At 11:29 AM 2/3/00 -0500, you wrote:
>I am confused by the direction this discussion is taking, and I DO
>understand A. Franks's point, which seems to me to be that most (if
>not all?) relevant information can be put into public notes, that is,
>670s and 675s.

The problem being discussed is (is it not?) that 670s and 675s are NOT
public notes, and therefore do not display to the public. (I know that the
MARC authority definition of these fields does not specifically say they
are not public, but I think most systems would not display these fields to
the public, both given their content and given the fact that there is in
fact a note field, 680, which is specifically labelled as a public note.) I
think the point being made is that much (or perhaps only some) information
we are currently putting in these fields (and which thus do not display to
the public) would be useful information for our patrons to see, and
therefore in certain situations it would be nice to have the option of
creating a record using a note field that does display to the public.

Most information does have a source, which can be
>cited--"Info from author's sister, date$b(Jane Blow is widow of Joe
>Blow)"--and doesn't usually arise from the cataloger communing with
>him/herself.  The only truly "private" notes I've run across as a
>Library of Congress cataloger have been on the order of:  "author's
>year of birth  XXXX; do not make this information public until 50
>years after author's death" (I really ran across one like that).  What
>kind of truly "non-public" information are we talking about?
>
>Joan Biella
>Library of Congress
>NOT an official statement
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Robert L. Maxwell
Special Collections and Ancient Languages Cataloger
6430 Harold B. Lee Library
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 378-5568
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