ALC CATALOGING COMMITTEE

AFRICANA SUBJECT FUNNEL SPRING 1998 REPORT

The following subject headings have been proposed since the last update
(November 1997).

Art, Eritrean
Boran (African people) -- revised
Boran dialect -- revised
Figure sculpture, Songe
Information storage and retrieval systems $x Population
Masks, Songe
Quotations, Papiamento
Songs, Kabyle
Tamashek literature
Tamashek poetry

PROPOSAL FOR USE IEN IN THE 040 FOR ALL FUNNEL SUBMISSIONS

Original note from SACO liaison:

The reason we would like to use IEN in the 040 subfield a for all Africana proposals is that we are moving to an automated system of counting statistics for the SACO program. In the new system, a software program will scan the LCSH database for all SACO proposals, then will break down what it finds by USMARC code in 040 subfield a. In other words, we will get a list back telling us that IEN contributed 116 headings and DGPO contributed 186 and so on.

Africana Project headings all need to have the same 040 subfield a for the Program for Cooperative Cataloging to know the total number of subjects contributed by the funnel. The code used in the 040 doesn't necessarily have to be IEN but we would like to use the same code for all Africana proposals.

Response to our questions about creation of a unique code for the Funnel Project and what if coordinator position moves to another institution.

Back when we first began thinking about how to automate SACO statistics, I discussed the possibility of getting a separate USMARC code for the funnel with Ann Della Porta and the Coop staff member responsible for statistics collection. Based on past experience, they didn't think it would be possible to get the office responsible for assigning the codes to give one to any organization other than a library or a utility.

As I mentioned before, any code will do as long as the institution is not making other contributions to SACO. If there is a concern about possible confusion between Northwestern and the Africana funnel, we could use another institution's code, if a consensus can be reached on which one.

If you were to leave Northwestern, we can handle the programming to switch to another institution's code in our in-house spreadsheets. A one-time change like that shouldn't be a problem. Where we would run into difficulties is in receiving system reports with codes from ten or twenty institutions and having to combine them into one entry for the funnel in our spreadsheets. The situation is further complicated if some of the other institutions are also contributing directly to the SACO program and we have to separate out their Africana contributions from their other contributions.