Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
|But if memory serves, even those original BT's were in some cases
|machine generated to get the ball rolling. The LCSH in it's entirety
was
|just too large to do all by hand, when they started adding those BT/NTs
|(the 80s sometime?). If I'm remembering right.
I had been out of library school about 8 years when LC made the major
change to hierarchical relationships of subjects. Prior to 1985,
different terminology was used; in 1985 LC used computer translation to
shift terminology as follows:
old new
x [see from] UF [used for]
xx [see also from] BT [broader topic]
sa [see also] NT [narrower topic]
both xx and sa RT [related topic]
It was a challenge getting used to the new terminology, but, in some
respects, it was a lot easier than trying to explain to public services
staff the difference between "see also" and "see also from" when they
used the LCSH red books at the catalog.
If you look in volume 1 of LCSH, you'll find a bit of the history under
the section "The Hierarchical Relationship: Broader Topics and Narrower
Topics" (or whatever the title might be in various editions) in the
"Introduction".
|It's interesting news to me that III OPAC has been taking advantage of
|these for a while though, thanks for the pointer, I plan to investigate
|what they've done.
Our OPAC is at <http://iii.ahml.info>.
For illustrative purposes, I put in a BT code in subfield w of tag 550
("Christian sects") in the subject authority record for "Orthodox
Eastern Church".
If you search "Christian sects" and click "Christian Sects -- 27 Related
Subjects", you'll see the backwards (NT) reference at result #20 in the
list. Unfortunately, it seems that the tag 550 reference does not in
any way show up as a BT display for "Orthodox..."--that is, "see also
the broader term Christian sects". So I don't know what's happening
there--I'm quite surprised (maybe there's some system setting that was
forgotten to be turned on or something). I know for sure that I was
taught in library school that, as I said in my previous message, you
*never* create NT references, because you'd have to be continually
monitoring them for deletions of the original headings being referred
to. (The system-generated NT's, as found in "Christian sects",
disappear automatically if the original records, such as "Orthodox...",
are ever deleted.) FWIW.
Harvey
--
===========================================
Harvey E. Hahn, Manager, Technical Services Department
Arlington Heights (Illinois) Memorial Library
847/506-2644 - FX: 847/506-2650 - Email: hhahn(at)ahml(dot)info
OML & Scripts web pages: http://www.ahml.info/oml/
Personal web pages: http://users.anet.com/~packrat
Received on Wed May 09 2007 - 16:13:47 EDT