Cataloguing Section

Annual report 2001

Scope Statement

The Section is the center of international developments in cataloguing theory, activities, and standards development within IFLA. The Section analyzes the functions of cataloguing activities for all types of materials and media, including both bibliographic and authority information, for the benefit of all users. The Section proposes and develops cataloguing rules, guidelines, and standards for bibliographic information, taking into account the developing electronic and networked environment in order to promote universal access to and exchange of bibliographic and authority information.

The Section also provides leadership in the development of various standards and guidelines related to bibliographic activities, such as corporate name headings, authority entries, OPAC displays, and metadata standards.

Membership

The section has 170 members.

The standing committee consists of 20 members, five corresponding members, and four official observers. Six members were elected in 2001. Europe, with Russia, and North America are well covered, but we are still eager to have participation from Asia, Africa, Central America, and South America.

Standing committee members at the end of the IFLA Conference in Boston in August 2001:

There were also 6 outgoing members in August 2001:

We also listed the 5 following Corresponding Members:

Official observers

Officers

Meetings - August 2001, Boston

The Section had a committee meeting in two sessions during the Boston conference, attended by 44 and 49 persons respectively, observers included. The main discussion focused on review of activities and the strategic plan. The ISBDs, their development, roles and promotion were also a major topic.

The officers participated in the division's officers meeting, held in two sessions, during the conference. The chair participated in the Coordinating Board meeting: April 2001 in St. Paul, Minn., USA.

Projects and working groups

In addition, a new working group has been proposed to review the Series areas in the various ISBDs in order to ensure consistency in description and to explore potential harmonization with the description of series in the AACR and ISSN standards.

Publications

1. Structures of corporate name headings : final report, November 2000 / IFLA Section on Cataloguing, Working Group on the Revision of FSCH ; compiled and introduced by Ton Heijligers. - IFLA, UBCIM Programme 2001. - 21 p. (Publication on demand)
2. Guidelines for authority records and references. 2nd ed. revised by the IFLA Working Group on GARE Revision. - München : K.G. Saur, 2001. - 46 p. - (UBCIM Publications). Formerly Guidelines for authority and reference entries.
3. SCATnews, 2001:14-15, in January and July, respectively.
4. ISBD(A), 2. Ed., latest revision May 2001, http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/pubs/isbda.htm
5. ISBD(G), latest revision October 2000,
6. ISBD(CR) issued for world-wide review in March 2001.
7. ISBD(M) issued for world-wide review in April 2001.

Conference Programmes

The Section reported on its activities in the Open Forum of the Divison of Bibliographic Control. It also had one Open Session, comprising four presentations: Patrick Le Boeuf presented a study on the international reception and impact of FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records); Françoise Bourdon discussed authority control in relation to technical support, available or desirable, and Barbara Tillett spoke on what has been achieved in an international context to make a virtual, international authority file possible and what still needs to be done to that end. Monika Münnich talked about the vision and progress of the Working Group to develop a Multilingual Dictionary of Cataloguing Terms and Concepts. Some 150 people attended the programme. No simultaneous interpretation was provided, but the presentations were available in all official, IFLA languages (Patrick Le Boeuf's paper not in Russian and Françoise Bourdon's not in Spanish however).

Relationships with other Bodies

We have the joint leadership of the Discussion Group on Metadata, Lynne Howarth from the Section on Cataloguing with Larry Woods, from the Section on IT. Barbara Tillett, chair of the Section, serves as the liaison to the Working Group on FRANAR. There are unofficial links to the EU projects LEAF and INTERPARTY, and there has been correspondence with the International Council of Archivists (ICA) trying to establish common approaches to terminology and standards. This has been carried out through FRANAR and earlier UBCIM groups.

Barbara Tillett
Chair

Gunilla Jonsson
Secretary

Back to the Cataloguing Section