ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Z-39 Standards Committee

SC/l of Z-39 Standards Committee, the International Subcommittee, whose membership is comprised of the chairmen of all subcommittees, held an all-day meeting April 5 at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at the call of Chairman Jerrold Orne, librarian of the University of North Carolina libraries. Ernest Sohns and Henry Tovey, of the National Science Foundation, and Fred Croxton, of the Redstone Scientific Information Center, Huntsville, Alabama, joined the subcommittee chairmen.

Dr. Orne explained the responsibility of these chairmen in handling documents from the International Standards Organization (ISO), for

it is this International Subcommittee, SC/l, which is charged with casting the U.S. vote. Recently, votes as the U.S. member body ofISO have been called for on such subjects as Transliteration of Cyrillic Characters, Titles Leaves of a Book, Indexing and Bibliographic References. Each such international standard is referred first to the subcommittee chairman concerned with the special area of interest and then to the full SC/l, with a specific deadline to be met. Dr. Ome also circulated two brochures from USASI on the procedures necessary for the achievement of a national standard.

Mr. Croxton presented a proposal for the development of a draft standard on the common registration code for serials, and outgrowth of discussions held earlier this year by ISTIM (the task group for the Interchange of Scientific Information in Machine Language, a working body set up at the initiative of Donald Hornig, science adviser to the President). This project, conceived as a separate venture like the Curran report for SC/2, would forward the work of the joint task force of the three national libraries on the National Serials Data Program. This proposal will be considered by the full Z-39 Committee at its May meeting.

There is also a movement underway, recommended in the report of ISTIM by which the scope of Z-39 would be expanded to include Information Science. At the same time Z-39 would be funded to operate on a far broader basis with a paid executive staff and to take on additional projects as they appear to be useful.

The quarterly reports of the Z-39 subcommittees as presented on April 5 follow.

SC/2—Machine Input Records—Chairman, Henriette D. Avram, Library of Congress.

SC/2 held no meeting this quarter. Work has been completed on the second draft standard. However, additional suggestions from several sources made a rewrite necessary. The third draft of the machine-readable format is now ready for Z-39 members and other interested parties.

Mrs. Phyllis B. Steckler, R. R. Bowker Company, has been asked to become a member of the subcommittee, as a representative of the publishing industry.

SC/3—Periodical Title Abbreviations—Chairman, James L. Wood, Chemical Abstracts Service.

During the first quarter of 1968, SC/3’s activities were directed at the revision of the “American Standard for Periodical Abbreviations, USASI Z39.5 (1963)” and at maintaining the services offered by Z-39’s National Clearinghouse for Periodical Title Word Abbreviations.

On December 1 copies of the first working papers for the revision of Z39.5 were distributed to SC/3 members. The working papers contained rules for abbreviating periodical titles taken from Z39.5, British Standard 4148: 1967 “Recommendations for the Abbreviation of Periodical Titles,” ISO Recommendation 4 International Code for the Abbreviation of Periodical Tides,” and Draft ISO Recommendation No. 1278 “Revision of ISO Recommendation R4-1953-International Code for the Abbreviation of Titles of Periodicals.” Each subcommittee member was asked to review the rules and to submit suggestions for the revision of Z39.5.

On February 29, a special SC/3 Task Group consisting of Mrs. Thelma Charen, of the National Library of Medicine, Harold Oatfield, of the Chas. Pfizer Company, Inc., and Mr. Wood met at the National Library of Medicine and prepared the first preliminary draft for the revision of Z39.5. This draft, based upon the comments received from the subcommittee members, was circulated on March 8 to members of the subcommittee, the chairman of Z-39, the National Science Foundation, and to the British Standards Institution Subcommittee on Periodical Title Abbreviations. A special working party of the British Standards Institution’s Subcommittee, consisting of Kenneth I. Porter, editor, British Union Catalog of Periodicals Incorporating World List of Scientific Periodicals, Miss Phippen of the Science Library (London), and Dr. Bernard Crowther, former editor of Physics Abstracts, is reviewing the Z39.5 revision work of SC/3. As this British group is also responsible for preparing a revision to British Standard 4148: 1967, the BSI working party and the SC/3 Task Group are jointly directing their efforts toward the preparation of an Anglo-American Standard for Periodical Title Abbreviations.

Comments on the preliminary draft were requested by April 1. The Task Group will review all comments and prepare a second draft revision. This new draft will receive substantially wider distribution than the preliminary draft in order to solicit response from the widest possible audience prior to final submission to Z-39 on July 1.

During the first quarter of 1968 the National Clearinghouse for Periodical Title Word Abbreviations, which is operated for Z-39 by the Chemical Abstracts Service, sold eightynine copies of the “Revised and Enlarged Word-Abbreviation List” for USASI Z39.5. Thirty of these copies were sold to organizations in eleven foreign countries, and fifty-nine to organizations in the United States. During that same period 128 U.S. and twenty-two foreign subscriptions were received for the Quarterly Supplement to the “Revised and Enlarged Word-Abbreviation List” and twentyeight complimentary subscriptions were entered, these latter being made available to various national and international standards bodies.

Ninety new word abbreviations were assigned by the Clearinghouse and these new word abbreviations will be published in the NCPTWA Quarterly Supplement, Vol. 2, No. 1, January-March 1968.

SC/4—Bibliographic References—Chairman, Maurice Tauber, Columbia University School of Library Service.

SC/4 has revised its preliminary draft and distributed it in February 1968 to the other subcommittee chairmen and various other individuals representing libraries, publishers, editorial operations and bibliographic agencies. As of April 5, replies have been received from ten individuals, some involving other people as well as the person signing the letter. The Library of Congress and the National Library of Agriculture will send notes later.

In general categories, the observations and criticisms have been concerned with the following aspects:

1. Organization of examples (follow sections for all items).

2. Elements included—number of authors, U.S. location, publisher’s names abbreviated.

3. Capitalization in titles should be re-examined.

4. Language is not always clear; substitute phrases in some cases.

5. Check on the elements for certain types: e.g., abstracts, conferences, patents and music.

6. Separate handling of abstracts.

7. Relate work to other committee activities: SC/2—Machine Input Records; SC/3— Periodical Title Abbreviations; SC/5—Transliteration; and SC/12—Indexing.

Comments do not reflect any basic criticism of the present general over-all approach. The draft needs some amplification, definition, clarification and addition of examples for all items. Organization of items and their order under types will be reviewed.

SC/5—Transliteration—Chairman, Jerrold Orne, University of North Carolina Libraries.

The chairman has met three times with Dr. Tsuneishi (for Japanese) and Mr. Spalding (for LC considerations of R9: Cyrillic letters, and for Arabic). New correspondence concerning the work on Hebrew is now being conducted with an Israeli organization. Our present efforts are being bent toward production of an American draft standard for Cyrillic letters (based on the revised ISO/R9), for Arabic (considering ISO/R233: 1961), for Hebrew (considering ISO/R259: 1962), and for Japanese. It is hoped that most of these drafts will be ready for circulation to the membership within the next six months. Other language problem areas are being considered. The British counterpart member will be consulting with SC/5 early in June to consider the possibility of other joint U.S. and British common standards.

SC/6—Abstracts—Chairman, John H. Gribbin, Tulane University.

The preliminary draft of a proposed American Standard for Writing Abstracts received the criticism of some twenty-five persons throughout the United States who are involved in abstracting. Subcommittee 6 met at the offices of Biological Abstracts in Philadelphia on February 16 and reviewed the criticisms. The draft was extensively revised. A second draft is now being distributed for additional criticism. The subcommittee expects to submit its final draft during the April-June 1968 quarter.

SC/7—Library Statistics—Chairman, Frank L. Schick, School of Library and Information Science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The work of this subcommittee has been completed. The approved standard has been referred by the sponsor of Z-39, CNLA, to USASI for adoption.

SC/8—Proof Corrections—Chairman, Bruce Young, University of Chicago Press.

The subcommittee expects to complete work on a draft standard during the summer and have it ready for circulation in the fall.

SC/9— Terminology—Chairman, Jerrold Orne, University of North Carolina Libraries.

This subcommittee forwarded its recommendation on one ISO/TC-37 document, after collecting opinion by correspondence. It has in hand proposals from ISO/TC-46 for work on the Terminology of Documentation, supported by memoranda from the British, German and Rumanian member bodies. All current work is being carried on by correspondence and hasto do essentially with ISO/TC-37 activities.

SC/10—Arrangement of Periodicals—Chairman, Anne J. Richter, R. R. Bowker Company.

The work of this subcommittee has been completed and the standard has been published.

SC/12—Indexing—Chairman, John Rothman, The New York Times Index.

The subcommittee met in New York on January 26 and March 15 to discuss whatever comments on the preliminary draft had been submitted. The draft has been revised accordingly and is now submitted for ballot. The subcommittee’s work has thus been substantially completed, culminating an activity of three years in the preparation of a total revision of the Standard on Indexes issued in 1959.

SC/13—Library Directories—Chairman, Karl Baer, National Housing Center Library.

The subcommittee met on February 19, 1968 in New York City and discussed the comments received, upon its request, from some fifteen librarians and representatives of library associations, including ALA and SLA. Most of these dealt with details or minor changes. It was pointed out that state libraries presented a special situation; a separate section of the standard will be given over to them. The assistance of John A. Humphry, III, president of the Association of State Libraries and librarian of the New York state library, will be sought. During the review of the section on school libraries, the opinion was expressed that the subcommittee as a whole lacked sufficient expert knowledge. The assistance of Mary V. Gaver, of Rutgers—the State (N.J.) University, and of Frances Henne, of Columbia University, will be sought.

The many changes made during the meeting will necessitate a rewriting of the draft.

The draft for an International Standard submitted to ISO in Moscow has met with considerable interest as evidenced by generally lengthy comments received from six countries.

SC/15—Filing—Chairman, Theodore Hines, Columbia University School of Library Service.

Copies of the revised Draft USA Standard Basic Criteria: Collating Sequence for Alphanumeric Filing are being circulated for comment. This represents yet another change in title in the draft, and there have also been some changes in the examples. Experimental use of the draft criteria has met with continuing success.

SC/16—Bookbinding—Chairman, Stephen Ford, Grand Valley State College.

Several members of the subcommittee met with publishers and book manufacturers in two winter meetings of the ALA/RTSD-ABPC Joint Committee to discuss the Provisional Performance Standards for Binding Used in Libraries. The whole subcommittee will meet in New York on April 22 to receive the report of the Library Binding Institute and set a schedule for future deliberations.

SC/17—Book Numbering—Chairman, Robert Frase, American Book Publishers Council.

A new subcommittee has been established to deal with standard book numbers, which is expected to explore the possibility of establishing as an American standard the system of standard book numbers which the U.S. book publishing industry is placing in operation and which is identical with and a part of the system already adopted in Great Britain and expected to be put into effect in other English speaking countries as well.

SC/18—Book Publishing Statistics—Chairman, Anne J. Richter, R. R. Bowker Company.

The final draft of the standard on Book Publishing Statistics is now being submitted to the Z-39 Standards Committee for letter ballot. The original draft, which was circulated in December 1966, had the general approval of the committee, but several suggestions were made which were important enough to warrant a revision and recirculation of the draft.

The two major objections raised concerned the use of UDC and omission of all books under forty-nine pages. The revised draft translates the UDC numbers into Dewey classifications, and recommends the inclusion of hard bound juveniles under forty-nine pages in the count.

SC/19—Book Publishers Advertising—Chairman, Ellis Mount, Engineering Library, Columbia University.

The first meeting of this new subcommittee was held on March 19 with all members present. The following actions were taken: The committee reviewed thoroughly the document (approved in 1966 by the American Book Publishers Council and the Special Libraries Association) entitled “Recommended Practices for the Advertising and Promotion of Books.” Several changes and additions were proposed. The committee reviewed the various printed media used by publishers in the promotion of books, and categorized them as to the level of bibliographic data usually included in each type.

The committee will meet in April at which time it will pool the ideas of the members as to the proposed level and types of information which each type of promotional material ideally should include.

All drafts of proposed Z-39 standards are available to any persons or groups interested in commenting, upon request to the subcommittee chairman or Harold Oatfield, Pfizer Medical Research Laboratories, Groton, Conn. 06340.