Wednesday, July 15, 1998

Leonette Williams called the meeting to order at 1:35 p.m. She reported that she had spoken with Michael Saint-Onge and Jim Heller to relay the SIS members’ dissatisfaction with the Anaheim programs and scheduling.

Secretary/Treasurer Report:

Leonette distributed copies of the report prepared by Carole Hinchcliff who was unable to attend the meeting. The report is reproduced at the end of these minutes below.

Members At Large Reports:

Betty Roeske reported on the success of our joint reception held Saturday, July 9. The turnout, while smaller than in previous years because of the competing ALL-SIS reception, was good, and Innovative, our corporate sponsor, was quite pleased with the entire affair.

Representative Reports:

Rhonda Lawrence, the AALL representative to MARBI, delivered an update of current MARBI business. MARBI makes recommendations and decisions on coding and its committee reports are available at http://www.loc.gov/marc.

Items of interest:

» New concise MARC formats are available and coming out soon.
» The National Library of Canada will be implementing harmonized formats.
» The final report on Metadata, with links to MARBI and CC:DA, is available online at http://www.ala.org/alcts/organization/ccs/ccda/tf-tei2.html.
» The Library of Congress produced a new statement, "MARC in the year 2000", in March 1998. See http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/yr2000.html.
» The Cataloging Policy and Support Office issued a report, "Subject Authority Data Elements and Form/Genre Implementation", June 26, 1998. The report, available at http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/formgenr.html, states the Library of Congress will begin to make changes to the authority files in autumn, 1998.

Rhonda also reported on a discussion paper introduced in New Orleans. It proposed to define the 856 field in an authority record to provide a link to the corporate body’s web page. Some participants at the MARBI meeting questioned whether this was what we want from an authority file. However, the proposal passed as submitted. LC will look at it more closely and report back on how to implement it.

Marie Whited’s report from ALA ALCTS/CCS/SAC and Ann Sitkin’s report from ALA/ALCTS/CCS/CC:DA are reprinted elsewhere in this issue. Both are also available from the TS-SIS homepage.

Committee Reports

Acquisitions:

Carmen Brigandi delivered the committee’s report. The listserv, Lawacq, began in early 1995. Most of its current members are academic law librarians. The committee sponsored the program, "New Horizons in Collection Development Approval Plans," at this year’s meeting. The group is developing a collection development policy page to add to the websites with links to institutions which have placed their collection development policies on their own websites.

Two program proposals were discussed by the committee: Development of New Products by Vendors, a proposal being developed by Jim Mumm, and Electronic Materials Collection Development Policies. The committee members also discussed the feasibility of a telecommuting program for paraprofessionals and they appointed an education subcommittee to prepare proposals for the Philadelphia meeting.

Cataloging and Classification:

Leonette Williams delivered the report for Carol Shapiro who could not attend. The committee is involved in several projects including implementation of JZ/KZ, the revisions to AACR2 rev., and the development of legal terms to be submitted to ALA and the Library of Congress.

Exchange of Duplicates:

Leonette Williams reported that the group was making its first steps toward an electronic list.

Heads of Cataloging in Large Law Libraries:

Bill Benemann reported that at last year’s meeting in Baltimore, there were so many big heads that the room was filled to capacity and flowed into the hallway. The main topic of discussion at this year’s meeting was implementation of JZ/KZ.

Preservation:

Leonette Williams reported that the Preservation Committee sponsored a tour of LC’s conservation lab at the Baltimore meeting last year.

Program/Education:

Joe Thomas reported that TS-SIS submitted proposals for four programs and one workshop for the Anaheim meeting. Only one program, "Shattered Shelves! Effective Emergency Preparedness", and the JZ/KZ workshop were approved.

Joe encouraged members to visit the TS-SIS homepage which has links to a summary of the 97/98 survey results and to the reports of AALL liaisons to ALA.

OBS/TS Joint Research Grant Committee:

LeGrande Fletcher delivered the report for Brian Striman. LeGrande announced that he will join Ellen McGrath as co-chair of the Open Research Roundtable replacing Brian who has been elected vice-chair/chair elect of OBS-SIS. LeGrande mentioned an upcoming, limited survey being conducted by the Editorial Boards of Spectrum and Law Library Journal. He encouraged anyone who receives it to return it. He also relayed Carol Avery Nicholson’s request for assistance in preparing the new edition of the Law Library Systems Directory. Finally, LeGrande announced this year’s grant recipients. The committee received three applications, one of which was withdrawn. The other two applications were approved and grants were awarded to Christina Tarr, University of California, Berkeley, who is working on a project related to cataloging on Amazon.com, and LeGrande Fletcher, Brigham Young University, who is compiling a bibliography on Nevada legal materials to be published in Law Library Journal. LeGrande urged anyone interested in publication opportunities to contact either Ellen or him.

Serials Committee:

Joe Hinger delivered the Serials Committee report. The committee had submitted proposals for a full one-day workshop and a program at the Anaheim meeting. Neither submission was selected. During the last year, the committee also produced a statistical survey. They received completed surveys for 40% of the 181 surveys sent.

Joe also reported on the Serials Committee’s meeting in Anaheim. Despite the early hour of 7:15, the turnout was great. One topic the group discussed was whether they should defunct the committee and make it a subcommittee of another group. This proposal was defeated. Joe is working on a report to be published soon. The committee’s main focus this year is AALL’s lack of representation with NASIG. Reports from NASIG delivered at the committee meeting indicate a record attendance of law librarians.

Renee D. Chapman Award:

Melody Lembke presented the Chapman Award to this year’s winner, Peter Enyingi. Peter is the award’s first retired recipient although he still contributes to the profession by indexing for the Index to Legal Periodicals. Peter came to the United States with a law degree and first worked for Cornell then moved to L.A. County Law Library. His greatest contribution to the profession was his sense of sharing. He also worked closely with Phyllis Marion when AALL first got the idea of SIS’s and he was the impetus to the formation of the big heads. Peter is also the reason there is a Cataloging Legal Literature.

Introduction of New Chair/New Chair Comments:

Leonette introduced the incoming chair, Joe Thomas from Notre Dame University, and Joe thanked everyone for the opportunity to serve as chair. He reminded the group that program proposals for the 1999 Washington, D.C. meeting were due at AALL headquarters on August 17. There will be a technical services track but the form is not yet clear. Joe asked that all program proposals be sent to Chris Tarr, Reggie Wallen, or him.

Joe also announced he plans to form a new ad-hoc committee which will look at the structure of TS-SIS committees to determine if we have what we need and if we need more.

He also plans to make use of the TS-SIS listserv as a primary communication tool and asked everyone to keep watch for future messages.

Joe announced the new editors for TSLL are Anna Belle Leiserson and Linda Tesar both from Vanderbilt University. Appointment of a new business manager is in the works.

Joe finished his remarks by thanking Leonette for all her help in "bringing him along".

Other Announcements:

Brian Striman popped over from the OBSSIS meeting to add a few of his own comments to LeGrande Fletcher’s report. He mentioned the amount of each award (LeGrande was awarded $300.00; Christina Tarr was awarded $231.00. TS is responsible for half of this total, $260.50.) and announced that Corinne Jacox would be the new chair of the Joint Grant Committee. She will be in contact with Richard Leiter, the new chair of the AALL Research Committee, and will be making adjustments to the grant process for next year. Brian also reported that he’ll be working with Larry Dershem on "LC classification annotated", an expanded version of the current Rothman schedules.

Janet McKinney warned that she will be soliciting help for the upcoming TS survey which comes out sometime in October. She also asked people to be developing program proposals for Philadelphia in 2000 since she needs them in less than a year.