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Automated Bibliographic Control Committee Minutes
July 8, 2000
9:30 a.m.

Present: Inna Gudanets (Stanford), Misha Buczkowski (Oregon), Diana Greene (NYU), Leena Siegelbaum (Harvard), Sandra Levy (Chicago), Tatiana Barr (Florida), John DeSantis (Dartmouth), Janice Pilch (Illinois), Beth Snyder (Michigan), Barbara Conaty (LC), Rebecca Guenther (LC), Marek Sroka (Illinois), Grazyna Slanda (Harvard), Carl Horne (Indiana), Kristin Johnson (Harvard), Patricia Thurston (Yale), Jackie Byrd (Indiana), Beth Feinberg (UCLA)

Minutes from January 2000 were approved.

Conaty and Guenther of the Library of Congress attended the meeting to discuss the issue of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian language codes.

The group largely agreed that catalogers do not use Bosnian unless it is identified as such in the work. Slanda added that the only way one can definitely decide that a book is in Bosnian is if it is a language textbook. The group also agreed that this argument is chiefly of a political nature. Guenther stated that LC may write guidelines for the use of the Bosnian language code, she can contact CPSO in this regard.

Gudanets noted that PCC core records do not include an 041 language code, that many countries have dialects, and that there are more critical issues concerning transliteration systems than concerning language codes. She noted also that the Bosnian language code sets a precedent for all other groups to change codes. This Committee will write a paper to LC in support of its position by August 1st.

Levy brought up the issue of split files, how to handle if make this change.

The Committee also discussed the possibility of the scr language code for Croatian changing to hvr. RLIN can combine these codes, but OCLC cannot, and neither can the vendors.

Guenther and Conaty reported that LC does have guidelines concerning new codes. There is a form on the web at: http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2.

Byrd then reported on the Illinois-Urbana Champaign catalogers meeting at the Slavic Librarians workshop. There was an informal agenda and topics included: backlogs, staffing, systems and national cataloging programs. Levy added that it was good to have the catalogers meet in the middle of the conference and not on Friday, as more people were able to attend. There were about 25 attendees at the catalogers meeting.

Conaty offered to organize a tour of the LC Slavic catologing units for the ALA midwinter conference in January 2001.

Meeting adjourned at 10:20 A.M.

Respectfully submitted,

Beth Feinberg

Last updated 01/09/01