On Wed, 27 Jul 2011, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> I thought 045 was used for "aboutness" time period? Like a historical book
> about the 19th century, or perhaps a novel that takes place in the 19th
> century -- time periods covered by the content itself.
"Aboutness" is a sufficiently subjective concept that it can be
interpreted broadly. For example, anything written in Plato's time can be
considered to be representative of the time and its thought, and thus be
"about" that time.
> Rather than time period of creation or publication or conception, a different
> thing.
Think of the concept as being about the "times" (e.g. writings from the
ancient Roman Empire) rather that the "time" of publication.
> This is the problem with much of our MARC data, fields/subfields that have
> been used to mean entirely different things, with no way to tell how it's
> used in a particular record. This makes the data nearly useless.
Actually, what is presented (the data, e.g. content) is always more
important that its "carrier" (e.g., here, the field in which it is
presented). I don't see the semantic problem you have raised to be any
more significant that the fact that words can have varying meanings (e.g.
"about"). Take advantage of what is available for local catalogs (where
nothing is proscribed by international rules) and run it up OCLC's
flagpole and see who salutes it! Where there is a present need and a
present opportunity, neither should be ignored.
Cheers!
jgm
John G. Marr
Cataloger
CDS, UL
Univ. of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
jmarr_at_unm.edu
jmarr_at_flash.net
**There are only 2 kinds of thinking: "out of the box" and "outside
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Received on Wed Jul 27 2011 - 15:51:01 EDT