REPORT OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC CONTROL COMMITTEE FOR 2002-2003

The committee members for this past year were Trudy Bodak (Chair), Lorraine Dubreuil, Velma Parker, Donna Porter, Grace Welch, Frank Williams, Alberta Auringer Wood and Frances Woodward. 

We continued to focus during the year on two major projects:

The American Library Association is hoping to have the second edition of Cartographic Materials published in time for the ALA conference in June. This year Velma and Grace devoted much of their time on the final revisions. As mentioned in last year’s report, this work has been enlarged to include rules for cartographic material in electronic form, series and serials, and more extensive rules for early cartographic materials and remote-sensing images. The appendices have been revised, and the glossary has undergone a major overhaul. We are looking forward to this publication. Velma and Grace are to be commended for their devotion and commitment to this major work.

In November, Trudy Bodak, Lorraine Dubreuil, Velma Parker, Donna Porter and Frank Williams attended a meeting in Ottawa with Michael Andrassy, Ellen Katic, Emilie Lowenberg and Nicki Quintero from the Union Catalogue Division of the National Library of Canada to follow up on the status of the Union Catalogue of Maps and to discuss map cataloguing issues. As a result of our deliberations, Velma wrote an article under "Cataloguing Notes from the Bibliographic Control Committee" for the Winter 2003 issue of the ACMLA Bulletin that provides some guidance on the various fields that need to be coded consistently and in concert. This article also addresses the recommended use of GMDs (General Material Designations) and outlines procedures to follow if duplicate records are found in the Union Catalogue on AMICUS. We plan to post this article on the ACMLA website. In order to help map cataloguers, Velma and Frank also prepared more examples for the Core Level Cataloguing for Non-Serial Cartographic Materials Document. These remote-sensing examples will be posted on the ACMLA website. As part of training, Velma and Grace participated in an ALA Pre-Conference cataloguing training session in Atlanta this year, and they plan to do a follow up in Toronto in June 2003. For the latter session, Velma will be doing early cartographic rules and Grace will be focusing on the electronic rules.

One of our outstanding goals is to do a survey of the cataloguing community. This survey will give us an opportunity to determine cataloguers’ needs and to obtain feedback about AMICUS and other timely topics, such as metadata. This information will assist us in our future planning.

Sincere thanks go to the members of the Bibliographic Control Committee and to the Union Catalogue Division staff of the National Library of Canada for their work this past year.

Respectfully submitted,

Submitted May 14, 2003