Dear all,

I guess I am naive. I thought we could go to OCLC and give them the ISBN and then buy their records for that item, with LC number mandatory.

Why would that not work?

Emil Levine
Library and Information Science Consultant
Breitenfurter Strasse 426/3
Vienna, Austria
UNIDO 43-1-26060-3568

-----Original Message-----
From: baljkas@mb.sympatico.ca [mailto:baljkas@mb.sympatico.ca]
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 6:51 AM
To: LEVINE, Emil; Bigwood@lpi.usra.edu; koha@lists.katipo.co.nz;
richard@katipo.co.nz
Cc: MAYER, Elisabeth; baljkas@mb.sympatico.ca
Subject: RE: [Koha] UDC vs LCSH schemes

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

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