I think the point of the discussion about inputting SACO proposals through
OCLC, was that folks are already used to creating and submitting name
authorities in the utilities, and there is a mechanism to send these to
Coop. Cat. staff for review before they are added to the NAF.
The idea was that some folks would like to employ a similar mechanism to
key in subject proposals through OCLC and then submit them to LC to go
through the editorial process. I think this has several advantages,
particular on the LC end:
1) the proposal will already be in an electronic form that can be easily
exported into LC's online system, which will save rekeying
2) Coop. Cat. staff reviewing the proposals before sending on to editorial
review in CPSO will be able to easily make changes to the proposal once it
has been exported to the LC system
3) if there are significant problems with a proposal, Coop. Cat. staff
could return the record to the library that proposed it with comments on
it and the library could then redo or modify the proposal and resubmit it
4) it would allow for automatic generation of subject authority records
from bibliographic records via the kind of macro now used for
names. (Obviously much more editing and additional information would
usually be necessary on the subject authority records, but a macro would
save some rekeying of author, title information at least and could
generate some types of references as well.)
I'm sure there are other benefits I haven't thought of yet.
I don't think any of us envisioned creating subject authorities through a
utility that went directly into the authority file without editorial
review. LC would retain review and final validation and distribution of
all subject authorities. In other words, while there would be a "submit"
function that would work for subject authorities, the "add" and
"lock/replace" functions that are used for names would not be possible for
subjects.
I think whatever steps we can take to streamline the SACO submission
process so that more libraries feel that it is worthwhile to do are good
things to do. We wouldn't want to mandate submission through a utility
(or through a Web form even), but I would like to see this as one option.
**************************************
* Adam L. Schiff *
* Principal Cataloger *
* University of Washington Libraries *
* Box 352900 *
* Seattle, WA 98195-2900 *
* (206) 543-8409 *
* (206) 685-8782 fax *
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