The Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) At Large Meeting and Participants Meeting were held on the afternoon of Sunday, June 24, during the 2018 ALA Annual Conference. The At Large Meeting gave updates for the Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO) and the Subject Authority Cooperative Program (SACO), including an overview of the Library of Congress (LC) SACO review process. The Participants Meeting focused on the evolving role of the authority control into identity management and included member updates and viewpoints of several projects.
Before the NACO and SACO updates during the At Large Meeting, Judith Cannon (Library of Congress) thanked PCC members, many of whom are also members of ALCTS, for their hard work and contributions. She also mentioned that the new PCC directory was being tested thoroughly and that a roll-out process will begin over the summer. Starting in October, PCC Members will submit their institution’s statistics in the online directory and they will also be responsible for keeping their institutional profile up-to-date.
Manon Theroux (Library of Congress) gave an overview of some of the NACO Library of Congress (LC) processes, including different types of maintenance requests and tips for sending LC maintenance requests. Her slides include 11 tips when sending maintenance requests to LC. Paul Frank (LC) told everyone that the Libraries and Archives Canada (LAC) had joined NACO and that he would provide more information about LAC’s involvement, including new fields, on the PCC email distribution list, PCC-L. He also mentioned that the task group working on relationship designators for authority records is close to releasing approved guidelines and that an announcement would come out soon.
Paul Frank and Janis Young (LC) began the SACO discussions with policy changes. Of note is the change to MARC field 053 literary author number program. PCC members can now add literary numbers to authority records without seeking LC approval. Member supplied classification numbers should be coded in field 053 with a blank first indicator and 4 in the second indicator, followed by a subfield $5 with the MARC organization code. LC will continue to use field 053 with a blank first indicator and 0 in the second indicator.
Janice spent a highly informative amount of time covering the decision-making process for the LC vocabularies, which included the editorial structure, how decisions are made, and the amount research that goes into each proposal.
LC is also working on changing the policy for subdivisions that automatically gives free-floating status to analogous subdivisions used under the same heading, such as Computers–Religious aspects–Buddhism, [Christianity, etc.]. LC will be creating authorities records for these. For the heading mentioned above, LC will create authority records for each religion as needed. While these consolidated headings saved space in the print version of the LC subject headings, they are problematic for conversion to linked data. This project will begin in the fall and is expected to take at least a year.
Additional information covered included the similarities and differences between NACO and SACO. Both programs work with authorities, but while NACO relies on member contribution and collaboration with LC, PCC members may only make proposals for SACO headings for review by LC. Finally, a note that there is a moratorium on Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms (LCDGT) proposals as LC examines its structure and guiding principles for this vocabulary set.
Lori Robare (University of Oregon), chair of PCC, kicked-off the Participants meeting by highlighting the impact and strength that members bring to the PCC. She also reminded members that the new strategic directions were in effect, highlighting the PCC communications board which will provide news through quarterly bulletins, the first one coming in August.
To begin the discussion on the evolution of authority control, Amber Billey (Bard College) discussed her experience with authority data throughout her career. Of note was the need for lower barriers for authority control participation and to understand the shift from authority control to identity management. John Riemer, University of California, Los Angeles, discussed work of the PCC Task Group on Identity Management. This group has been looking at what would really need to happen if we moved from authority control to identity management. The task group created a list of working questions to help better understand the shift.
Isabel Quintana (Harvard University) discussed the PCC ISNI pilot. The International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) seeks to identify entities through an unique 16-digit number. The PCC pilot, which included members from several PCC institutions, has been looking at ways identity management could become part of cataloging workflows. Now in its final quarter, the pilot is looking at deliverables such as documenting lessons, identifying what worked well and what still needs improvement, and receiving subgroup deliverables. John Hostage (Harvard University), Chris Long (University of Colorado, Boulder), and Jeannette Norris (Brown University) discussed their experiences during the pilot. There were several comments about transitioning your thinking from NACO to ISNI processes and the differences and similarities between those workflows. This was followed by a question and answer period from the audience.
Most of the presentations from the Participants meeting are available as a single PowerPoint file download from LC.
