OBS-SIS RLIN Committee		Minutes

July 20, 1999

Pat Callahan, University of Pennsylvania, chaired the meeting for Mary Chapman, New York University, who was unable to attend AALL this year. Robin Dale, RLG representative, was unable to be present due to a scheduling conflict. At the RLG Law Roundtable held on Saturday, July 17, R. Dale reported that RLG is involved with digitizing projects at Cornell and also plans to set up a law Web page for access policies and other law community-related resources. The ILL Manager was also demonstrated at this meeting.

RLIN Database Advisory Group report, Anne Myers, Boston University.

RLG has a number of foreign databases available through RLIN or via Zephyr, which converts foreign MARC to USMARC on the file for display and transfer. Copies of the list were distributed with a request that it also be posted to the Web on either the RDAG or Law Web pages. Problems were reported in the Eureka display of #v for the genre form. Use of the subfield generates error reports. There were questions why there is a delay by RLG to implement the update to fix this problem; Anne will refer this to RDAG. The 007-reproduction field should be kept blank.

Libraries using CURL and Deutsche Bibliothek records as well as vendor records reported them useful for order purposes but not for cataloging.

ARA, Authority Record Assistant, is available for NACO libraries. It allows a heading from the bibliographic record to be used to generate a basic authority record from a template.

Format of future meetings was discussed. The hour format works well. The question of the value of meeting annually was raised. Public services staff does not demonstrate an interest in attending because the group is seen as one for technical services staff. Next year’s chair will poll for agenda items before the AALL final program is printed in May; if nothing is pressing, the committee meeting may be cancelled. RLIN listservs, Web pages, and email could be used for general announcements.