Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Fellow PCCList and SACOList subscribers,

Here is a message that was extracted from a posting on the SACO Home
Page on September 19, 2007.  The content originated from the Summary of
Decisions from Weekly Editorial Meeting Number 38 and incorporates a few
additional explanatory comments:

CPSO is currently engaged in a project to create large numbers of
authority records for commonly used subject heading strings that
incorporate free-floating subdivisions.  The goal is to have commonly
occurring valid subject strings represented by authority records for
validation purposes within Voyager, and for other libraries that have a
validation component in their Integrated Library System (ILS).    The
records created, called “validation records,” can be identified by
the presence of the 667 field which reads: “Record generated for
validation purposes.”  All validation records appear in the Library of
Congress Data Base and in the LCSH Master file, but they will not appear
in the printed annual edition of LCSH.

If, in the process of submitting a proposal to change an existing
heading or subdivision, an LC cataloger should encounter a validation
record that includes the heading or subdivision being changed, the LC
cataloger should not prepare a proposal to update the validation record.
 Instead, the LC cataloger should attach a note to the proposal alerting
CPSO to the fact that one or more validation records exist that will
need to be changed.

CPSO will update the validation records but those changes will not
appear on the weekly lists.  At this time, we will not be able to accept
proposals for subject validation records through the SACO program.

John

John N. Mitchell
SACO Coordinator
Cooperative Cataloging Team
Library of Congress
101 Independence Avenue, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20540-4382
202.707.5772 (Office phone)
202.252.2082 (Office fax)
[log in to unmask]