J. McRee Elrod wrote:
>
>
> Our customers prefer the 440/8XX approach, since all their ILS's can
> handle that, they sometimes do not have the master record for the 7XX
> linking fields to link to, as well as many ILS's making a mess of
> using them.
>
>
I know that this is a common reason for choosing a particular coding,
but it is a sad one as well. If we have to limit ourselves to what our
vendor systems can do, then we really haven't much of a way to move
forward into new kinds of data. I remember the work we had to do in the
80's to "fix" MARC records that had been originally used for card
production. In order to get certain data into certain areas of the
cards, libraries would use the field that put the data in the(ir) right
place, rather than use the "correct" field. This created huge messes for
future use of the records. Once again, we are foiled by our lack of
flexibility.
kc
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
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ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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