This is the url for the working group on the future of bibliographic control (aka cataloguing and catalogues):
http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/ The Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control wants to know the viewpoints of all parties interested in this topic, but I suspect more attention would be paid to group submissions. I hope all groups with an interest in the continuation of quality cataloguing created by humans will speak up. My individual comment was: Since automation, we cataloguers have unfortunately tended to limit ourselves to bibliographic record creation, leaving OPAC creation to systems people. It is not that ISBD/AACR2/MARC21 are not flexible and able to meet the present day needs of patrons, whether recreational readers or scholars, but that we have failed to take advantage of the wealth of information stored in those records. Few OPACs, for example, have genre indexes or classed subject catalogues. Rather than reinventing a metadata wheel, creating language specific MODS and MADS in an increasingly multilingual and interconnected world, attention should be paid to greater harmonization among our standards (e.g., is imprint repeating as in MARC21, or not as in AACR2; is the medium specific field ONE field as in ISBD/AACR2 or multiple fields as in MARC21?). Attention should be paid to utilization of an amazing achievement in international standardization, the ISBD. Attention should be paid to continuing the contribution of national cataloguing agencies, including the Library of Congress, creating bibliographic records with classification and controlled vocabulary subject analysis, records which are retrospectively compatible with the wealth of existing bibliographic records. __ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) {__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/ ___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
