[Koha] subject heading authority control (MARC21)

[Eric Bégin]

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 at 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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