28 August 1999
Welcoming Remarks
James Eason, outgoing chair, opened the meeting with a few brief introductory remarks.
Introductions
Following the introductory remarks, attending members identified themselves and gave a brief description of the level of description for objects in their collections:
Denver: fine arts and objects, all item level description
American Jewish Historical Society- has a card catalog, looking for ideas
Beinecke, item and collection level descriptions –that will link to their digital surrogate when it exists
San Diego - using a combination of MARC cataloging and Access databases.
UW LaCrosse - just beginning to catalog images and objects, looking for ideas
Lincoln Museum - wants better control of photos prints and engravings, looking to share cataloging on prints.
American Museum of Natural History (Barbara Mathe) – Access database at item level for color photographic
materials, things that come from photo studio are in a database The photoprint collection list is based on provenance
of the object being described.
UNC - Collection level MARC records, Filemaker Pro for other levels of description, some Web based finding aids,
some digitization.
Library of Congress (Sarah Rouse) - item level descriptions accessible in files; MARC records and Access databases;
printed finding aids, lists with cataloging to go with them.
Wake Forest University, News Bureau - listing, slides, movie, and video.
Chicago Symphony - NEH grant, InMagic, DBtextworks, digital eventually, problem with photos with no
identification.
Henry Ford Museum - item level 60,000 digital Argus database (new Windows–based, open platform version
available) on their web site contains 250 high-res images.
State Historical Society of Wisconsin -- has many eclectic ways of finding things.
RLIN at collection level, 6-7000 collections
NW College - Japanese internment photos
University of Houston Not much yet
Museum Services, Department of Interior (Laurie Baty) - millions of items cataloged using ReDiscovery software;
have discovered the need to have databases talk to each other
Harvard Business – uses a card catalog and inventories; looking for ideas on where to go from here
Ariz. Archives (Richard Pearce-Moses) is working on a Cultural inventory of the state
Presbyterian Church in Canada – has a multi-media collection with 50,000 records in DBTextworks.
Keel Center, Cornell – has become newly responsible for the photo collection, which is pretty well documented
already. They are also responsible for other objects, etc., for which they are using Filemaker Pro
UC Berkely, uses Marc records and EAD –with records created at various levels of description.
NewYork Historical Society - using MSAccess, with databases based on Dublin Core fields for series and item level,
MARC records at Collection level. Traditional printed finding aids, with series access, etc. developed from
databases. These records include prints, photographs, and drawings.
The Meeting
The meeting was called to order by Judi Hofmann, chair. Judy introduced Carolyn Texly, vice-chair.
Council Representative, Richard Pearce-Moses took the floor to encourage members to serve in leadership roles. The Society needs officers who are sensitive to visual materials. The Representative then opened the floor to questions.
An attendee posed a question regarding whether one must be a member of SAA to be a member of VMCAR.
The representative responded that one doesn't have to be in SAA to be a member of the roundtable.
An attendee posed a question regarding recent requests from SAA seeking input on standards.
The representative responded that any response that comes from this group has to go through council Standards
Committee.
There were no more questions for the Representative.
Old business
The Thesaurus for Graphic Materials revision:
An interim edition will be on the Cataloging Publication Office section of LCWeb in October. This revision will contain
material on collection level records, architectural records, collection names, portfolios, creator and publisher for prints.
There will be more examples including main entry records. LC is looking for advisory committee people. Comments
will be accepted through March 2000. They anticipate having the draft document ready by December 2000 and the
Web version by April 2001. The hard copy is anticipated by 2002.
Questions from the floor
· Someone was looking for help with retrospective conversion for cards;
· Someone asked if the SAA, through the VMCAR, could put pressure on vendors to get changes from $x to $v;
· Someone was looking for examples of using the physical description field.
Meeting Miscellany
The Chair provided a quick description and current condition of the Visual Materials Section Cataloging and Access Roundtable (VMCAR)
Richard Pearce-Moses made an appeal for community in using the listserv. Richard made the point that the Visual materials listserv is intended to be inclusive.
The VMCAR Web-page is looking for a new owner
James Eason is exploring the idea of merging people from Photohist listserv and VMCAR into a new listserv.
The chair asked for discussion of program ideas, which resulted in the following suggestions:
· Overview of varieties of access to collections;
· Bring materials or forms to share with VMCAR;
· Sue: collaborative projects, broad based appeal;
· Toronto chapter of Archives of Ontario will be holding a workshop on appraisal of Non-textual records next spring.
The meeting adjourned.
