Notes fields (including 505 contents fields) are not inaccessible. With
a keyword search and the proper indexing of one's catalog virtually any
data are searchable in a MARC record. Recently, in fact, 505 contents
field author/title information has been placed in subfields (r and g)
which can be indexed to search by author and title searches as well as
keyword.
Elise
Elise T. Zappas
Humanities Cataloger &
Automation Librarian
Drew University Library
Madison, NJ 07940
973-408-3667
ezappas_at_drew.edu
>>> "K.G. Schneider" <kgs_at_bluehighways.com> 9/27/2006 10:50 AM >>>
This is a marvelous post, and while in my Thinking Unit (a long hot
shower)
it inspired me to come up with a 95% facetious rule: abolish all
non-fixed
fields. This would reduce the temptation to stuff valuable metadata in
notes
fields. But it would need a corollary rule, which would be that every
month
we (LibraryLand) would be required to establish at least ten more
fixed
fields whether we needed them or not. Then a third rule would be that
proposed fixed fields would be discussed in a weekly global
teleconference
in which a simple majority vote established new fields, and that
demerits
would be issued to libraries that suggested fields without solid
evidence to
support their suggestions. (I'm not sure what the punishment would
be.)
The less silly ruminations I had were related to what KC has called
"the
slow-moving barge" effect. I recently shopped for TV stands on several
store
websites. I was able to browse by facets that were useful for me-first
the
larger category itself (TV stands), and then by size, material, and
color.
These companies knew these facets were useful for me. How do *we* as a
huge
profession know what fields are useful, establish these fields, and use
them
in meaningful ways? We pride ourselves on standardization, and indeed
that
has its charms. But are we also paying a steep price for it?
Karen G. Schneider
kgs_at_bluehighways.com
Received on Tue Oct 03 2006 - 09:15:51 EDT