IAML newsletter

To the IAML Newsletter

Reported by Sherry L. Vellucci

Tuesday July 20, 16.15 - 17:45

The Cataloguing Commission held two meetings during the New Zealand Conference. Since the Commission Chair, Jim Cassaro, was not present at the conference, the first meeting was chaired by Sherry Vellucci, Vice Chair of the Commission.

Elections were held with the following results:

Anders Cato, Chair (Sweden)
Sherry Vellucci, Vice Chair (U.S.A.)
Christina Koch, Secretary (Sweden)

The first session was comprised of three presentations. The first speaker was Andrew McPherson, music cataloguer at the National Library of New Zealand. Andrew demonstrated the National Library's new Te Puna database, which is based on the Endeavor Voyage system. He showed several aspects of the cataloguing and search clients, including creating bibliographic records, authority work, and a variety of search techniques.

The second speaker was Antony Gordon, senior cataloguer at the British Library National Sound Archives in London, England. Antony spoke about the Sound Archive's catalogue and collection management system known as CADENSA. He discussed the history and development of CADENSA, describing some of the problems encountered in the conversion of large quantities of data from disparate sources. Antony finished with a live demonstration of CADENSA via a telnet conection to the UK.

The final speaker was Sherry Vellucci, Associate Professor in the Division of Library & Information Science at St. John's University, New York, U.S.A. Sherry gave a lengthy paper on Metadata for Music, which provided an overview of metadata characteristics. She discussed several issues that are critical to the successful implementation of metadata and identified areas for possible IAML activity in the metadata arena.

Thursday July 22, 14:15 - 15:45

The second meeting was a joint session with the Commission on Service and Training. The focus of this session was on Teaching Cataloguing and was reported on in detail by the Chair of the Service and Training Commission.

Finally, Sherry Vellucci reported that a postcard had been received from Sister Blanche. On her way to New Zealand, Sr. Blanche was stranded in Fiji, where she discarded her habit as a novice and was raised to the rank of Mother Superior at the island's only dual library school and convent "Our Lady of Bibliographic Control." She will, however, continue to be the guardian angel of IAML, and keep a close eye on all things internationally bibliographic.