Technical Services Special Interest Section

Even after three years as the representative to this Committee I barely begin to understand all the ins and outs of ALA operations, but it was a professionally enriching experience nonetheless. My vocabulary certainly expanded.

Just constituted between ALA Midwinter and ALA in Atlanta is the SAC Subcommittee on Semantic Interoperability. Part of its charge is to survey "approaches to integration and harmonization of subject vocabularies and knowledge organization schemes used in various metadata standards for the purposes of effective and efficient resource discovery." So discussion of metadata and subject headings is back on the ALA agenda. The SAC Subcommittee on Subject Reference Structures in Automated Systems is a continuing working group; they are drafting recommendations that could be offered to any library automation system's vendor as "best practices" for subject authority reference display. This group's final report should be to SAC at the next midwinter. While the Subcommittee on Fiction Guidelines may not offer much of paramount interest to law librarians, I think that the Subcommittee on Subject Analysis Training Materials will be of major interest. This group is working with PPC (Program for Cooperative Cataloging) to create training materials for a basic course in subject analysis using LCSH. While most of the examples will be non-law ones, I would suggest that once the materials are available for review we think about constituting a working group to come up with relevant law examples. The materials could then be incorporated more easily in law training workshops. Although I was appointed to this group, since I will no longer be attending ALA meetings, I felt I could not continue to participate. Just communicating on email will not work for such an ambitious undertaking.

In addition to written reports from these subcommittees several program proposals were also germinated. "Getting the Most Out of Subject References in the Online Catalog" and a "test" module from the subject analysis training group entitled "Training for Effective Subject Cataloging" are both planned for Toronto in 2003.

A very informative report offered to SAC each meeting comes from Lynn El-Hoshy, the Liaison to SAC from the Cataloging Policy and Support Office of the Library of Congress. In addition to the comings and goings of LC staff (for instance, Winston Tabb, the Associate Librarian for Library Services, is to be the Dean of University Libraries at Johns Hopkins University), I'm always interested in what is happening with LC's library system implementation. The best news for all of us is that beginning on a trial basis July 1, 2002, subject authorities (names and titles, too) will be available via the web at http://authorities.loc.gov. LC is also in the final stages of its project to create authority records to control free-floating subdivisions. Have you searched lately? –LAW AND LEGISLATION was loaded into RLIN in November of 2001.

May all your subject analysis be easy and the subject heading you need in LCSH.

Submitted by
Melody Lembke
Associate Library for Technical Services
Los Angeles County Law Library