Richard’s ALA Midwinter Report, 2019

Here are the highlights of what I attended:

1. Round Table Coordinating Council: The future of ALA Midwinter was discussed. Starting in 2021, Midwinter will move to a topic-themed conference where speakers, sessions, and attendees will focus on finding solutions for challenges facing libraries.  The idea is to make Midwinter more profitable by reducing expenses, although it will also reduce attendance. With a smaller footprint, Midwinter will likely be held in 2^nd tier cities.  Also presented was the jury process for program proposals for ALA Annual; the work of the ALA Steering Committee on Organizational Effectiveness and related move of ALA headquarters to a new building in downtown Chicago; and the “I am ALA” video series.
2. ALA Committee on Supporting Refugees, Immigrants, and Displaced Persons: This was the 1^st face-to-face meeting for this committee, which I was invited to join recently after attending its meetings as a substitute IRRT representative this past year. We discussed a variety of possible projects for the future, including quarterly webinars on social justice, updating the toolkit/resource page for the committee, and other endeavors.
3. IRRT All Committee Meeting: This was the regular business meeting for the round table, bringing committee chairs up-to-date on changes to the officers manual, plans for orientation and reception at Annual in DC, the IRRT poster session, etc.
4. RDA Update: The revision of the RDA Toolkit is progressing, with stabilization of the English text due to be complete by April. Any content changes after April will be limited to correcting errors, improving consistency, and creation of new elements, but not rewording.  Thomas Brenndorfer recommended viewing the RDA YouTube channel and reading the RDA Toolkit beta site.  The 3R project is winding down; the roles of RDA committees, work groups, and regional groups is better defined now.  An example editor for RDA is being sought.  Orientation to the new version of RDA is being developed using live webinars and online courses.  The old RDA Toolkit will be taken down around January 2021, with the new site up about a year before that.
5. Faceted subject terms: A program on this topic will be presented at Annual. FAST Policy and Outreach committee was established in 2018 by OCLC with 12 members.  A survey on Genre Form Terms in Cataloging was conducted this past year. Respondents were asked if a local policy for using genre/form terms was in place.  Most accept such terms in copy and have the ability to search facets in discovery system. Some are applying AAT or LCGFT terms, but are concerned about duplication between FAST and LCGFT.  Reconciliation of terms is needed; for example, Bibliography vs. Bibliographies. Adding genre form terms for special parts of the collection is actually low-effort but high-value work.  What are needed are conversion services to change from LCSH to FAST.  Some terms are in LCGFT but not in LCSH. User studies are needed to evaluate the impact of facets on user searching abilities. Faceted vocabularies could also be used in digital repositories.
6. IRRT Executive Board Meeting: The executive board discussed plans for ALA Annual; made permanent an ad hoc endowment committee; reported on the establishment of a new ad hoc committee to create webinars on international topics; and evaluated plans for future international librarian meet-and-greets at Midwinter.
7. PCC Participants Meeting: I heard reports on LD4P2 (Linked Data for Production, 2^nd phase) to begin shifting library resources to linked data environment. Phase 2 will expand the number of libraries involved to 17.  These libraries will be using linked data to describe serials, non-book resources, non-Roman script resources, vinyl recordings and more.  A sandbox, using Sinopia software, should be ready later this spring.  Later in the year, all PCC members (including OSU) will have access to this sandbox.  Sinopia is based on LC’s BIBFRAME editor.  A conference for LD4P participants is scheduled for May 2019.
8. Heads of Cataloging Departments Interest Group: The first presentation, from Jodene Pappas, was about her efforts to learn about linked data. She read relevant documentation and then manually crosswalked a MARC record to MARCXML, then used LC’s program to translate that to BIBFRAME. While not a method for migrating data from MARC to BIBFRAME, it provided her with a much better understanding of what is currently going on with this transition in the cataloging world.  The 2^nd presentation, by LC’s Erin Freas-Smith, discussed a project to provide article-level metadata for African print journals (which are not otherwise searchable online).  Using volunteer interns from Gallaudet U., the tables of content for each issue were scanned and then manually transcribed into a Google doc.
9. I presented an update on my work on creating subject headings for Oregon Indian tribes. It was well-attended, attracting considerable interest both before and after Midwinter.