Jimmie,
It's not easy trying to draft/revise a report by committee, even less by
e-mail, so I'm not expecting that you will either have the time to reply to
all the comments, or even feel inclined to act on them (that's why you're
the boss!).
I've one general point about the draft of the first section, and then a few
trivial bits and pieces.
The most general one first. Of course, the Summary of Recommendations will
ultimately have to match whatever's flagged as a recommendation in the body
of the text, so is liable to change anyway as we come to those specific
sections. I was going to suggest that (b) ought to come before (a), because
that's logically how they fit (we establish the concept of membership and
one of the aspects of that is that members will be permitted to submit via
the utilities). But then I realised you'd followed the order of the points
in the original charge. So I think you're right on that, even if it seems a
little odd.
I would make the recommendations less prose-like and turn them even more
into a series of bullets and sub-bullets (I know there's no such term, but
I'm sure you'll understand the point). The essentials (which is what the
recommendations are) need to stand out. Simply laying them out more
snappily will help with that. Some of the recommendations include a bit of
"justification", which I'd have thought is for the body of the report, not
the recommendations themselves.
The only thing obviously "missing" at this stage is that (b) should start
with something we've almost taken for granted by now:
That SACO be confirmed as a full program of the Program for Cooperative
Cataloging, incorporating the concept of membership applied to the other
PCC components.
Now for the trivia:
> 10 years now. Through SACO many useful changes and additions to LCSH have
"many useful" is a bit weak. Perhaps have a look at the stats and summarise
them, e.g.
Since SACO's inception, non-LC libraries have contributed over XX,000 new
subject headings to LCSH, and initiated changes to a further XX,000.
> Inconsistencies exist in quantity and quality of subject authorities
Start that sentence with "Significant"?
> Library of Congress. How can the SACO Program obtain more support and
> produce more and better subject authority proposals?
I didn't like the wording of this question - to what extent is our focus
"more and better"? And I wondered, in any case, whether this was the place
for such a statement anyway - does it add anything that's not said in some
other way in the introductory section?
> The mandate for this work grew out of discussions about SACO at the November
> 2002 PCC Policy Committee. It also followed a commissioned study completed
> at the Library of Congress by Charles Fenly in July 2002 which examined the
Begin 2nd sentence:
These discussions were themselves informed by a commissioned study...
> problems in some detail and outlined possible changes for SACO.
The difficulty here is that we haven't introduced the idea of "problems"
into the discussion, so referring to "the problems" comes out of the blue.
"What problems", the reader is entitled to ask. How about
"...examined in detail a number of issues that had been raised by LC staff
and outlined..."?
> to facilitate subject proposals for LCSH. The currently used web-form should
... The current web-based form...
> mail is discouraged for reasons of both speed and safety.
I take it this specific to paper/snail mail? No mention here of e-mail
(that will need to be covered in the body of the report). "Safety" I would
take to be a 9/11 thing, and is probably more self-evident to a US members
than to the international corps.
Hope this is useful.
Best wishes,
Hugh
--
Hugh Taylor
Head, Collection Development and Description
Cambridge University Library
West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DR, England
email: [log in to unmask] fax: +44 (0)1223 333160
phone: +44 (0)1223 333069 (with voicemail) or
phone: +44 (0)1223 333000 (ask for pager 036)
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