At 09:37 AM 3/6/2006, David W Reser wrote:
>Although Ana is out of town for a few days for me to confirm, it was my
>understanding (from CPSO's perspective) that the removal of the "name not
>given" information from the two different places in the 670 section of DCM
>Z1 was for two reasons:
>1) eliminate a requirement to provide a 670 citation to the "work cat."
>when that work had no information to cite regarding the heading (i.e.,
>seen as extra work that is unwarranted), assuming that another source
>would be cited to support the heading/references; and
>2) eliminate the frequent questions about why a citation that contained no
>information was coded as a 670 and not a 675.

"Assuming that another source would be cited to support the
heading/references": So if the item provides no information about a person
we might search references sources; and thus our only 670 might well be the
670 for that reference source. A reference source might well be the OCLC
database, or some other database.

As it happens, we're recently seeing a number of records that have a 670
citing the LC database, with no 670 for any particular item. Such records
appear to be created for headings discovered in the LC database and not for
items currently being cataloged, so their structure isn't a direct result
of this recent change. Nevertheless, they provide an illustration of what
records created as a result of this change might look like. Here's a
typical example:

          001 n 2006010746
          010: : |a n 2006010746
          040: : |a DLC |b eng |c DLC
          100:1 : |a Lawrence, Philip
          670: : |a LC database, Feb. 13, 2006 |b (hdg.: Lawrence, Philip;
usage: Philip Lawrence)

If one has a question about items that might need this heading or a similar
heading, the authority record isn't worth much. We're forced first to
revisit the reference source (in this particular case, the LC catalog) for
more information. Requiring a citation of the item for which the heading
is established (when there is an item) is one way to put some utility into
such an authority record. (There's also a way to make authority records
created for headings discovered in a database more useful, without citing
an item being cataloged, but that's a matter for another time.)

Dropping the 670 to avoid "frequent questions" seems to me only to open up
a avenues for different but far more frequent questions. Isn't the rule
"Always cite the item for which the heading was established in the first
670 field" simple enough?


Gary L. Strawn, Authorities Librarian, etc.
Northwestern University, 1970 Campus Drive, Evanston IL 60208-2300
e-mail: [log in to unmask] voice: 847/491-2788 fax: 847/491-8306
Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.