Review the proposed changes and vote Download the proposals in PDF format

 

Revising Blue Book Cataloging

There have been scores of suggestions on how to “improve” the cataloging system developed in the late 1980s for handling Order of the Arrow issues.

 

For more than 25 years, the “Blue Book” system has served the hobby well in helping provide a common language for identifying lodge issues. But the system needs to be updated before lodge editors go to the massive effort of updating the listing with the last 10 years of cloth because the hobby has evolved both in quantity and complexity.

 

Using the Blue Book 6 (BB6) standard as a basis the ISCA Standards Committee is presenting a series of proposed amendments, alternatives and major changes to the standards. (The Standards Committee is composed of eight long time collectors each with more than two decades of pulling their hair and gnashing their teeth of over colors, measurements, and questions of legitimacy and or contrived rarity, i.e., they’ve 'been there, done that and got the bruises to prove it.')

 

The format will be as follows. In the PDF document available for download above you will see two columns of text. On the left is the Blue Book 6.0 cataloging stands from 2005 -- what is being amended. On the right will be the items for discussion this month for you to consider, comment and then vote upon. You will see all of the BB6 standards on the left, and the proposed amendments, changes and/or alternatives will be shown on the right.

 

After you fully understand the proposals (from the PDF document), then make sure you select the “Review proposed changes and vote” button and log your response. Please make sure you at least vote and you can make and/or add comments to the blog section as well.

 

ISCA’s format for adopting changes is:
--There is a one month window for comments from the public on each proposal.
--Once the month has ended the Standards Committee will review the comments, reach an agreement and then submit a formal recommendation for adoption to ISCA.
--Once ISCA approves the recommendations, then those are officially adopted and posted, and lodge editors can begin using the changes.

 

Obviously in the process of cataloging there will be disagreements over what is and is not a legitimate issue of a lodge, or how it is cataloged or whether or not one flap or another is the real first flap. ISCA has set up an appeals committee for the advocates on each side to present their case. That process is outlined on the ISCA website.

 

But one cataloging decision has already been made. To help people know whether or not the identification label was cataloged under the BB6 standards or the ISCA revised standers there is a subtle but necessary change to how to write/type a revised catalog listing as opposed to the BB6 method by placing a hyphen between the 'letter' and issue number. In other words where BB6 listed a lodge's first solid embroidery flap as "S1" the ISCA defined listing will be typed "S-1". That way when someone sees a listing they automatically know it is cataloged under the revised definitions and not under the 10-year-old BB6 standards.

 

Finally, confine your comments and discussions to the applicable discussion pages and not to personal emails to the chairman, ISCA Board or assumed committee members. We want everyone to benefit from a thorough public discussion and the only way to do that is discuss each topic publicly not in a series of private conversations.

 

--Tracy Mesler, ISCA Standards Committee Chairman

 

PS -- Unless the email is from a Committee member or the ISCA Chairman please be advised it will be deleted without reading. We want the discussions where all can read and comment.

 

If you have comments you would like to make that do not fall under a specific proposal please use this discussion area below to make them.