Quoting Karen Coyle <li...@kcoyle.net>:
Quoting "J. McRee Elrod" <m...@slc.bc.ca>:
-- give me a list of all of the books published in London from 1853-1857
-- show me which publishers are prominent in this subject area
Using the present SLC OPAC, and Boolean searching, we could answer
those questions. Most present ILSs are very blunt instruments.
It helps to have "London, Eng." or "London [Eng.] in 260$a as we do.
With RDA we won't even have "London, Ont." in the record if not on the
item. It is not that complicated to use the "contains" search of
260$b for publisher surnames.
I'm afraid you are proving my point. You don't know which books were
published in which city, you only know which books were published in
a transcribed city name. Ditto for publishers. The transcribed names
and the entities are different things. You might be able to produce
an answer, but it will be highly inaccurate because you are using
uncontrolled, transcribed things. It's a free text search, not a use
of data.
Indeed. However, as a matter of fact, country (or state) of
publication is designated by MARC code in 008; that can be combined
with "London" in 260 $a.
I agree of course that publisher's name in transcribed form (which, as
Deborah Fritz points out, is essential for recognition and record
matching by human agency) is poor for matching. But isn't it however
possible to detect which are the significant names -- Longman(s),
Macmillan, and a range of others would surely figure -- and create a
frequency table? It doesn't help that they have historically been
recorded differently, but the surnames of the principals in the firms
are there, and there you go.
ILSs I've worked with can be set up to create search limits by place
of publication (as in 260 $a) and country (as in 008). Publisher
keyword might not be easy. But the procxess can be begun.
As for publisher identifiers (preferred name as an ID, an authority
form), if we are to apply the same standards as for other areas of
name authority work, cataloguers will go mad. Before modern brand
identification attitudes came into publishing, one can't tell whether
a variant form of name means a change of corporate body or simply a
variant created by having a different person design the title page
layout.
Hal Cain
Melbourne, Australia
hec...@dml.vic.edu.au
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