Minutes of October 27, 2004 TERMinators meeting

Present: Mark Dehmlow, Nastia Guimaraes, Alan Krieger, Mary Lehman, Tom Lehman, Laurie McGowan, Kathie Ryan-Zeugner

The discussion of "Research Tools" was continued from the previous meeting. Tom's agenda listed 3 possible definitions, two from the previous meeting and one added from the dictionary. After some discussion the group agreed on the third definition slightly modified:

Research Tools: Resources containing general, factual or background information, or used to identify materials on a topic.

We next took up some "stand alone" facets that should be somewhat simpler to define than others.

Places were defined as: Regions, locations or jurisdictions.

There was much discussion of the term, "Subjects." The suggested definition has two parts: 1. Areas of study supporting university departments, programs, centers, or institutes; and 2. Areas of study for which a librarian has been assigned responsibility for collection development and reference. The question arose as to whether one or both of these were necessary to determine a subject. In some cases, there is no program, but there are endowment funds and a librarian charged with administering them. "Jewish Studies" and "African History" were cited as an examples.

Discussion included the concept that the DDW is not meant to replace the catalog and its subject headings. We want to keep this vocabulary as limited as possible. As situations change bibliographers can petition the committee to add a subject. It will be possible to broaden the vocabulary as needed. It was decided that both phrases were needed in the definition of the term.

Subjects: Areas of study supporting university departments, programs, centers or institutes for which a librarian is responsible for collection development and reference.

Composers, performers and performance groups were grouped into one facet.

Composers, Performers, and Performance Groups: The names of musical composers, performers, and performance groups as the names appear in the library catalog headings.

Discussion of the facet, People and Organizations, revealed that many of the terms under this heading, especially those referring to people, were never or seldom used. It was suggested that we publicize this and see if anyone wants to keep some, that we remove all the unused terms since most appear in other categories. Many were taken from the Virtual Reference Desk site, and don't necessarily work well in the DDW.

It was suggested that we pull all unused terms and notify bibliographers that we have done so, but not reveal a list of what we have removed. It was mentioned that we probably should not delete anything until we have a official procedure in place for requesting a change or addition to the vocabulary.

With the removal of "People" from the facet, "Organizations" was defined:

Organizations: Groups of persons identified by a particular name that act as an entity.

Respectfully submitted,
Kathie Ryan-Zeugner October 28, 2004