Present: Tom Bolze, Daniel Lovins (chair and recorder), Youn Noh, and Britta Santamauro. [Britta is a former and, we hope, returning member of Task Force]

Absent: Becky Slitt

Note: Action items are in boldface green. Meeting began at 2pm in the Law School cafeteria.

RDA and PCC
We discussed Matthew's 2005 address to the PCC , and speculated about the context. A kind of riposte to PCC, i.e., after they expressed concern about AACR3 being too costly to implement? Does concern of PCC (along with Marcum, et al.) help explain apparently added emphasis on "cataloger's judgment" (i.e., in lieu of detailed instructions) for certain rules in RDA, and, accordingly, a discontinuation of LCRIs in favor of (possibly less robust) "LC Cataloging Decisions"? I.e., are these perceived as cost-cutting measures? We had some discussion on how else RDA might differ from AACR2. For example, a greater reliance on FRBR distinctions, and an effort to maintain the RDA as a content standard, thereby relegating display, exchange, and other considerations to other standards.

Meeting with Team Leaders
Daniel reminded group that we are invited to attend the team leaders meeting on Nov. 9th, 2-3pm, in SML 409. Tom and Youn said they won't be able to make it. Would be good to get input from Joan on how we should prepare [Daniel meets with her Tuesday, November 8], but we may already have a decent amount to discuss, for example, our comments on the TL Document, and our recommendation to develop pilot projects for application of non-MARC metadata skills (i.e., before they get forgotten). We also agreed to meet at our regular time on the following day (Thurs., Nov. 10th), though Youn said she would be unable to make it.

Shelf-listing issues
We briefly discussed anti-theft article cited by Becky, but decided to hold off on fuller discussion until Becky is present. Note reformatted version posted to our Web site, where highlighted passages discuss shelf listing as tool for inventory and theft-deterrance. The author is mostly thinking about special collections, but the argument lends itself to generalization.

Technical Services Statistics and Trends
Discussed data in Acquisitions outflow spreadsheet [1], and apparent 30% decline in items routed to Frontlog between FY03/04 and FY04/05. Will this reduction in hand-offs from Acquisitions free our people up to work on new digital library initiatives? Tom asked why spreadsheet indicates only 48,714 items (or titles?) in "cart traffic to processing partners"? Doesn't Yale receive a lot more than that each year? Does some of this just sit in Acquisitions? Daniel said he'd ask for Joan's help in interpreting these figures.

Pilot Projects and Application of New Knowledge
Daniel mentioned NAF+Wikipedia experiment proposed by Dan Chudnov (following similar DDB initiative), which may serve as nice metadata pilot project; Daniel also mentioned his proposal the proposal he made to E.C. about digitizing and providing metadata for illustrations from a small set of rare Avant-Garde Russian-Jewish pamphlets; need to wait for E.C.'s return before discussing further. Also need to discuss with Nanette and possibly Kevin Repp.

Database interoperability
Followed-up on topic of database non-interoperability (see 10/27 minutes): Tom mentioned program at ALA Annual Toronto, 2003, regarding interoperability of library OPACs with online museum catalogs. In the past, the Task Force has discussed the non-compatibility of Yale's heterogeneous finding aid databases (as presented by Joan to LMC), but Tom suggested that we might want to expand the discussion to include integration of full-scale library and museum catalogs. Others in the Task Force seemed to agree that this would be a good idea.

Daniel cited a 2004 Library Journal article entitled "The Collaboration Imperative". The author is Liz Bishoff, VP of OCLC's Digital Collection and Preservation Services, who argues that librarians, archivists, and museum curators need to collaborate more effectively. Areas of mutual interest and benefit include ILTS grant-writing, scaling up to more cost-effective project management, collaborative training and best practices, and, perhaps most importantly for our purposes, interoperability through common metadata standards. [Here's a copy of the article downloaded from LibraryLit.] We also discussed the recent visit to Yale by Tim Hart and Nick Honysett of the Getty Institute, systems architects/technologists who talked about measures undertaken at the Getty to break down barriers to integrated Web access. They had described Yale as being in the position they were in five years ago (i.e., before they rebuilt their systems architecture).

Meeting adjourned at 3pm.

Back to top