Cataloguing Section

Annual report 2002

Scope Statement

The Section is the centre of international developments in cataloguing theory, activities, and standards development within IFLA. The Section analyses 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 and five corresponding members. 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:

Corresponding Members:

Officers

Meetings - August 2002, Glasgow

The Section's Standing Committee met in two sessions during the Glasgow conference, attended by 38 and 36 persons respectively, observers included. The main discussion focused on reports of activities, the strategic plan, ISBD reports, and routines and plans for future conferences, especially the conference of cataloguing experts planned for next year.

The officers participated in the division's officers meeting, held in two sessions, during the conference.

Projects and working groups

In addition, a new working group has been established 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.

For more detailed information, please, refer to the Cataloguing Section's minutes for Glasgow 2002, which will be available on IFLANET.

Publications

1. SCATnews, 2001:14-15, in January and July, respectively.
2. ISBD(CR): International Standard Bibliographic Description for Serials and Other Continuing Resources. Revised from the ISBD(S): International Standard Bibliographic Description for Serials. Recommended by the ISBD(S) Working Group. Approved by the Standing Committees of the IFLA Section on Cataloguing and the IFLA Section on Serial Publications. München 2002. xi, 112 p. Hardbound. ISBN 3-598-11599-7.
   (UBCIM Publications. New series, ISSN 0941-8946 ; 24)
3. ISBD(M) 2002 revision available on IFLANET in 2002.

Conference Programmes

The Section reported on its activities in the Open Forum of the Division of Bibliographic Control. It also had one Open Session, comprising three presentations focussing Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records from different aspects: Gunilla Jonsson spoke about The Basis for a Record in Major Cataloguing Codes and the Relation to FRBR, a theoretical study, which found that we need the Manifestation record more than ever, but that cataloguing must include authority work in a much wider context than before. The presentation ended on the note that FRBR has given us a common language which is one of the prerequisites for enhanced interoperability ; Knut Hegna and Eeva Murtomaa reported on their project Data mining MARC to find: FRBR?, a comparison between Finnish and Norwegian records, which identified in which areas FRBR elements could be automatically generated. The conclusion was that the formal syntax and the accuracy within the MARC records in their sample were not sufficient for a full machine generation of the FRBR structure. They did, however, give suggestions for enhanced OPAC displays, based on their findings.

Chris Taylor presented Marie-Louise Ayre’s Report on the successful AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway implementation of the FRBR and INDECS event models, and implications for other FRBR implementations. The presentation discussed the benefits of this implementation and the practical and conceptual difficulties encountered. The conclusion was that the models offer many benefits and should be seriously considered by a range of information providers.

About 260 people attended the programme. Simultaneous interpretation was provided, and the presentations were available in all official IFLA languages.

The section also had a Workshop, focussing ISBD(CR) and the new way of looking at cataloguing of serials of different kinds, now called continuing resources. The workshop was arranged and monitored by our member Paul Bunn, the attendance was the 50 allowed and more would have joined if it ad been possible.

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. The final meeting of this Discussion Group was highly acclaimed affording participants an opportunity to discuss metadata issues at round tables.

Barbara Tillett, chair of the Section, serves as the liaison to the UBCIM 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