260$c and Type of date (008/06)

[Joan C Biella]

Friends,

Here is a piece, or two pieces, of information which may interest you--or they 
may make you tear your hair and shriek "Is there no justice?!"  In spite of 
this risk, I think you should know.

I received a query about how to code the fixed field for "Type of date" 
(008/06) when the 260$c has a year of the Jewish calendar followed by the two 
equivalent Gregorian years in brackets--e.g.,

$c 744 [1983 or 1984]

Which is right for the fixed field, (1) "q" (questionable date) followed by the 
two possible Gregorian years in the Date1 and Date2 fixed fields, or (2) "s" 
(single date) followed by the earlier Gregorian date in the Date1 field?

As you know, LC follows practice (2), putting "s" in the 008/06 and, in the 
above example, "1983" in the 008/07-10.  But many other libraries follow 
practice (1) and use "q."

I inquired into this problem, and found the justification for LC's practice in 
the discussion of the code "s" at
http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd008a.html 
or
http://www.itsmarc.com/crs/Bib0466.htm 

But I also learned that OCLC documentation, using the same "744" example, says 
to code it "q" (questionable date).  Why OCLC chooses to do this I don't know, 
but it sure explains why a lot of these are coded "q" in the OCLC database!  

Joan