TO:	Kris Kiesling, Chair, SAA Standards Committee
FROM:	Dennis Meissner, Chair, SAA Technical Subcommittee on Descriptive Standards (TSDS)
DATE:	August 16, 2000
RE:	1999/2000 TSDS Annual Report

Following a year that bustled with standards-related work, the 1999-2000 cycle saw only moderate activity. In fact, half of TSDS's work during the year, though related closely to descriptive standards, had nothing to do with evaluating formal proposals.

Anticipating the possibility of another slow-to-moderate year on the standards front, TSDS will be considering how it can best use the time to educate itself for work that it may be called upon to perform in evaluating the draft manual that will be produced by the Canadian-U.S. Task Force on Archival Description, if that initiative is funded. Some sort of deeper study of the Canadian Rules for Archival Description will be in order.

On a related note, the chair wishes to reaffirm the value of last year's decision by SAA to send a TSDS representative to Ottawa to attend the November 1999 CCAD meeting. This was a very useful exercise, and one appreciated by the CCAD hosts; it should, if possible, become an annual event.

Two changes occur with regard to the appointed committee members as the year ends. Dennis Meissner has accepted reappointment to a second term, and will continue as chair for one more year. Bradley Westbrook, UC San Diego, has been appointed to a three-year term, to fill the seat vacated by Nicole Bouché earlier this year. In addition, the SAA president needs to fill an ex officio slot, since Michael Fox will no longer be serving as liaison to CC:DA.

Following are brief summaries of the activities in which TSDS members participated during the period since the 1999 SAA meeting.

• MARBI Proposal 2000-06 (additional linking subfields)
  • During discussion of the successful outcome of MARBI proposal 99:08 at the August 25, 1999 meeting in Pittsburgh, TSDS expressed a clear sense that the archival community should press for the inclusion of linking subfields in MARC fields other than 555 and 583. MARBI liaison Michael Fox had cautioned that any new applications suggested must be accompanied by clear and compelling rationales, and must be supported by real-world examples of suggested practice. Following the SAA meeting, TSDS facilitated a discussion focusing on the use of the linking subfield in 545 (Biographical or Historical Data). Michael forwarded the accumulated examples to Rebecca Guenther, Library of Congress, who introduced Proposal 2000-06 to add linking subfields to several additional MARC fields, among them field 545. The proposal was discussed at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in January 2000, and ended in a decision to add linking subfield $u to fields 505, 514, 520, 530, 545, and 552 (Full text of Proposal No. 2000-06 available at: http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2000/2000-06.html).
• ISAD(G): Examples for Revised Second Draft
  • In October, TSDS was asked to compile a full set of examples for the rules comprising the revised second draft of ISAD(G), since all the original examples were going to be replaced. A month-long exchange of suggestions resulted in a substantive set of examples for nearly every rule in the standard. ICA:CDS Liaison Michael Fox forwarded the examples to the committee for consideration, and many ended up populating the recently published ISAD(G) 2nd edition (PDF file of full text available at: http://www.ica.org/cds/ISAD(G)E-pub.pdf).
• Representation at November CCAD Meeting
  • SAA, for the first time, allocated funds for a TSDS representative to attend a meeting of the Canadian Committee on Archival Description. TSDS chair Dennis Meissner attended the November 27-28 meeting in Ottawa as an observer, but was afforded many opportunities to comment on particular issues under discussion. The trip, which we hope will be funded again in 2000, provided a valuable opportunity to view and to acknowledge the important Canadian work taking place in the area of archival descriptive standards, and to further cooperation between the two communities. A notable particular benefit was the opportunity to study a draft of The RAD Primer, which was under discussion on the first day of the meeting. The TSDS website contains a lengthier report on the meeting.
• Review of SAA Continuing Education in Description
  • Bill Landis, working with Alden Monroe, analyzed the description-related items among the SAA continuing education offerings since 1993, concluding among other things that the description offerings were a rather piecemeal group skewed strongly toward the MARC format and toward EAD; that a comprehensive treatment of the principal aspects of description was missing; and that the approach erroneously assumed an existing overall knowledge of the elements of description on the part of all archivists. The data and report (available at: http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/~blandis/tsds/saa-desc-ce.pdf) were forwarded to SAA's Committee on Continuing Education and Professional Development Committee for discussion and action. TSDS will no doubt remain involved in this issue.
• ANSI/NISO Z39.85-200X (Dublin Core Metadata Element Set)
  • SAA NISO representative Lisa Weber asked TSDS to comment on the draft standard (available at: http://www.niso.org/Z3984.html), which was scheduled for balloting in mid-August. A very lively discussion ensued regarding the purpose and adequacy of the DCMES for archival purposes, which ended in a strong majority decision to encourage NISO to approve the DCMES as a standard for the discovery of information resources in an interdisciplinary environment.