Re: Purposes of classification (was Re: Aristotle, "Everything is Miscellaneous", and the lib's "educative function" )

From: Simon Spero <ses_at_nyob>
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 16:12:38 -0400
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
On 6/8/07, Mark Ehlert <ehler043_at_umn.edu> wrote:
>
>
> "Linguistics & philosophy" is a series title (note that it's in a 130
> field of the authority record), not a subject heading, though it could be
> used as such in a work discussing the series.  I suspect many other "&"
> headings are titles as well or perhaps SEE references to "and" headings,
> though I have no hard stats to back this up.


Lets go to the video tape...

For   the Dec 2006  authorities, I get the following counts

Tag             Count
100             11412
110             30067
111             1570
130             5376
150             19
151             46

For purposes of this discussion, only the headings tagged 150 and 151 are of
interest;  there are 65 of these to examine.  For the 150s, it appears that
the ampersands are  based on  Proper Names (to stick with the Linguistics
and Philosophy motif).

Tag Heading 150$a AT&T PC 6300 (Computer) 150$a Bil & traktor (Firm) Strike,
1978 150$a Kongelige Porcelainsfabrik & Fajancefabriken Aluminia a/s Strike,
Copenhagen, 1972-1973 150$a Premio Benson & Hedges 150$a Virginian & Ohio
Railroad (Model railroad) 150$a Geo. A. Hormel & Company Strike, Austin,
Minn., 1985-1986 150$a Hildebrand & Wolfmüller motorcycle 150$a AT&T PC 6300
Plus (Computer) 150$a Lyon & Healy Piano Co. Strike, Chicago, Ill., 1917 150$a
Charles Ottley, Landon & Co. (Imaginary organization) 150$a Friends & Foes
(Game) 150$a Currier & Ives dinnerware 150$a Kiss & Tell (Group of artists)
150$a AT&T WorldNet (Online service) 150$a Batman & Robin (Game) 150$a H.W.
& J. Hector-Kunstpreis 150$a Sea & Sea cameras 150$a Texas A&M Bonfire
Collapse, College Station, Tex., 1999 150$a Rosato & Associates (Imaginary
organization)
For the 151 headings, the situation is less clear cut:
There are 18 headings for 'Soil & Water Conservation District"s, but 168 "Soil
and Water "s;
"Sac & Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska" doesn't even make it
to the end of the subfield.

" Bath & North East Somerset (England)" is also puzzling;  there's a 451 for
"Bath and North East Somerset", plus a 670 source to the United States Board
on Geographic Names <http://www.nga.mil/portal/site/nga01/> which is
ampersand free. I believe this may have been the reason
Lorcan<http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/l.dempsey.html>had to come
over here to fix things.

Indeed, given that the Federal government has the  BGN in place, and given
that  DLC has an MIB on the  DNC and FNC , it might make sense to transfer
responsibility for all Geographic authority records that fall within their
remit entirely to that body, whether officially, or by automatically
generating/updating authority records from the BGN databases

This principle may generalize...

Simon
Received on Fri Jun 08 2007 - 13:59:58 EDT