NACO Coordinating Committee Minutes

Date: 3 October 2005

Present: Sarah Elman, Maria Hunenko, Mickey Koth, Cécile Mandour, Rick Sarcia, Manon Théroux (chair and recorder).

Absent: Steven Arakawa.

1. Announcements on Staff Training/Independence

The following four catalogers have completed NACO Series Training: Tom Bolze (Rare Book Team, SML), Abdul Hannawi (Near East Collection), Fereshteh Molavi (Near East Collection), and Chris Smith (Rare Book Team, SML). Also, Penny Welbourne (Rare Book Team, SML) sat in on the class as a refresher.

Todd Fell (Rare Book Team, SML) has been granted independence for creating NACO authority records for personal names.

2. NACO Participant's Manual (3rd ed.)

In August, LC issued the 3rd edition of the NACO Participant's Manual: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/naco/npm3rd.pdf

The URL was forwarded to the YUL-NACO e-list and a link was added to the "Authority Control at Yale" site. There seem to be very few substantive changes in the new edition. Manon will send a message to YUL-NACO highlighting some of the changes she noticed (053, 670, appendices on BFM).

3. LC Decision on Proposal to Add Death Dates to Existing Personal Name Headings

Last week, LC announced a decision on its proposal to allow the addition of dates to existing personal name headings: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/pndates.html

In brief, the decision is:

1. Allow for the optional addition of death dates to established headings that contain birth dates only.
2. Continue the "status quo" regarding the restriction of adding dates (birth and/or death) to existing headings that previously had no dates and are not in conflict with other headings.

This is a slight revision from the original proposal which would have allowed the addition of any date information "at will". On the positive side, it will allow us to respond positively to patron complaints about open-ended dates in headings; on the negative side, it will make for more database maintenance work.

Implementation has not started yet and NACO catalogers should not add death dates to existing headings (except to resolve a conflict) until they get the official go-ahead.

4. Revisions to: "Authority Control Workflow for Yale Catalog Librarians"

A draft revision of the document called "Authority Control Workflow for Yale Catalog Librarians" was discussed. The main change was to recognize that RLIN is not our only option for authority record searching when no authority records have been found in Orbis or LCDB. Instead of RLIN, one could search the online LC Authorities or OCLC. However, NACO catalogers still must search the RLIN pending file before creating a NACO record.

The draft will be further revised so that it not only recognizes these additional options but provides some guidance on the advantages and disadvantages of choosing one over the other.

Draft revision:
http://www.library.yale.edu/~mtheroux/acworkflow.htm
Existing document:
http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/authorities/acworkflow.htm

5. Revisions to: "Yale Policies for NARs"

A revision of the draft document called "Yale Policies for NARs" was discussed. The document was revised in light of some instructions in the new NACO Participant's Manual concerning 053 fields. These new instructions make obsolete some of the committee's earlier decisions on when LC classification numbers for literary authors should be recorded in authority record 090 fields in Orbis. A few further revisions were suggested and will be incorporated. The final document will be sent to CCC for approval and distributed on YULCAT.

New draft:
http://www.library.yale.edu/~mtheroux/names_policy.htm
Old draft:
http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/authorities/names_policy.htm

6. RLIN21 Upgrade

The 3.0 version of the RLIN21 client is scheduled to be released the week of October 10, 2005. It will be a mandatory update. A few staff in the Hebraica Team and the East Asia Library have been testing a "pre-release" version of the client. The YULCAT-L announcement sent in August is here:

http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/yulcat-l/2005-August/000056.html