Yeah, this quickly becomes a big mess. Maybe it _can_ be done in MARC,
but doing it in MARC results in a really confusing spaghetti flowchart
of logic software needs to follow (possibly along with access to other
data like matching a parenthesized institution code to the authority
file they are _likely_ but not guaranteed to have been using) to
actually make use of this.
If we're stuck with MARC, then I guess we'll have to make do. But I'm
with Karen, putting more effort into MARC in an effort to make a really
complicated way to at least make this possible -- increasingly gives us
diminishing returns for the effort.
Jonathan
Galen Charlton wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <rochkind_at_jhu.edu> wrote:
>
>> You've still got to know _what_ authority file the control number came from.
>> Does the MARC standard provide a way to identify that?
>>
>> A US cataloger is likely using the US NAF, but a German or French cataloger
>> is not. So if all you've got is a bare control number in $0, you've still
>> got to know what authority file it comes from.
>>
>
> It looks like it could be done in two ways. The $0 is supposed to
> contain a parenthesized prefix containing the code of the institution
> that assigned the authority record ID, and that presumably could be
> used as a proxy for identifying the name or uniform title authority
> file being used. For subject headings, the 6XX second indicator and
> subfield $2 would identify the thesaurus, and by implication the
> subject authority file that $0 would refer to.
>
> Regards,
>
> Galen Charlton
> LibLime
>
Received on Thu Apr 23 2009 - 12:56:08 EDT