Section on Bibliography

Minutes of the meetings of the Standing Committee,
Amsterdam, August 1998

First Meeting : 15 August 1998,
10:00-14:00

1.1 Welcome and attendance

Apologies from : Joao Gonçalvès (Portugal), Pilar Dominguez Sanchez (Spain), Marcelle Beaudiquez (France)

The list of SC members was circulated and each member checked his/her address.

1.2. Adoption of the agenda

• the newsletter of the Section
• the leaflet of the Division
• preparation of the election of the Standing Committee in 1999.

1.3. Minutes of the Copenhaguen meetings and matters araising

• revision of ISBD(S) : no volunteer from the Section on bibliography was participated in the working group created by the IFLA Section on cataloguing.
• co-operation between the book trade and national bibliographic agencies : Ute Schwens (Germany) is proposed by Werner Stephan to follow up the Ross Bourne's proposition to prepare guidelines.
• analysis of B. Bell's Guide, specially concerning information about retrospective conversion projects : no French or German student was found to do the study. The book was available too late in the university year.

1.4. Reports from the Section

Section annual report :

In 1999, issues were scheduled in January/February and in July. It appears necessary to define in few words in the Newsletter what is "bibliographic control". In order to well announced the call for nomination for SC election next year it is planned to put the newsletter on IFLANET with the help of Kirsten Waneck (information coordinator).

The Secretary/Treasurer had circulated the annual report in advance, and as a paper registered for the open forum of the Division, translations were asked to SC members. The text was available in English, French, German and Spain on the web site of IFLA since July 1998. Those who have prepared these versions were thanked by the Committee. The administrative funds budget was presented. The Section received 200 NLG from IFLA in February 1998 and spent 195 French Francs for express mail. The balance at date of report was 3336,89 FF. No administrative money was asked for 1999. No funding projects were current during 1998 within the Section.

The Information Coordinator encouraged SC members to participate in the meeting "Introduction for IFLA newcomers" planned on 16 August to welcome new delegates and to promote the Section, and announced a meeting of information coordinators of all IFLA professional groups with Theresa Stanton (Communication Officer, IFLA HQ) and Gary Cleveland (UDT Core Programme, Canada) to coordinate the work done on IFLANET. This meeting was planned on Friday 21 August. It is quite important to have just one person per section to be in relation with IFLA for FLANET.

All SC members were urged to give regularly information during the year on what happens in their country and what are their relation with other international bodies in order to allow the officers to report in the Newsletter, the annual report and on IFLANET.

Translation of papers

Membership statistics

The Chair passed remarks upon an "Overview of membership per section per 1 August 1998" which was circulated in the Coordinating Board meeting the day before. The Section on bibliography has 105 registered members (Cataloguing : 148 ; Classification and Indexing : 100). The smallest Section has 45 members (Geography and Map Libraries), and the biggest 485 (University Libraries and other General Research Libraries). Kirsten Waneck was asked to get the list of the members from IFLA HQ and to circulate it to the SC members. It will be useful to incite members to nominate candidates for SC election next Spring.

Planning for the Bangkok Conference (see SC II)

• to establish the extent of current and future coverage of electronic resources by National Bibliographic Agencies (NBAs) ;
• to establish the nature of the cataloguing practices and policies used in cataloguing electronic resources; and,
• to determine how NBAs are dealing with remote access electronic resources (e.g. material available on the Internet).

That electronic material can assume a variety of publication manifestations is exemplified by the following types of ER covered (in order of highest to lowest covered): texts (e.g. books), bulletin boards & discussion lists, serials, directories & databases, programs (e.g., word processors, games, desktop publishing), digital reproductions, Web sites, and online services.

Legal deposits account for the primary source of acquisitions of electronic resources (often on a voluntary basis), followed by gift/exchange and purchases. In several instances the legal deposit laws were recently revised to include electronic resources or such changes are anticipated in the near future. The majority of respondents anticipate increasing coverage of electronic resources, both as a result of updated legal deposit laws and as the publishing of these kinds of materials becomes more prevalent within each country. Of those NBAs replying to the Survey which currently do not provide coverage for ER, most (14) are planning to initiate some kind of activity in this area shortly.

The Survey asked a series of questions relating to the cataloguing practices and policies used for bibliographic descriptions in the national bibliographies. Most reported following the national cataloguing rules, with 19 indicating that their descriptive cataloguing policies are based on the Anglo- American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition, either the English text, or a translation or adaptation of it. Also used is the CONSER Cataloguing Manual: Module 31, which covers descriptive cataloguing of remote access computer files. Thirteen NBAs reported revising their cataloguing rules to incorporate electronic materials and, in some cases, utilizing the recently issued International Standard Bibliographic Description for Electronic Resources (ISBD(ER)). In general, countries gave the same level of cataloguing to ER as they did for print materials.

Some ER bibliographic records received fuller treatment (none reported giving briefer records to ER materials). From the Survey results, it may concluded that electronic resources are quickly becoming an integral part of national bibliographies. The fact that they are given equal or greater cataloging attention than their print counterparts, combined with burgeoning revisions to national deposit laws to include these materials amply supports this claim. (Thanks to John for having produced this report to be included in these minutes)

1.5 Amsterdam Programme (see SCII)

• open forums of the core programmes, division, and of the 3 sections of the division,
• workshops organized by the UBCIM Programme, the Section on cataloguing, the Section on classification and indexing, the Section on national libraries.
• working group meetings : Minimal Level of Authority Record, OPACs display, ICNBS Planning Committee, etc

SC members were informed that an evaluation form would be available in each working language at different places on the conference site. They were urged to fill it in. As usual, the Denmark Royal School of Library and Information Science will be in charge of the survey. Results are published in IFLA Journal.

Second Meeting : 21 August 1998,
10:00-12:00

1.1. Attendance

Observers : Ute Schwens (Germany), Axel Ermers (Germany)

1.2 Report from the Coordinating Board of the Division (held on Friday 14th August)

1.2.1. Future conferences :

About the Bangkok Conference in 1999 :

The Professional Board proposed that the contributed papers sessions be dropped from the 1999 Conference. There have been a lot of papers, but the quality of them has not been high, and it has been difficult to find translators for them. It would be a one-year experiment.

During the 1999 Conference there will be no workshops on Sunday or Monday. There will be a need to cut back on the number of workshops. A total equivalent of ten full-day workshops will be permitted, this means there can be any combination between ten full-day and twenty half-day workshops.

About the Jerusalem Conference in 2000 :

There are problems because people from certain countries may not attend or there may be restrictions on things that can be done. A satellite meeting in Haïfa has been proposed.

1.2.2. IFLA Budget :

IFLA foresees a balanced budget for 1998. It looks like the next few years will have tight budgets, in that a lot of net revenue from the conference in Bangkok and Jerusalem is not expected to be as large as in recent years. Units will probably not be able to ask for new money.

1.2.3. Proposed changes to the IFLA Statutes :

This has not advanced as quickly as one would have wanted. If any changes are to be made at the 1999 Conference they needed to be distributed in January 1999. Probably only minor changes will be made in Bangkok, others will be made on a two-year cycle (for example the possible restructuring of core programmes).

1.2.4. FAIFE :

The new IFLA Office of Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression was opened full-time in Copenhagen at the beginning of the Summer. It is the result of the work of CAIFE, the Committee on Access to Information and Freedom of Expression, which now has been established with 22 members. Jan Ristarp and Carsten Frederiksen are FAIFE Director and Deputy Director and they were introduced to the Coordinating Board members

1.3. Amsterdam Programme

1.3.1. Open forum of the Section :

Four papers were presented and texts were available in four IFLA official languages : English, French, German and Spanish. There was a misunderstanding with the person asked to do the Russian translation. Full texts in all versions are available on IFLANET.

Bibliographic control in the Netherlands / Kees van den Berg (Royal Library, The Hague, Netherlands)

Statistische Auswertung Nationalbibliographischer Daten / Ute Schwens (Dienstleistungen und Archivierung, Die Deutsche Bibliothek, Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

Présentation d'une bibliographie de bibliographies des sciences de l'information : "International Bibliography of Bibliographies in Library and Information Sciences and Related Fields", volume 2, 1979-1990 / Maria Witt (La Villette, Cité des Sciences et de l'industrie, Paris, France)

Remote access electronic serials and the National Library of Norway / Anna M.H. Langballe (University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway) About 70 persons attended the meeting.

1.3.2. Contribution of SC members in other meetings :

Five members participated in other meetings and presented papers.
Bohdana Stoklasova (National Library in Prague) contributed to :
• the UDC Workshop organized by the Sections on Cataloguing and on Classification and Indexing : she presented Bilingual (English-Czech) UDC Master Reference File on CD-ROM,
• to the Workshop organized by the UBCIM Programme, the Permanent UNIMARC Committee and the Division on Bibliographic Control on the theme « UNIMARC in transition » : she presented UNIMARC in Czech libraries.

Eeva Murtomaa (Helsinki University Library) contributed to

• the Public libraries workshop on the theme « Professional Work with Internet for public libraries »: she presented Net is making a revolution in cataloguing
• the Cataloguing Workshop on ISBD(ER) : she presented The impact of the functional requirements for bibliographic records : recommendations on the ISBD(ER).

Tamara Vasilieva (Russian State Library, Moscow)

• contributed to the open forum of the Section on Government information and offician publications on the theme « Government information and official publications as a resource for researchers » : she presented Official publications for readers in the Russian State Library : resources and needs.

John Byrum (Library of Congress, Washington)

• contributed to the ISBD(ER) Workshop : he presented ISBD(ER) project definition and process

Françoise Bourdon (Bibliothèque Nationale de France) contributed to

• the UNIMARC in transition Workshop : she presented the possible follow up of the European Project AUTHOR concerning UNIMARC/Authorities.
• the open forum of the Division on bibliographic control : she presented a progress report on the European project BIBLINK.

1.4. Section Programme for the future Conference in Bangkok

• Chirudee Pungtrakul, a librarian from Thailand could be invited to speak about the bibliographic situation in this country
• Peter Haddad, Head of Technical Services in National Library in Canberra could be invited to speak about national bibliographic matters in Australia and about cooperation between Australia and New Zealand.
• a report from the International Conference on National Bibliographic Services which will take place in Copenhagen in November 1998 under the auspices of UBCIM Programme and the Division on Bibliographic Control.
• Mrs Calabresi, Head of Bibliographic Services in Roma, could be invited to explain how and why the Italian national bibliography is now under the responsibility of a private company

A joint workshop could be planned with the Section on National Libraries on the theme : Electronic Publications and (National) Bibliographies. The following speakers could be invited (necessity to check with Winston Tabb from the Section on National Libraries):

• John Byrum (Library of Congress) for a report of his survey devoted to the integration of electronic publications in bibliographies

• Sonia Zillhardt (Bibliothèque Nationale de France) for a progress report on the European Project BIBLINK
  • a Swedish librarian to speak about the Nordic work on archiving electronic publications
  • an Australian librarian to explain the way the home page of the National Library in Australia managed electronic publications
  • a Japanese colleague from the Diet library
  • Ute Schwens for the Deutsche Bibliothek experience

1.5. Draft programme for Jerusalem Conference in 2000

• to organize a sattelite meeting on the follow up of ICNBS ?
• a paper on the state of the art in the region
• the paper of Mrs Calabresi if it is not presented in Bangkok ?
• a paper on the Arabic aerea : ALECSO could be contacted through an international organization
• a paper from the Eastern Europe : the same system ALEPH is used in Sarajevo and in Jerusalem.

1.6. Revision of the Action Plan

Goal 3 :
Promote co-operation with the book trade in the preparation of bibliographic information

Action 3.1. :
several works are done to promote the co-operation

• Eeva Murtomaa represents the Section on bibliography in a working group created by the Section on cataloguing in order to establish guidelines for authors on how to use metadata : the group wants to study when and how bibliographies use or don't use metadata. What is the level of metadata needed by bibliographies. Line Horwarth (Canada) is the chair of the working group and Fernanda Campos (Portugal) is a member and will make a relation with BIBLINK.
• John Byrum announced a paper on electronic CIP programme in USA : cooperation between publishers and librarians is on the way.
• Ute Schwens mentioned a work in progress between Die Deutsche Bibliothek and 5 selected publishers (ex. : Springler) : CIP is a first step towards a fruitful cooperation.
• some projects exist between CDNL and the International Federation of Publishers, and within EBLIDA ;- several private cooperations take place to produce the national bibliography (in Germany, Italy, etc) How to avoid overlaps ?

Action 3.2. :
the ICNBS Conference can be considered as a follow up of the Ross Bourne's survey

Goal 4 :
Monitor and promote publication of bibliographies in electronic form, e.g., on the Internet 4.1. : the ICNBS Conference can be considered as a follow up of the Robert Holley's survey

Goal 5 :
Monitor and take action as necessary on new search methods and user interfaces

Action 5.1.
Françoise Bourdon and Eeva Murtomaa from the SC of the Section are members of the Working Group on OPAC Guidelines defined in the framework of the Section on cataloguing. A bibliography on this topic was compiled by the consultant working for this Working Group. Perhaps it could be useful to put this bibliography on IFLANET ? (to contact Dorothy McGarry from the SC on Cataloguing)

Goal 6 :
Monitor and promote the inclusion of Internet resources in bibliographies

Action 6.1. :
the survey of the inclusion of Internet resources in national bibliographies was made by John Byrum (see report above)

1.7. Election and re-election of SC members in 1999

A call for nomination will be sent next Spring to SC members to help each of them to check her/his statute concerning their SC participation.