ALA / ALCTS
Subject Analysis Committee
Gleanings from Annual meetings, held online, June-July 2020
(in lieu of in-person Annual Conference, Chicago, June 2020)

* LC will start applying RDA 6.2.2.10 instead of alternative 6.2.2.10.3 to selections of poetry by a single author; that is, the title of the first manifestation will be used rather than a conventional collective title. We heard at the SSFV meeting on July 9 that PCC PoCo has approved this practice.

* LC PTCP is working on LC/PCC Policy Statements and will issue them as an application profile.

* LC has finished the multiples project for the "Religious aspects" subdivision and is moving to inherently religious headings with multiples and other headings like "Career in [specific field]" and "United States--Appropriations and expenditures, [date]."

* Music Library Association is undertaking regular review of Tentative Subject Headings lists, inspired by SAC.

* The documentary "Change the Subject" (on Illegal aliens in LCSH) is available on Vermont PBS (or PBS in general via Vermont PBS). https://www.pbs.org/video/change-the-subject-23nbpj/

* The Working Group on the heading Illegal aliens has issued its report and is working on a clearinghouse of what libraries and catalogers are doing to compensate for terminology in this area.

* The merger of ALCTS with LITA and LLAMA passed the membership votes and the new division will be called Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures. ALA approved the merger on June 27.

* A draft Code of Ethics for Catalogers is available. Comment period ends in July 2020. https://sites.google.com/view/cataloging-ethics/home

* Subcommittee on Faceted Vocabularies: subgroups looking at chronology, genre/form, geography, demographic groups. Chronology group prepared draft best practices for recording chronological data in MARC (now on ALA institutional repository) (https://alair.ala.org/handle/11213/14591) and a MARC discussion paper on expression dates in 046 (https://www.loc.gov/marc/mac/2020/2020-dp13.html); genre/form group is analyzing LCSH subdivisions and MARC fixed field codes to ascertain if all are covered in LCGFT as appropriate; geographic group is looking at how to map geographic data from LCSH into 370 (at the moment, explorations do not differentiate how 6XX $z place is related, i.e., place of creation, topical, demographic data about author or subject); demographic is mapping LCSH to potential LCDGT terms, including differentiating descriptors in terminology representing language or nationality, e.g., Physicians' writings--French--Morocco

Compiled by Sherman Clarke
sherman.clarke@gmail.com

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