Introductions
Kate Bowers, chair, introduced herself and chair-elect James Eason.
A quick show-of-hands indicated most members work with original visual
materials, a few with surrogate images, 6-10 work with moving image collections,
and 3 are from museums, 1 from a commercial agency, about 6 are from governmental
archives, and about 10 from colleges or universities.
Chair elect
A call for volunteers or nominations for VMCAR vice chair/chair-elect was
made.
Reports
Program proposals
Program proposals for SAA 1999 in Pittsburgh were solicited.
Visual Materials Section
James Eason reported on this years Visual Materials Section meeting.
Submissions to the section newsletter VIEWS are always encouraged by
editor Laurie Baty
A section website is planned.
A section committee is reviewing visual materials publications to recommend
for update by SAA. An update of Ritzenthaler is definitely being planned
(details on status will appear in VIEWS).
Description Section
Kate Bowers reported on the Description Section meeting.
The release of EAD Version 1 was announced, with an anticipated Spring
publication dates for a text on guidelines for use.
The first meeting of the new EAD Roundtable was announced.
There was discussion of "content vs. carrier" in cataloging (example:
digital version of a map: is it computer file? Or map?)
The addition of the 856 field to MARC authority records was announced.
This will allow linking of biographical/historical texts to name authority
records.
The Description Section has a web site: http://www.library.yale.edu/~dsmith/saa/saadescr.htm
The Finding Aid Fair in the exhibit hall was announced.
Archival Motion Picture Archivists
AMIA reports that work continues on a revision of Archival moving image
materials : a cataloging manual.
More details on this and other AMIA news are available at AMIA's website:
http://www.amianet.org
Moving Image Genre / Form guide is being compiled at LC. See website:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/mopic/migintro.html
Resources for Visual Image cataloging
ArtMARC sourcebook : cataloging art, architecture, and their visual images
is a recent (1998) publication with useful reports from various institutions
engaged in image cataloging. Chapters include reports from slide libraries,
architectural collections, fine art collections, and historical societies,
among others. Several detailed tables provide ready comparison of various
institutions' use of MARC fields for different data types. Although there
is a heavy emphasis on art slide collections, there is good variety represented,
and the comparisons are interesting and informative.
Art and Architecture Thesaurus: Michelle Futornick of the Getty Information
Institute announced the AAT Roundtable, at which the new Getty Thesaurus
of Geographic Names (TGN) would be discussed. Also, reorganization at Getty
will change the nature and name of the GII, but they will continue all
current activities and AAT support & development. See: http://www.gii.getty.edu/
and http://www.gii.getty.edu/vocabulary/index.html
[The links above are dead; see
Research at the Getty and Vocabulary Databases for current information. mem, May 2002]
Library of Congress: Anne Mitchell reported that their Farm Security
Administration photo site is up on the web, as is a baseball card collection.
No news to report on LC Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (LCTGM). Both LCTGM
I and II are available via the web. Alpha testing of EAD continues. Minor
revisions to Elisabeth Betz Parker's Graphic materials : rules for describing
original items and historical collections have been issued (some time ago)
and are included in the Cataloger's Workstation cd-rom, but no new paper
edition is being planned. Many roundtable members expressed strong interest
in an updated edition of this text, and Ann Mitchell agreed to look into
this further at LC. It was suggested that perhaps an update could be instigated
by SAA or roundtable members, with a new editor (if Elisabeth Betz Parker
of other LC staff members are not available, and are supportive.) The possibilities
are not clear, but Anne Mitchell and James Eason will be in contact to
investigate.
VMCAR website: after discovering that all but one roundtable member
have access to the web and use it regularly, input was requested for useful
resources for the VMCAR site. Kate Bowers will continue to maintain this
site. There was interest in supplementing the membership list with "areas
of expertise or interest." Logistics for creating this element on the existing
membership list are as follows: the rountable collected e-mail addresses
of those willing to be contacted by colleagues; those willing to share
their expertise will have their area and their email address added to the
membership list on the web stie.
Hot Topics: various discussion points
Suggested discussion topics: EAD for visual materials, and use of non-MARC
image databases.
About 50% of those present are using EAD for their visual collections.
Some comments (roughly paraphrased):
-
"It allows quick keyword searching and the process of preparation forces
review and improvement of text for mark-up"
-
"it's a two-edged sword, and highlights the weakness of some finding aids"
-
"needed review is time consuming - it can't be turned over to a student
assistant"
-
"Mixed feelings: EAD is manucripts-driven, and not ideal for visual collections.
An item-level database might be better, because the linear text format
of EAD feels limiting"
-
"EAD may be a 'stop-gap' improvement for access, but falls short of ideal"
-
"I'm not a cataloger, and much prefer finding aid descriptions"
Some smaller institutions are getting their existing finding aids marked
up in EAD through larger projects at other institutions (like the Online
Archive of California project.)
About 8 members reported that they catalog at the item level in formats
other than MARC.
Use-driven item-level MARC cataloging is being done at the Smithsonian.
When items are requested for publication or exhibit, they get cataloged.
The facilitates tracking usage and copy negatives as well as future access.
An anonymous comment was reported: "Forget EAD. It's obsolete." Those
present presumed that this comment was in reference to XML replacing SGML,
which will not make EAD obsolete. EAD is XML compliant.
Publications were revisited. More discussion of Graphic Materials edition
(Betz Parker). It was suggested that sample MARC records might be a useful
resource to put on the VMCAR website. Ritzenthaler revision discussion
also continued, with varying opinions expressed as to its usefulness: some
felt that it is too dense, yet too general, but there is nothing else suitable
for interns of beginners. It was not compared favorably to the AMIA manual,
which was perceived as much stronger.
