Thanks to Ed for putting forward this idea. Frankly, anything that kills 
the 683 idea dead is good with me, for the reasons that others more 
experienced in this area put forward prior to Midwinter. Ed's idea has 
many merits, and would certainly facilitate the machine processing of 
such changes (here in Cambridge we're using the software Gary Strawn 
briefly described in one of his earlier contributions on this topic).

I'm not sure yet that splitting former hdgs between 4XX and this 
proposed 886-like field is either necessary or desirable, and I hope the 
new DP will include that in its consideration. Sherman has suggested one 
rationale for such a distinction already.

The 87X fields predate my exposure to USMARC. And UKMARC never had a 
published authorities format, let alone any to facilitate the flipping 
of AACR hdgs to AACR2 style, so I can't comment on Ed's suggestion in 
this area.

Since the minutes aren't out yet and I wasn't able to be at Midwinter, 
can I ask who's actually going to write this revised DP? The original 
paper carried the names of the PCC and the Task Group on the Function of 
the Authority File (although a couple of people who served on the latter 
  said that weren't aware that the TG had had any input into the 
drafting of the paper when I asked around). Is someone able to confirm 
that the list of authors of the revised version will include at least 
one person with solid practical experience in the application of 
software-driven authority control.

Regards,

Hugh
--
Hugh Taylor
Head, Collection Development and Description
Cambridge University Library
West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DR, England

email: [log in to unmask]   fax: +44 (0)1223 333160
phone: +44 (0)1223 333069 (with voicemail) or
phone: +44 (0)1223 333000 (ask for pager 036)

Ed Glazier said - in whole or part - on 16/03/2006 18:33:
> There has been some discussion in the past few days on the NACO Music
> Project listserv about the impact of adding death dates to existing
> headings and the fact that cross-references from the old form (without the
> death dates) are not currently allowed in NACO records.
> 
> MARC Discussion paper 2006-04 discussed a couple of ways to include this
> information in authority records.  One was in 4XX fields, with newly
> defined $w values.  The other was in a note field, e.g. 683, which would
> contain the former heading.  The outcome of the MARBI discussions at ALA
> Midwinter was "A new discussion paper will be written that explores various
> options."
> 
> I would like to suggest possible components of other options.   They do not
> answer all of the issues raised at MARBI and would definitely require
> system changes to implement, but probably any solution to the problem would
> require implementation changes.
> 
> The first option I'm suggesting is a new variable field in authorities
> modeled on the 886, Foreign MARC Information Field in the Bibliographic
> Format.   Such a field could have a separate tag identifying it as "Former
> heading linking field" and it would be understood that this would contain
> the tag and all content-designation of the original 1XX field that is being
> cancelled.  With a few additions, the content-designation of the 886 field
> (see below) would allow the original tag, indicators, and subfields to be
> record here, rather than just the text without the content-designation,
> which is one of the flaws of the suggested 683 field.   Only one tag would
> have to be used for this purpose.  An additional subfields appearing prior
> to the subfields representing the heading could be defined for date and
> textual information (e.g., put it all in subfield i) and/or subfield w
> values relevant only to this field could be defined.
> First Indicator
> Type of field
> 0   Leader
> 1   Variable control fields (002-009)
> 2   Variable data fields (010-999)
> Second Indicator
> Undefined
> #   Undefined
> Subfield Codes
> $a   Tag of the foreign MARC field (NR)
> $b   Content of the foreign MARC field (NR)
> $2   Source of data (NR)
> $a-z   Foreign MARC subfield (R)
> $0-9   Foreign MARC subfield (R)
> 
> 
> Obviously, this is not a completely developed option, but I wanted to
> suggest this as another way of approaching the issue - one that could allow
> machine-manipulation of the data but could also allow for suppression of
> indexing and display, if desired, because it would have a separate tag.
> 
> Another possibility would be to use something like the 87X fields that were
> defined in the USMARC Bibliographic format to facilitate the flipping of
> headings from AACR to AACR2.   These contained a link to the field in the
> bibliographic record that was to be replaced with the data in the 87X
> field.   Variant name field tags were defined for personal names (870)
> corporate names (871), conference or meeting names (872), and uniform
> titles (873).  If you have old USMARC Bibliographic format data, you could
> look this up.
> 
> Ed Glazier
> Principal  Analyst
> RLG
> 2029 Stierlin Court
> Suite 100
> Mountain View, CA 94043-4684
> [log in to unmask]
> (650) 691-2261; fax (650) 964-0943