Wednesday, May 7, 2003 23:27 CDT Emil, I spent about a half hour searching for anything online that would give you an LC<-->UDC correspondence table. Nichts! I'll try some other sources tomorrow, but I kinda think Richard is right. If anybody out there in Koha-land is a member of the AUTOCAT listserv, this would make an excellent question for the community. Please be aware that ISBN does not guarantee an LC number has been assigned. If a book has an LCCN then its catalogue record has been completed (not all are always retrievable online, for some strange reason). ISBN numbers are allocated by national agencies but not by the CPSO or the Cataloguing divisions of LC. Richard is right in saying there would be cases of multiple mapping. Even looking at LC authority records, you'll see subject auth records with more than one number depending on what discipline is treating the topic under discussion. It would be a large task to convert between the schema, but depending on the size and nature of your collection there might be a way of bridging. Sears Subject Headings give DDC numbers and there are schema/works converting DDC<-->LC. It would depend on the subject terms used and how close they might be to the generalist terms in Sears. What kind of subject headings do you use? Specialised thesaurus?
Many LC subject authority records have a class number. You could search the 1st subject heading in the bib record and check the authority record to see if there is a class number. This assumes the subject headings have been properly done.
But as a test case this would work. You would want to get a listing of the major subject headings in your collection first if you decide to do the whole thing this way. All LC subject authority records should now have a class number or a scope, etc. instruction, that is a reference to a term that will give you a number. As Richard says rightly, it all depends on the SH's.
If they are using full bibliographic records then the LC call number may be in field 050. ...
... or 051. Useable numbers can also be found in 055 tags assigned by Canadian institutions. Depending on the source of the item in hand, you may want to try online copy cataloguing first. Copy from NLC, U of Toronto, and various large consortia/libraries in the U.S. are available through free multiple search tools.
You could copy it from there to 852. That would take care of some of the records.
Try to reduce the number first if you do contract out. To that end, weed the collection beforehand if you can.
There may be services that could do this for a fee. Marcive comes to mind. You could ask them if it is something they could do.
Another source to be well recommended (based on outsourcing research done at a former post) is Special Libraries Cataloguing, URL <http://www.slc.bc.ca> . Mac there would surely be able to help you figure out what would work best for your retrospective work. Hope some of this helps. Cheers, Steven F. Baljkas Koha neophyte eagerly awaiting MARC21 compatability Winnipeg, Manitoba, CANADA