Heidi Lerner
Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:06:00 -0800
Heidi G. Lerner Hebraica/Judaica Cataloger Catalog Dept. Stanford University Libraries Stanford, CA 94305-6004 ph: 650-725-9953 fax: 650-725-1120 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: CPSO Account To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 11:05 AM Subject: [PCCLIST] Recent and pending NACO cleanup projects Dear PCC colleagues, We'd like to update you on a few projects that have had, or will have, an impact on the NACO authority file. Completed cleanup projects: Last fall we issued announcements notifying NACO catalogers to begin using several new MARC characters, including the degree sign and the musical sharp. We also indicated that OCLC was considering automated means to convert earlier records that used substitutes for the degree sign and musical sharp. We're very pleased to announce that Robert Bremer of OCLC has just completed a project to convert existing NACO records that contained a superscript zero where a degree sign was intended, and to convert pound signs into musical sharps, where appropriate. Pound sign --> Musical sharp Robert reports that this conversion resulted in 538 changed authority records. Robert has also produced a list of the LCCNs of the NACO records where any 1XX, 4XX, or 5XX field was changed when converting to a musical sharp. Anyone interested in the list can contact Dave Reser via email to receive a copy of the list ([EMAIL PROTECTED] ). Superscript zero --> Degree sign Robert changed 45,433 authority records as part of this conversion-- the vast majority were for geographic coordinates in 670 citations on geographic name heading records. He also manually converted a few records where the change impacted the 1XX, 4XX, or 5XX (e.g., the musical group 98 degrees (LCCN no 99025097)). ***Because the conversion project has completed, it is now even more important to be using the new characters instead of the old substitutions-- we continue to receive several records a week with the incorrect characters.*** Additional cleanup projects in the planning stage: Robert is also nearing production on two additional clean-up projects of the NACO file. The first is a project to add 043 and 781 fields (or 667 SUBJECT USAGE information) to geographic name authority records. This is a continuation of a project Robert ran two years ago that added such fields to about 80,000 name authority records. The continuation project will primarily impact newer geographic name authority records created without such fields since 2006. The second project concerns the removal of unnecessary ending punctuation found in 1XX headings on older name authority records (generally impacts records created before a policy change in 1989 to exclude such punctuation). While many of these older records will have had ending punctuation removed as they were updated during the last 20 years, a number of records remain to be fixed-- these records have presented vexing challenges to local systems and authority control vendors for many years and have been the source of many complaints, so it will be great to have them corrected. While some of the changes will be formulaic and handled quickly, others will require manual review at OCLC to confirm whether the removal of ending punctuation is appropriate. We believe these enhancements greatly improve the automated use of the valuable authority data generated by PCC participants, and send our thanks to OCLC for taking on these improvements. Thanks, Dave Reser LC CPSO