President Mary Holt called the meeting to order at 5:40 p.m.

MeSH Resolution

Mary presented the Resolution on Medical Subject Headings and OCLC Services. She explained that the current resolution is based upon the 1995 resolution to load MeSH into OCLC's Online Union Catalog. It is also a follow-up to the proposal to load MeSH into the Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC). Consideration of that proposal by the OCLC Members Council has been delayed due to OCLC's decision to redesign its system. Janet Carter questioned whether NLM has been involved in supporting the load of MeSH authority records. Mary responded that NLM has not taken a leadership role in this endeavor due to a variety of changes that have taken place at NLM, which has made it more difficult than it would have been a few years back. One example is the change in how NLM assigns subject headings. Mary stated that the members do not have to approve the resolution at this meeting if the group wants to delay it.

Mary proceeded to explain what she would like for the group to do during the coming year to gain support for the resolution. She proposed that HSOCLCUG should try to get as many medical librarians together at the Midwinter Meeting of the American Library Association to hold a brainstorming session. OCLC will have representatives at that meeting, one of which could possibly attend our session. Mary thought Becky Dean might be able to attend. Judith Dzierba, who is our NLM liaison, could approach NLM about sending a representative to the meeting as well. Alane Wilson, who was representing OCLC at the meeting, interjected that it would be better to have more than just one representative from OCLC at the meeting for a discussion of scheduling, technical challenges, and functionality.

Since our small membership no longer supports holding an independent meeting, Mary also proposed that HSOCLCUG meet during the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas. MLA allows non-MLA groups to hold informal meetings at the annual conference at a cost of $200.00, which is a lot less than having a meeting on our own. All informal meetings are included in MLA's official program. HSOCLCUG could have one session focusing on the issues related to the medical subject headings and a second session on resource sharing issues. For the latter session, Susan Lieberthal and Dena Plaisted could repeat their ILLiad program at MLA.

One issue for the subject headings session could be NLM's practice of issuing their catalog records with the MeSH headings recombined into the traditional subject heading strings. There are problems with the way some of the heading strings are created and NLM is not putting any effort into cleaning up those problems. Some libraries are re-editing their OCLC records to match NLM's new form, while others are maintaining the recombined subject heading strings. Mary would like to see NLM stop recombining its subject headings into the traditional strings. She reiterated what Alice Jacobs, the NLM representative to the meeting, had said earlier in the day that NLM is interested in knowing what the medical libraries want, but the medical libraries must decide what they want. Mary also mentioned that another source of MeSH authority records might be the locally enhanced MeSH records created by Gary Strawn and Tony Olson.

In addition to the session at MLA, Mary recommended sending the resolution to Maggie Wineburgh-Freed, President of the Technical Services Section of the Medical Library Association, so that it could be included on the agenda of the section's Business Meeting. She would like to get other organizations to support the resolution before it is presented to OCLC.

To gather additional support, Mary mentioned contacting each of our regional medical libraries (RMLs). The RMLs are rethinking what they need to do. Currently, their emphasis is consumer health and hospital libraries, but our needs need to be met as well. Bruce Abbott suggested that HSOCLCUG request that liaisons from the RMLs be assigned to the regional OCLC networks creating an official channel of communication.

Mary questioned whether the members wanted to table the resolution. Alane Wilson responded with a suggestion to change the wording of the last paragraph of the resolution from "the development of OCLC's new interface" to "the development of OCLC's system". Some discussion ensued on the proposed change.

Mary encouraged everyone to fill out the test survey on authority control. Judith Dzierba and Dan Kniesner developed the survey to determine what questions need to be asked and have allowed plenty of space for comments. Mary announced that Dan's plan is to conduct the final survey on the Web. One issue with putting the survey on the Web is the ability to identify who is answering the survey questions. HSOCLCUG can solicit the groups or organizations that it wants to participate in the survey. Medical as well as academic libraries need to be targeted. There were some problems with the MeSH/CORC survey, which was conducted on the Web. Individuals, who knew nothing about medical subject headings, responded to the survey.

Bylaws Committee / Bruce Abbott

Based on his discussions with Mary Holt and the difficulty of getting members to serve as officers, Bruce proposed the following amendments to the bylaws:

Eliminate the elected position of Recording Secretary.
Create the appointed position of Web Site Coordinator.
Reassign the duties of the Recording Secretary to the Editor of Start of Message and the Web Site Coordinator.
Redefine the members of the Executive Board.

The only elected officers of HSOCLCUG would be the Vice-President (President-elect) and President. An additional bylaws change to eliminate the term and frequency of the appointment of the appointed officers was suggested. On motion of Mary Hawks, the proposed amendments with the additional change to Article V were discussed and adopted.

Mary emphasized the importance of having a presence at the OCLC Members Council even though the group does not have a vote. The President of HSOCLCUG is supposed to attend the Members Council as the group's representative. The President does not have to attend all meetings (a total of 3 each year), but it is good to attend occasionally and to keep in touch with the chairs of the interest groups by e-mail. Mary believes that if an e-mail is well thought out and sent to the right person at the right time, it can be very effective.

Mary mentioned that Bruce Abbott has agreed to review the bylaws in their entirety for the Bylaws Committee. The bylaws need further revision to meet the needs of the organization regarding electronic communication. The revisions will be posted via MEDCAT and the HSOCLCUG website <http://hsoclcug.org> in advance of the next business meeting. An effort will be made to publish them in Start of Message. The proposed amendments may be discussed via MEDCAT and may be further amended at the business meeting. Voting on the bylaws amendments will be held during the business meeting.

Nominating Committee

Mary Holt announced that the Nominating Committee is composed of Connie Machado, Susan Dorsey, and Mary Hawks, chair. One nominee has been suggested and has agreed to run for President-elect. She asked that additional nominations be sent to Mary Hawks.
Ballots for the election of the President-elect will be mailed to the membership.

Administrative Secretary Report / Karleen Darr

Karleen was unable to attend the meeting, but submitted the following reports.

FINANCIAL REPORT
Reporting Period: July 1, 2001 - October 15, 2001

ACCOUNTS BALANCE JULY 1, 2001 $6,032.22

INCOME

Interest Income 44.34
Membership Dues 2001/2002 490.00

SUBTOTAL INCOME $ 534.34

EXPENSES

Annual Meeting Charge 1,300.00
Start of Message Charges 570.90

SUBTOTAL EXPENSES $1,870.90

INCOME LESS EXPENSES ($1,336.56)

TOTAL ALL ACCOUNTS $4,695.66

Savings account balance October 15, 2001 3,432.82

Checking account balance October 15, 2001 1,262.84

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MEMBERSHIP REPORT
2001/2002

Current membership is divided into two categories.

Personal 30
Institutional 10
Total 40

Mary further reported that Karlene is willing to continue as the Administrative Secretary even though she is no longer working in a medical library environment. She has moved to the main library at the University of California, Davis. Mary would like to have someone serve as co-Secretary until all of the responsibilities are transferred.

Editor of Start of Message

Mary stated that Cindy Fedders has agreed to continue as Editor of Start of Message, but would like to have a co-editor. Mary wants to distribute the newsletter electronically since it is so expensive to print and mail the newsletter to members.

Mary mailed 250 newsletters in the hope of getting new members, but didn't get any. Connie Machado mentioned that part of the problem is the lack of mentoring. Directors who used to be active in this group continue to pay their membership dues, but do not inform their catalogers about the group. There are a lot of inactive memberships. Mary reported that HSOCLCUG has lost almost all of its institutional members. Mary solicited for a volunteer to take charge of membership and suggested that a letter be written to medical library directors outlining the issues of the group and asking them to join HSOCLCUG as an institutional member for $25.00 a year.

Health Sciences OCLC Users Group Task Force

Mary reported that Dan Kniesner has agreed to continue as Chair of the MeSH MARC Committee, which has been renamed the Health Sciences OCLC Users Group Task Force. The task force, whose work will result in a report, will continue to investigate the medical subject headings situation. Mary has created a Web site for the task force and additional members are needed if anyone is interested.

Even though Dan could not be present at the meeting, Mary thanked him for his work on the SERHOLD-OCLC pilot project as well as the MeSH/CORC survey.

HSOCLCUG Web Site

Mary announced that she is the Web Site Administrator. She asked that she be notified of any changes that need to be made to the site. She will incorporate the CORC pathfinders as a part of the Web site.

MeSH Resolution Revisited

Mary returned to the MeSH resolution. On motion of Connie Machado, the following amended resolution was discussed and finally approved as a draft resolution.

RESOLUTION ON MEDICAL SUBJECT HEADINGS AND OCLC SERVICES

WHEREAS, member libraries rely on OCLC's WorldCat database and the OCLC services to libraries,

WHEREAS, OCLC is no longer using the annual MeSH MARC file from the National Library of Medicine to correct existing MeSH headings in the WorldCat database, and

WHEREAS, an online medical and scientific authority file and services would enable member libraries to maintain more easily these corrected headings, and would enhance the efficiency of member libraries performing subject authority work,

WHEREAS, the WorldCat database would be further enhanced if the medical headings were corrected, providing greater reliability of subject searches in the electronic environment, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, that the Health Sciences OCLC Users Group urges OCLC to investigate the best possible method for the loading and the maintenance of medical subject headings, using NLM's annual MeSH file or using the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS ), into the online authority file.

We further seek OCLC's incorporation of medical subject headings in the development of OCLC's system, and request that OCLC clearly and formally commit to the inclusion of medical subject heading authority in their strategic plan.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 6:30 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Lynne B. Bowman
Recording Secretary