Free-Floater Subdivision Validation (18X)
When a heading is attempting to find a match against Library of Congress (LC) authority records, it is typically the case that the full heading will not find a match. Why is this? It is due to all of the varied possibilities with headings that include free-floating subdivisions.
For instance, the heading 600 10 $a Smith, John might have different subdivisions attached to the end, like so:
600 10 $a Smith, John $v Blogs
600 10 $a Smith, John $v By-laws
600 10 $a Smith, John $v Catalogs
But LC has only authorized the main heading:
n 86851637
100 1_ $a Smith, John
So what we end up with is a very large number of full headings which are only partially matched.
Library of Congress has expressed their intent to link 18X authorities to 15X authorities via the 072 and 073 fields. What codes are present in the 072 / 073 fields that would be of use for 18X validation? These contain a reference to the Subject Cataloging Manual (SCM) reference IDs.
For example, H1095 is the SCM ID that contains valid subdivisions for use with 600 fields in bib records. Those same three examples above blogs, by-laws, and catalogs are all valid for use on a bib’s 600 field.
On June 20, 2011, we looked at all 8,575,658 authorities in our LC master file. From this file, we found only one authority that had a 072 field:
sh2010014519
072 $a H 1149
150 $a Cyclohexylamine
As mining the links between 15X LC authorities and 18X authorities is not a feasible option, we decided to try our hand at another method. Come join us on our listserv to see what we have in store for our clients and validating their free-floating subdivisions.
Tags: Announcements, Authority Control, Authority Records, Enhancements, Partial Matches