The discussion from January is still valid. The fundamental question is what is the intended use of the former heading information.
If it is for the information of cataloguers/authority control staff in following through on changes to headings, particularly those changes that cannot be handled by machine flipping (because decisions must be made to distinguish between two or more entities that used to have the same heading), then a note such as 683 with subfield d for date of change is probably satisfactory (although very occasionally the change consists of a tagging change only, which would not be apparent). (But 688 could probably be enhanced to cover the same data.)
If it is to extend machine updating to situations where the change is 1-1 but the former heading is not suitable as a public reference (examples of correction of typo, closing of person's dates, normalize to same form), then a 4xx with appropriate subfield w value (but if this option why not w/2, Earlier form of heading, which already has codes for former heading?) is required. This would require systems to have a staff/machine processing index with all references, and a filtered (or second index) for public view that did not contain the inappropriate former headings. Some of the examples in the DP (adding a date or qualifier to resolve a conflict) would never be candidates for machine updating as the machine cannot decide which new heading is appropriate. Using the 4xx option to record former headings for these sorts of former headings would require yet another value in subfield w to indicate that machine processing of the update is not possible. (We discussed something of this sort, but for the leader and 7xx, in the context of FAST, in 2002-13).
Pat
Pat Riva
Romance Languages Cataloguer/Bibliographic Database Specialist
McGill University Libraries
3459 McTavish
Montreal, Quebec H3A 1Y1
514-398-4790
fax: 514 398-8919
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