National Library News January/February 2000 Vol. 32, nos. 1-2

Summary of the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR Meeting Held in Brisbane, Australia from October 18 to 20, 1999

The Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules) met in October 1999 to work through a significant agenda in terms of both number of items and importance.

The Joint Steering Committee (JSC) made substantial progress on many of the initiatives undertaken as a result of its action plan developed following the October 1997 International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR. The following is a brief overview of some of the initiatives considered and major decisions taken by JSC at its meeting in Brisbane.

A Task Force of the ALA (American Library Association) Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) undertook a detailed review of AACR2 to bring the rules into alignment with the ISBD(ER), which was published in 1997. JSC reviewed the Task Force recommendations and identified outstanding issues for consideration by JSC constituencies.

JSC endorsed most of the recommendations, with some modifications. As a result, there will be a substantial revision of chapter 9 and some revision of other parts of the rules, including the glossary. Among the changes endorsed by JSC are the replacement of the term "computer file" by the term "electronic resource", including in the GMD (general material designation); the provision of clarification on what constitutes a new edition of an electronic resource; substantial revision of the glossary and index; and the update of examples to include more networked resources.

JSC considered the recommendations contained in the report Revising AACR2 to Accommodate Seriality, which was prepared by Jean Hirons of the Library of Congress with the assistance of colleagues Regina Reynolds and Judy Kuhagen, and by the CONSER AACR Review Task Force. (The report is available at <http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/jsc/ser-rep0.html>.) Rule revision proposals will be prepared to reflect the decisions taken by JSC at the meeting. In addition, a number of related initiatives will be undertaken, including the preparation of a new introduction to AACR2 to address issues pertaining to "seriality", the development of a prototype to test the feasibility of recommendations proposing the reorganization of Part 1 of AACR2 into chapters based on ISBD areas of description, and the preparation of an appendix to AACR2 addressing what constitutes major and minor changes.

JSC reviewed the recommendations contained in the paper prepared by the CC:DA Task Force on Rule 0.24. One of the key issues to be considered by the JSC constituencies will be how best to resolve the problem of format variation.

JSC began its review of The Logical Structure of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules — Parts I and II, prepared by Tom Delsey of the National Library of Canada, by endorsing the recommendation to use a model to assess options for restructuring Part I of the code. Work will now begin on the development of a prototype that organizes the rules according to the ISBD(G) areas of description.

Due to insufficient time, consideration of the other recommendations was deferred to the next meeting of JSC.

The next meeting of JSC will be held in March 2000 in San Diego, California.

For further information on the activities related to JSC, please contact the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing representative to JSC:

Margaret Stewart
Chief, Standards and Support
National Library of Canada
395 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0N4
Telephone: (819) 994-6900
Fax: (819) 953-0291
E-mail: marg.stewart@nlc-bnc.ca