Thanks, Heather and Joy, for excellent observations. The story with my library
is that the authority database currently is in a bad shape since it has not
been through any vendor or in-house maintenance for years. I am planning to
have a vendor for the authority and bib maintenance next year. After it is
done, I would like to create a local workflow in terms of heading-control.
Karen and Dani showed me $9 as well as Tag Editor in the basic view. I also
learned the authority linker. I am interested in using the linker and retrieve
a list of unlinked headings for in-house maintenance as well as NACO
contribution. Joy's broader-heading option sounds useful for me to consider
utilizing, too.
Thanks for your input! I am looking forward to learning these things and Koha
in general better.
Sincerely,
Kumiko
Kumiko Reichert
Metadata and Cataloging Librarian
Maxwell Library
Bridgewater State University
10 Shaw Road
Bridgewater, MA 02325
kumiko.reich...@bridgew.edu<mailto:kreich...@bridgew.edu>
508-531-2665
From: Joy Nelson <j...@bywatersolutions.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 6, 2017 10:32:09 AM
To: Hernandez, Heather
Cc: Reichert, Kumiko; koha@lists.katipo.co.nz; ByWater Partners
Subject: Re: [ByWater Partners] [Koha] MARC field and heading validation with
Koha
As a side note to Heather's excellent synopsis, I'd like to add something. If
you choose to use the authority/bib linker cronjob you have the option to match
to 'broader headings'. So in the example Heather gave, using the automated
linking to authority records with a 'broader heading' preference you would
match a bib with Women Sailors -- Fiction to the authority record of Women
sailors.
Thanks!
joy
***
this heading in a bib record will validate & link to an authority record (which
one can see with the $9):
650 _ 0 $a Women sailors. $9 17788
But this heading will not validate & link (so lacks the $9), because authority
records are not created with headings with free-floating subdivisions such as
"$v Fiction:"
650 _ 0 ‡aWomen sailors‡vFiction.
On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 9:26 AM, Hernandez, Heather
<heather_hernan...@nps.gov<mailto:heather_hernan...@nps.gov>> wrote:
Hi, Kumiko--
I'm not sure our workflow would be applicable since we're a very specialized
museum library, but maybe you'll get some ideas?
We lacked a lot of authority capabilities in our previous catalog software
(Athena), so our headings were & are pretty messy. I'm in the middle of a
project to clean up the authority file and then the remaining authority
controlled fields in the bib records. So, that said:
I catalog on OCLC (Connexion Client) but am experimenting with creating
original records in Koha with the Advanced Editor. I manually search every
single authority controlled field in the Koha authority file, and download new
authority records from OCLC (or for locally created name, series, etc.,
records, key them very laboriously into Koha since there's no Advanced Editor
for authority records--I so dearly hope one is developed!).
If I have reason to substantially edit a bib record, I'll manually search all
the authority controlled fields that lack a $9 authority record link--I have to
do this manually because our Koha installation doesn't validate any headings
that have subfields that are not present in an authority record--that is, only
authority-controlled bib fields that match every, single subfield in the
authority record will validate & link. So, e.g., in our catalog, this heading
in a bib record will validate & link to an authority record (which one can see
with the $9):
650 _ 0 $a Women sailors. $9 17788
But this heading will not validate & link (so lacks the $9), because authority
records are not created with headings with free-floating subdivisions such as
"$v Fiction:"
650 _ 0 ‡aWomen sailors‡vFiction.
So with us, authority control is still a human function. We thought briefly
about using a vendor for the initial cleanup (I've had this done at previous
jobs & it's worked very well), but we lack the funds for such a project.
One feature that is beautiful is that *if* headings are linked to an authority
record, once the authority record is edited or overlaid with a newer imported
version, the linked headings are pretty instantly changed. Then it's just a
matter of some searching & manual editing to update the headings that aren't
linked because they have, e.g., free-floating subdivisions. Or
typos...sigh...:)
Our catalog is hosted and supported by ByWater & we've chatted a bit about how
we might experiment with some changes that might improve heading linking, but
haven't yet got beyond that--we have yet to upgrade beyond 17.05, so have yet
to implement ElasticSearch which, I imagine, might impact indexing/linking.
Hope t
