Weighing In On the 3rd LC Working Group Meeting

I've watched some of the webcasts from the final July 9th meeting of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. I highly recommend these webcasts, especially the Q & A sessions. Also, I've been reading through the presentation notes available at the Working Group's website. Here are a few (very random) observations:

• Main emphasis on using publisher's data, possibly ONIX, to find efficiencies for cataloging.
• A noticeable absence to this meeting: there were no publishers or ILS providers.
• It was refreshing to read in Karen Coyle's detailed notes  Lorcan Dempsey of OCLC saying "the problem is not MARC ...".
• The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) stands out in this third meeting and an example of efficiency and collaboration.
• The Library of Congress is planning to expand outsourcing of cataloging to book vendors.
• During the question and answer session, Deanna Marcum said that the Library of Congress would continue the work of the authority file and LC subject headings.

I'm still working on putting together some written testimony to submit to the Working Group. And if I'm brave enough will post it to the blog (following Martha Yee's good example of making her testimony public).

Comments

[Jonathan Rochkind]

Please do post it to your blog! The more actual wide-ranging discussion about this stuff in public the better.

[Chris Schwartz]

Jonathan, thanks for the encouragement. I'm still writing, but will post my testimony over the next couple of days. I spent a lot of time the last two weekends watching the Webcasts of the Working Group meetings. It's really helped to listen to the presenters and especially the questions raised.