subject heading authority control (MARC21)
Dear Colleagues, This is a question about the use of authority records for controlling subject heading fields (6xx) in MARC21. In a standard Koha MARC21 installation the same set of authorities (PERSO_NAME, CORPO_NAME, MEET_NAME, UNIF_TITLE) is set up to control both the form headings (1xx/7xx/8xx) and subject headings (6xx). With this configuration the user, when searching by authorities ("Browse by author or subject" in OPAC or the librarian using "Authorities"), is unable to distinguish: is the heading used as a form heading or subject heading, e.g. when searching, by authorities, for "Shakespeare, William" the user would get both: records in which Shakespeare is used as responsibility and the records about Shakespeare (with Shakespeare in 600). For me and my libraries this is not satisfactory. Is anybody facing the same issue? So, a possible solution is to create a parallel set of authority types (like S_PER_NAME, S_COR_NAME, etc.), which nearly duplicates the number of authority types. This solution, however, has a number of drawbacks: 1) at least AuthoritiesMarc ::GuessAuthTypeCode function has to be modified, 2) drop-down lists with authority types in authority searches become unreasonably long (users suggest there should be only "By author", "By subject", no matter if it is a person, a corporate body or a meeting or whatsoever, and "By title"). This is how I am planning to resolve this, but maybe there is a better idea? Or any comments that would shed some light on this issue? Thank you very much! Best regards, Janusz Kaczmarek -- Library of the Dominican House of Studies Cracow, Poland
Hi Janusz, I would suggest to do it the other way around. Let's the user specify if he wants to search, for example, an authority as author or as a subject. You will problably have to change few things in the indexation and in the authority search page, but you keep the advantage of having a single authority record, which prevent having to update 2 records, which is what an authority records should be used for, right :) Hope that helps, Eric Bégin Solutions inLibro inc. http://www.inLibro.com On 2013-01-23 06:15, januszop@gmail.com wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
This is a question about the use of authority records for controlling subject heading fields (6xx) in MARC21.
In a standard Koha MARC21 installation the same set of authorities (PERSO_NAME, CORPO_NAME, MEET_NAME, UNIF_TITLE) is set up to control both the form headings (1xx/7xx/8xx) and subject headings (6xx). With this configuration the user, when searching by authorities ("Browse by author or subject" in OPAC or the librarian using "Authorities"), is unable to distinguish: is the heading used as a form heading or subject heading, e.g. when searching, by authorities, for "Shakespeare, William" the user would get both: records in which Shakespeare is used as responsibility and the records about Shakespeare (with Shakespeare in 600).
For me and my libraries this is not satisfactory. Is anybody facing the same issue?
So, a possible solution is to create a parallel set of authority types (like S_PER_NAME, S_COR_NAME, etc.), which nearly duplicates the number of authority types. This solution, however, has a number of drawbacks: 1) at least AuthoritiesMarc ::GuessAuthTypeCode function has to be modified, 2) drop-down lists with authority types in authority searches become unreasonably long (users suggest there should be only "By author", "By subject", no matter if it is a person, a corporate body or a meeting or whatsoever, and "By title").
This is how I am planning to resolve this, but maybe there is a better idea? Or any comments that would shed some light on this issue?
Thank you very much!
Best regards,
Janusz Kaczmarek -- Library of the Dominican House of Studies Cracow, Poland
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Eric Bégin -
januszop＠gmail.com