OLAC Newsletter
Vol. 29 | No. 1| March 2009

The OLAC Newsletter (ISSN: 0739-1153) is a quarterly publication of the Online Audiovisual Catalogers, Inc. appearing in March, June, September and December. Permission is granted to copy and disseminate information contained herein, provided the source is acknowledged.

In this issue

From the Editor

Treasurer's Report

OLAC Meeting Minutes:

• CAPC
• Executive Board
• Membership

Conference Reports:

• MARBI
• CC:DA
• AMIA

LC Update

MOUG/OLAC Liaison Report

Reports from the 2008 OLAC/MOUG
Conference, Part II:

Workshops:

• Elect. Resources
• Form/Genre Headings
• Integrating Resources
• Metadata for Audiovisual Materials
• Worldcat Local
• RDA Program
• Poster Sessions
  

News and Announcements

Announcement of New Officers

Book Reviews:

• Metadata
• Kidzcat

OLAC Cataloger's Judgment:

• Sounds & Silence
• Edition or contents
• Order of names in 505
• PowerPoint on CD-ROM
• Mysteries of the 007
• Which came 1st 508 or 511
• True colors
• Computer file vs. video
• Auteur theory questioned

News from OCLC

Library of Congress Update
January 24, 2009

Submitted by Janis L. Young
Policy and Standards Division
Library of Congress
Library of Congress Experience/Capitol Visitors Center

The U.S. Capitol Visitors Center opened on December 2, 2008. An underground passageway now directly connects the Capitol to the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. The reading room hours will not change, but the number of hours that the Library of Congress is open has been extended in order to allow the public an additional 400 hours each year to view the Great Hall and exhibition spaces.

Reading Rooms

The Library announced that the minimum age for use of the Main Reading Room, Microform Reading Room, and the Local History & Genealogy Reading Room to access the Library's
physical collections has been lowered to 16. Previously, researchers be above high school age. Students as well as all public users of the Library's reading rooms are required to
have a Library Reader Registration card.

Free PDF versions of selected publications

The following publications are freely available at http://www.loc.gov/cds/freepdf.html as they are published: Cataloging Service Bulletin; and updates to the following: Library
of Congress Rule Interpretations, Subject Cataloging Manual:
Subject Headings, CONSER Cataloging Manual, CONSER Cataloging Manual, Descriptive Cataloging Manual, and updates to MARC 21 format documentation.

Policy and Standards Division (formerly CPSO) With the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate (ABA) reorganization in October 2008, the Cataloging Policy
and Support Office has become the Policy and Standards Division, and its email address has been changed to policy@loc.gov. The email addresses of individual staff members in the division remain unchanged.

LC Genre/Form Headings

In July 2008, the Library of Congress's Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate (ABA) managers authorized five new genre/form projects within LCSH to be undertaken by the Cataloging Policy and Support Office (now the Policy and Standards Division): cartography, law, literature, music, and religion. In November 2008, the ABA managers approved the Policy and Standards Division's four-year timeline for the projects.

On January 1, 2009, the Moving Image, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division (MBRS) implemented genre/form headings for moving images and radio programs in new cataloging. In addition, all SACO members are invited to contribute proposals for moving image and radio program genre/form headings beginning on February 1, 2009. All proposals should be entered into the fill-in form for genre/form headings, which will be made available to members through the SACO web site.

For general information about Genre/Form and LCSH at the Library of Congress, including a Genre/Form Frequently Asked Questions PDF document as well as a full timeline, visit:
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genreformgeneral.html. There will also be an LC booth presentation about the LC genre/form projects from 10:30-11 a.m. on Monday, January
26.

Library of Congress Classification

Available from the Cataloging Distribution Service are new print 2008 editions of BL-BQ (Religion (General). Hinduism. Judaism. Islam. Buddhism), BR-BX (Christianity. Bible), C
(Auxiliary sciences of history), DS-DX (History of Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.), H (Social sciences), PJ-PK

LCSH in SKOS

In 2008 the Library began a pilot to make a subset of LCSH freely available in SKOS format on the Internet. Making LCSH available in SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) will facilitate its use for data manipulation and other applications on the Semantic Web and elsewhere. The web site on which it resided, lcsh.info, was not on an LC server, and was taken down in December 2008 for that reason. The Library of
Congress remains committed to providing LCSH freely through SKOS. It is developing a distinct URI within the loc.gov domain, and the former lcsh.info site will redirect users to the new URI. The new site will be available for use later this year.

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) 31 st edition

The 31 st edition of printed LCSH will be available in the spring of 2009. The data cutoff date for the 31 st edition will be January 23, 2009. As of December 2008, LCSH had a total of 341,915 subject authority records, including validation records and Annotated Card Program headings.

Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings

With the 2008 update, the Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings is current through the end of February 2008. This is the final update to the 5 th edition of the manual. In 2009, a new edition of the manual will be published under the title
Subject Headings Manual. The new edition will consolidate the previous updates and complement the Classification and Shelflisting Manual, published in May 2008.

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