Hi Karen,
When I said, "there has been a project using subjects found in recent LC bibliographic records to automatically produce authority records to support the subject strings used," I didn't mean to imply that ALL the headings strings from ALL the LC bibliographic records had authority records now.
I knew about this from orally presented reports, and I haven't found an online report specifically about this project. However, in the LC reports available from http://www.loc.gov/aba/publications/ on 2007 (p.10) and 2008 (p.7) there is mention of it.
Thanks,
Jimmie
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 1:08 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Discussion of id.loc.gov
Lundgren,Jimmie Harrell wrote:
> Please forgive if details are a somewhat sketchy here, but I wanted to offer just a little more information.
>
> Although in the past the specific subject strings other than in pattern headings usually did not have corresponding authority records, this is no longer the case.
>
> There was an LC project to create authority records for subheadings that is described at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/subdauth.html
>
There are 342,684 subject authority records. This is NOT the number of
individual subject headings that have been assigned to bibliographic
records, which number in the millions (just do a count on your subject
file, 650's and 651's). So the LC subject authority files is not a file
of subject headings that have been assigned. It is a file of patterns
you can use to assign subject headings. While the Airlie House
conference in 1991 proposed a set order of the subheadings and an
increase in the number of pre-coordinated headings, the actual number of
entries in LCSH shows that the file still contains only a fraction of
the pre-coordinated strings that have been created.
kc
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
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Received on Mon May 18 2009 - 13:35:57 EDT