On April 24, the Library marked its Bicentennial as the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and the world's largest library. As part of the activities planned to commemorate this anniversary, the Library will host a 2 ½-day invitational conference on "Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium: Confronting the Challenges of Networked Resources and the Web."
The conference will be held Nov. 15-17, at the Library, and it is intended to provide a premier forum for authorities in the cataloging and metadata communities to discuss outstanding issues involving the bibliographic challenges of providing description and access to networked resources on the Web. The focus of the conference is on an open discussion of the issues, with primary attention to proposed solutions and development of action items for the Library of Congress to pursue in its cataloging leadership role.
Following introductory remarks by Winston Tabb, associate librarian for Library Services; Beacher J. Wiggins, director for Cataloging; and John Byrum, chief of the Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division, Michael Gorman will deliver the keynote address on "From Card Catalogs to WebPACs: Celebrating Cataloging in the 20th Century." Topics and panel discussions will then be presented in five main sessions, which reflect the problem-solving approach of the conference:
- An examination of the library catalog in the context of the Web
- An assessment of current library and metadata standards for bibliographic control and Web access
- A discussion of actions and plans for the future direction of these standards and of other mechanisms designed to advance description and access to networked resources, including the descriptive resource needs of reference providers
- An examination of the results of particular metadata and workflow experiments and initiatives
- An exploration of potential partnerships among the library, metadata and vendor communities that will foster the development of new or expanded Web-based projects. Thereafter the conference participants will be divided into break-out groups to identify recommendations to form an action plan and an overall strategy that will be discussed and approved by the conference in its concluding plenary session.
Because invited participation in the conference is limited by space considerations and by the nature of the event as a working meeting, papers will be submitted in advance and available for consultation on the World Wide Web. In addition, an electronic discussion list will be established to facilitate discussion of these papers before the conference is convened. Also to promote wide involvement by the community, the conference organizers are planning to videotape the proceedings and cybercast them soon thereafter. Finally, following the conference, the presentations and commentaries will be compiled for publication.
For further information regarding the program and speakers and for abstracts of their papers, visit the conference home page at: www.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol.