A c t i o n f o r L i b r a r i e s — N o v e m b e r 2 0 0 1

Library of Congress to Implement
Amendments 2001 to AACR2

By Rosario Garza

The Library of Congress (LC) intends to implement Amendments 2001 to AACR2 on December 1. (See the LC Web site: lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/amen2001.html.) By that time, the Library of Congress Rule Interpretations related to Amendments 2001 are anticipated to have been distributed by the Cataloging Distribution Service to LC staff and NACO participants.

The Amendments 2001 rule revisions are already included in the current LC Cataloger's Desktop; they have been incorporated into the AACR2 text and also appear separately under "Most recent Amendments." Printed copies of Amendments 2001 are available from the Canadian Library Association, Library Association Publishing and the American Library Association (www.ala.org).

Amendments 2001 includes three major rule revisions:

Conference publications can be entered under the heading for the conference if the name of the conference appears anywhere in the item being cataloged (21.1B2(d)). LC will apply this rule revision to conference publications cataloged after November 30.

British terms of honor ("Sir," "Dame," "Lord," "Lady") will no longer be included in headings (22.1C, 22.12), but will be retained in statements of responsibility (1.1F7) and can be used to resolve conflicts in headings (22.19B). LC will apply this rule revision to headings being newly established after November 30.

Chapter 9 has been renamed "Electronic Resources." The GMD "electronic resource" replaces "computer file," and conventional terminology (e.g., "1 CD- ROM") can now be used in the extent statement. The entire chapter has been reissued, although a number of the rules within the chapter do not contain any changes. LC will apply revised Chapter 9 to items cataloged after November 30.

OCLC will coordinate its implementation of Amendments 2001 with LC's implementation and asks that member libraries begin applying the amendments to items cataloged after November 30.

In conjunction with the implementation of revised Chapter 9, "Electronic Resources," OCLC member libraries are asked to cease using Guidelines for the Bibliographic Description of Interactive Multimedia (American Library Association, 1994) as the basis for bibliographic descriptions and to use the revised Chapter 9 for the bibliographic description of all electronic resources. OCLC staff is investigating conversion of the existing general material designations, "computer file" and "interactive multimedia," to the new general material designation, "electronic resource."

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Library of Congress to Implement Amendments 2001 to AACR2

Library of Congress to Implement
Amendments 2001 to AACR2