Patricia, Is your Ex-Libris catalog Voyager or Aleph? We have Voyager, which allows you to generate punctuation between subfields. If it is Voyager, I can point you to instructions on generating punctuation. If it is Aleph, I leave it to other Aleph users.
Elizabeth O'Keefe Elizabeth O'Keefe Director of Collection Information Systems The Morgan Library & Museum 225 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016-3405 TEL: 212 590-0380 FAX: 212-768-5680 NET: eoke...@themorgan.org Visit CORSAIR, the Library’s comprehensive collections catalog, now on the web at http://corsair.themorgan.org >>> "FOGLER, PATRICIA A GS-11 USAF AETC AUL/LTSC" <patricia.fog...@us.af.mil> 2/22/2013 9:01 AM >>> I am trying to make a local decision on the 502 for our catalog in preparation for RDA training. I remember some discussions on this topic a month and 2 ago & am hoping to hear that someone has come up with a good solution since. We would like to start coding the 502 subfields, but as best we can tell, our catalog, Ex Libris, is not able to generate punctuation that is not in the catalog record. Our public services librarians would very much like to retain as close to our current standard thesis note as possible. I understand (or assume at least there is) the assumption that systems will eventually be able to add the desired punctuation to this note. But what I do not understand about the RDA admonition to remove punctuation from the 502 in particular, is how local systems are handling this currently. Under AACR2, a sample free text 502 reads: ‡a Thesis (M. of Military Art and Science (General Studies))--U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2012. Which of course generates this display: Thesis (M. of Military Art and Science (General Studies))--U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2012. The closest we can get to this, with RDA coding is: ‡b M. of Military Art and Science ‡g General Studies ‡c U.S. Army Command and General Staff College ‡d 2012. With a helpful system-generated label, we get: Dissertation Note: Master of Military Art and Science General Studies U.S. Army Command and General Staff College 2012. Are other libraries just accepting this? Continuing with the |a free text field & full punctuation? Adding punctuation to the subfields? Is there some other option I've not though of? It seems a shame not to start coding this field for our local theses especially as we start working with RDA, but I'm not liking the options I feel I have here to bring to my colleagues. I'd be interested in what other libraries that catalog a lot of dissertations are doing with their 502s. Thanks. //SIGNED// Patricia Fogler Chief, Cataloging Section (AUL/LTSC) Muir S. Fairchild Research Information Center DSN 493-2135 Comm (334) 953-2135
