MARS Authority Control

We’re excited to announce that the 300 field validation that we’ve been working on is now in place and working.  We add this to the hundreds of other corrections and validations that we make to bibliographic records as we process them. Judy, one of our Project Managers, explains the new process:

In an effort to continue improving our bibliographic validation services, we’ve been writing some cleanup steps for the 300 field.  Nothing drastic of course — just some “straightening out” changes.  The cleanup takes place only on records marked with ‘a’ in leader byte 6 … non-print bibs such as media, electronic resources, microforms, etc. are left as-is.  Here’s a list of what the programming will do:

• * 300 $a = ‘unp.’ [or] ‘n.p.’ is changed to ‘1 v. (unpaged)’
• 300 $a = a comma is added to #### page numbers if missing (ex.: 5332 p. becomes 5,332 p.)
• 300 $a = ‘l.’ is changed to ‘leaves’
• 300 $a = ‘approx.’ is changed to ‘ca.’
• 300 $a = preliminary leaves and it’s abbreviation (p.l.) are removed (ex.: 4 p.l., xv, 312 p. = xv, 312 p.)
• 300 $a = ‘unnumbered’ is removed and brackets added (ex.: 48 unnumbered leaves = [48] leaves)
• If the p. is up against the :$b or the illustrative matter is up against the ;$c we add a space to separate
• 300 $a = Missing periods are added to ‘p’ (ex.: 135p. = 135 p. )
• 300 $b = The illustrative matter is rearranged to be in correct order
• 300 $b = Obsolete illustrative matter is replaced with ‘ill.’ (ex.: ‘tables’ or “fronts.’ = ‘ill.’)
• 300 $b = If ‘ill.’ is followed by the parenthetical illustrative matter, ‘ill.’ is dropped and the parenthetical matter remains (example: $bill. (ports.) = $bports.)
• 300 $b = illus. is changed to ill.
• Adds missing semicolon before $c
• Adds ;$ccm. if missing from 300 field
• [various pagings] = changes brackets to parentheses
• If there is no 300 and the record is a book, the default of $ap. ;$ccm. is added
• If there is numbered plate info in the $b that is moved to the $a – if plate designation is not numbered, it’s deleted

As with any of validation rules, these are optional, and if necessary, we can work with you to develop exactly what you’d like. These rules are now being included by default in our processing. We hope you find them useful!

Tags: Announcements, Bibliographic Records, Enhancements

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 8:50 am and is filed under Automated Authority Control, Bibliographic Records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.