[Sca-librarians] Pennsic Class Subjects

[Fiadnata]

Greetings All,

Please consider this to be a very informal call 
for help. We are not aiming for something to be 
implemented this year, but are looking forward to 
Pennsic 39.

I am the A&S Class Scheduler for Pennsic 
University 38, and have just had the Interesting 
Task of scheduling 1000+ class sessions. (I think 
the last count was 795 classes, with 1024 actual 
sessions -- so far. I know there are several 
classes that still need to get scheduled, but 
they came in after the May 15th deadline, so we 
weren't able to get them into the Pennsic Book.) 
Part of the task of Scheduler involves assigning 
subjects to all of these classes -- some of them 
quite far outside my area of expertise. Yes, it 
was a fun finger exercise, but looking at the 
diverse topics coming in, I know we need to get a 
better list of subjects than we currently have.

Right now, we have a list of 30-40 terms that 
have been being used over the course of the past 
few years. They are not exactly intended as a 
complete covering of all the possible areas of 
interest, but are, more often than not, simply 
the best term an amateur could come up with at 
that moment to describe the class in front of 
them. Growth is haphazard, and there are some 
topics that aren't being used at all, while 
others risk not being useful, as 70-80 items can 
be under them. ("Dance, European" comes to mind 
first, this year....)

I'd like to spearhead a small group of interested 
librarians who could put together a more 
evenly-balanced list of subjects to be used for 
the next few years. The ideal would be a 
hierarchical list -- think of the structure of 
the MeSH headings -- that could be made more 
specific or general, as the need arose. I can't 
promise that they will be used in perpetuity, but 
I can certainly put them in place for next year, 
when I step up to be Pennsic University 
Chancellor.

Are there a few people out there who'd like to 
join in this project? The main requirement would 
be access to the past few Pennsic Books, so that 
you would have an idea of the range of classes 
being offered, and a willingness to bounce some 
ideas around, so that we can get a "full slate" 
of topics together. We'll probably set up a Yahoo 
or Google group to do this, so that we can keep 
an archive of the messages.

And to forestall the inevitable questions, we 
hope to have the Pennsic classes for this year 
posted very soon. When we finally have the list 
up, I'll be happy to announce it here.

In Service,

Fiadnata ó Gleann Àlainn
A&S Class Scheduler
Pennsic University 38