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

[Clifford Miller]

e-mails from May 6 to present did not reach me until today. Sorry.

It seems to me OCLC will change its practice
on reconsidering the information you have supplied to us.

SInce 9 months of Gregorian year overlap 9 months of Hebrew year, (approximately)
it seems to me that the date ending with the same final digit in the
(75%) probable date of publication, absent any other information or clues.

Thanks and warm wishes.
Clifford Miller


At 04:17 PM 5/6/2008, you wrote:

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