> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind
> Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 12:22 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] update on lcsh??
>
> So a reasonable approach to me would be machine connecting LCSH place
> names to formal coordinates, and then human-entering coordinates only
> for such places that does _not_ work for, on an as-discovered basis.
>
> But the larger question is: Who would do even this? Is the cataloging
> community capable of any change whatsoever, or has it been so
> deprofessionalized and under-staffed that there's nobody left to do any
> change at all? OCLC maybe?
One of the aspects of FAST [1] was that they added 043 fields to all LCSH place names. The 043 could be used in a broad fashion for geographic searching. FAST also carried over any GNIS information that was found in the LCSH 670 note fields too. I don't know whether they plan to switch the GNIS information to the 034 field in the future, but it would seem possible.
Since I work with both FAST and Dewey, I looked into the possibility of an automated way, possibly with review, to add Dewey Table 2 mappings to the FAST geographic headings. I also have looked at the possibility of adding Dewey Table 2 classes to geonames.org information as well as Freebase, but unfortunately these items are no longer on my current task list.
Andy.
[1] <http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/fast/>
Received on Wed Jun 25 2008 - 12:01:58 EDT