Theology Cataloging Bulletin Vol. 23, No 4 • August 2015 3-1 Section 3 Section Three: News and Views (of the ATLA Technical Services Section) ATLA NACO AND CONSER NEWS Best Practices Taskforce The Best Practices Taskforce, composed of representatives from ATLA, the Catholic Library Association, and the Association of Christian Librarians, created and critiqued two documents which are now ready for a broader critique by interested members of the three associations. To this end, the proposed Best Practices for Authority Records in the Field of Religion and the Thesaurus of Religious Occupational Terms (TROT) are posted on the Technical Services Interest Group page on the ATLA website and ready for your perusal. This fall, the Taskforce plans to post these documents publicly and announce their availability on the PCC discussion list. In addition, the Thesaurus will be submitted to the LC Network Development and MARC Standards Office as an official standard with the acronym, TROT. If accepted, the terms will be available for use in the 374 (occupation) field of personal authority records with the addition of $2 trot. Please participate in this critique, since the documents will only be as useful as you make them. NACO members are encouraged to follow the Best Practices guidelines see if the terms you would like to use in the 374 field are available in the Thesaurus. If the terms you would like to use are not available, please propose them. Please send all suggestions and criticisms to Judy Knop at jknop@atla.com. New Demographic Group Terms and Code List Demographic terms are being developed for use in the newly added 385 (audience characteristics) and 386 (creator/ contributor characteristics) fields, in both bibliographic and authority records, by LC's Policy and Standards Division. The code to be used is $2 lcdgt (Library of Congress Demographic Genre Terms). The terms will be used in bibliographic and authority records to document characteristics of the intended audience of the work as well as the characteristics of the creator or contributor of the. Decisions on the extent of granularity are still being debated. Here is an example of two possible levels of granularity for the same work: A book for children learning German, written by a German woman. 385 $a English speakers $a Children $2 lcdgt 386 $a Germans $a Women $2 lcdgt Or 385 $n lan $a English speakers $2 lcdgt 385 $n age $a Children $2 lcdgt 386 $n nat $a Germans $2 lcdgt 386 $n gdr $a Women $2 lcdgt 386 $n age $a Adults $2 lcdgt Theology Cataloging Bulletin Vol. 23, No 4 • August 2015 3-2 Section 3 Phase 3B Changes to the Name Authority File Sometime before October 1, 2015, LC will perform the proposed Phase 3B changes to convert the Name Authority File to align with RDA. Because there are no changes to the 1XX field included in this Phase, LC will make all the changes at once in what they are calling a "slam." For at least one week, the LC/NAF will become "read only" while the changes are being made. NOTE: OCLC plans to delete all name authority records saved in the online save file, whether or not they are locked, before this work begins. Heed the announcement and complete or move all authority records to the offline save file when the announcement is made. Major changes to the database in Phase 3B are: • Recode all records to RDA if the 1XX contains no non-RDA elements (i.e., those records with no 667 THIS RECORD CANNOT BE USED ...) • Add 024 ISNI numbers where available. ISNI is the International Standard Name Identifier, developed to be database independent, on par with ISSN and ISBN. • Evaluate 370 for conversion to NAF/LCSH form with $2 code. • Generate 046 coded dates from 670 and 1XX. • Reformulate all 046 dates from yyyymmdd to yyyy-mm-dd $2 edtf. • Following Phase 3B "slam" all dates will be entered in the form with hyphens and $2 edtf. • Addition of 368 $c and $d, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, and 375 fields where possible from information found in 670s and 1XX. • Addition of qualifiers to 4XX fields consisting only of initials, initialisms, or acronyms. Following the Phase 3B "slam," all 046 codes $s and $t found in corporate, conference, and geographic name records will be changed to $q and $r, defined as beginning and ending dates. This will allow for $s and $t in all types of records to be defined as activity dates. Do not use the new 046 format for dates, or $q and $r until the changes have been made to the authority file and until PCC announces that they are ready for use. Submitted by Judy Knop, Member Programs Librarian, NACO/CONSER Funnel Coordinator American Theological Library Association LC GENRE/FORM TERMS FOR RELIGIOUS MATERIAL PROJECT On June 23, 2015, Janis Young of the Policy and Standards Division of the Library of Congress announced the following: "Since early 2007, the Library of Congress has been developing Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCGFT), whose terms describe what something is rather than what it is about, as subject headings do. In September 2015 the Policy and Standards Division (PSD) will approve approximately 40 genre/ form terms for religious materials. The terms appear on Tentative List 1518 (http://classificationweb.net/tentative-subjects/1518.html), to be approved on September 8, 2015. PSD is requesting comments on the terms from the library community; please email Janis L. Young at jayo@loc.gov through August 31, 2015. The religion genre/form project is a collaboration between PSD and the American Theological Library Association, which coordinated with the Association of Jewish Libraries, the Catholic Library Association, and the Council