provided in (multiple) 246 title variant fields.

New Business

Judeo-Persian Table

Joan noted that a copy of the Judeo-Persian romanization guidelines has been mounted on the web next to the Judeo-Arabic table.  Joan met with librarians at LC to develop these guidelines; CCAAM is still seeking someone to review it.  The guidelines will be added as an appendix to the general Persian romanization scheme.  Both the Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian tables are present on the RAS cataloging wiki (http://rascat.pbworks.com/).

RDA testing

Heidi noted that an RDA testing module has been placed on computers of RDA testers.  Training will begin in July and continue for four months.  Testing will begin on October 1, 2010.  All the testers will complete a survey on the same 25 items (10 monographs, 10 serials, 5 audio-visual materials).  After the 25 items have been completed, RDA testers will choose their items to catalog using RDA.  Anyone can learn more about RDA and supply their own feedback by subscribing to the RDA listserv: http://www.rda-jsc.org/rdadiscuss.html.  RDA records created by the testers will start appearing in OCLC in October.

Jewish Law Genre/Form Project

Lenore reported on developments in Jewish law genre/form headings.  She noted that limited genre/form headings have been in use for some time now, beginning with those applied to audio-visual materials (motion pictures, radio programs, and television programs).   A group of LC staff from PSD, the Israel & Judaica Section, the Law Section, and the Middle East Section met to discuss the list of Jewish law genre/form headings proposed by a group at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America led by Clifford Miller, and including Harriet Atik, Rita Lifton, Sol Majersdorf, Lisa Rohde, and Sara Spiegel.  The LC group provided feedback, which was then compiled into a table by Lenore and distributed at the meeting.  Lenore’s table had also been posted to Heb-NACO by Aaron Taub (6/23/2010) and to the RAS cataloging wiki.  In general, translations of terms into Hebrew are to be avoided if they may be covered by English language terms.  Ideally, LCSH and g/f terms should be identical when covering the same concept.  Lenore noted that a number of key issues will have to be resolved.  In addition to examining the validity of a particular term, we will also need to think about its reference structure and its impact on the corresponding topical heading about its place in the LCSH hierarchy, e.g., terms such as Amoraic literature or Tannaitic literature. Proposed terms already covered by uniform titles (e.g. Mishnayot) were determined to be unnecessary.  Adam suggested that we consider using a general “see also reference” in the authority record in the 360 field that would direct users to the uniform title (i.e. USE u.t. Mishnah).  The aim is to incorporate the Jewish law terms into the general Genre/Form Terms for Law Materials, which was prepared by a committee of American Association of Law Libraries, under the direction of Yael Mandelstam (Fordham University). Three terms were intended to be included in the most recent draft of the general law genre/form list—Codes (Jewish law), Responsa (Jewish law), and Takkanot.  Since genre/form headings do not have chronological subdivisions, catalogers have expressed concern that we not lose the chronological subdivisions that are currently used for Responsa in LCSH.  Lenore noted that there will be some overlap between the Jewish law genre/form and the Judaism genre/form headings (see below). 

Users are invited to provide feedback on the Jewish law genre/form headings on the wiki or directly to members of the RAS Cataloging Committee.  The Cataloging Committee plans to provide a response to the Jewish law genre/form table by the end of October.

Religion Genre/Form Project

Barbara Kemmis of the American Theological Library Association discussed the current project to develop genre/form headings in religion.  She noted that she had reached out to AJL members several months ago to solicit participation.  A preliminary conference call took place between ATLA, AJL, and LC to discuss the collaboration.  She noted that a wiki for the religion law/form genre project has already been established and that some headings had already been posted.  AJL members are invited to join the wiki, participate in the discussion, and submit their concerns to the Cataloging Committee.  The Cataloging Committee will spearhead AJL participation in the religion genre/form headings project.

LCSH in the National Library of Israel

Elhanan is leading a project to introduce LCSH to the National Library of Israel (NLI).  The actual usage of LCSH will start within a month.  He discussed the problems in the current system which uses a mixture of Dewey classification, Scholem classification (expansion of Dewey for Judaica), and descriptive texts.  This system is unique to the NLI and requires much effort in its upkeep.  Furthermore, other libraries cannot use this data in their cataloging and NLI cannot make use of the subject data from other libraries.  LCSH was chosen because it is the most widely used system in Israeli academic libraries and in academic libraries in the English speaking world.  Its usage will enable NLI to receive and provide usable subject data.  Elhanan sought a volunteer to mentor NLI cataloger(s) should they wish to consult with a cataloger more familiar with LCSH.  Heidi agreed to serve as a mentor.

Committee Business (2)

The new Cataloging Committee Chair, Aaron Taub, was welcomed and appointed to his role as of July 7, 2010. 

Minutes taken by Aaron Taub and submitted to Heb-NACO, July 21, 2010.

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