At 11:34 AM 11/30/2007, Bryan Baldus wrote:
>I don't know if it is correct, but for a recent heading, I used:
>
>670 Google book search, Oct. 2, 2007$bEncyclopedia of evangelicalism, p. 648
>(Spencer, Ivan Q(uay), 1888-1970)
I slap my forehead and say "Why didn't I scan for 'GOOGLE' before?"
I found 906 authority records in name authority issues
2007.01-2007.47 that have "GOOGLE" in the 670 somewhere. Of these,
48 are for "Google books" in some form. (In the rant portion of my
message, we'll come back to the others.) Of these, 15 begin the
citation with "Google books" or some variation, generally followed by
identification of the particular title; and 33 begin with a citation
of the individual title, followed by an identification of the mode of
access. So by a margin of about 2 to 1, people seem to fall into the
"source first" pattern.
There is substantial variation among the citations, as you might
expect, although the intent of all is usually clear enough; here are
two reasonably intelligible examples, one of each:
Google first:
670: : |a Google Book Search, via WWW, Feb. 23, 2007: |b Williams,
H. Thomas Hastings, 2005, p. 100 (New York Academy of Sacred Music;
choral soc. for the cultivation of sacred music; est. 1835, in NYC,
by Thomas Hastings, et al.; gave concerts at the Broadway Tabernacle Church)
Source first:
670: : |a One hundred modern Scottish poets, 1895, accessed via
Google books, November 1, 2007 |b (Rev. James Milligan, D.D.; b. in
Ecclefechan; taught in Yorkshire; attended Univ.of Toronto in 1856;
in 1868 returned to the UK and was called to the ministry in
Houghton-le-Spring in Durham)
(In each "Google first" example, the individual title is in subfield
$b rather than $a. I would have thought that this is part of the
"identification of source" rather than the "information found in
source," and therefore $a material. Clearly I'm in the minority
[once again!].)
(If course, there's no way to identify 670s that are based on Google
book searches, that don't bother to say that the thing was viewed
online. So there may actually be a substantial body of other 670s
based on Google book searches not included in the above sample.)
If it's necessary to indicate that an item was viewed via Google
(note the "if"), I would suggest that the "source first" form is more
generally useful--because it is the source itself, not the mode of
access, that's providing the information (same stuff should mostly be
in both the paper and online versions, right?). No need to be sticky
about the precise wording as long as the meaning is clear. The main
thing is to let others know make it clear going on.
********************** Tangential rant follows
Now: What about the 850 or so Google 670s that aren't for Google
books? Well, they are by and large a sad lot: they great Google as
an information source. My own opinion is that Google itself is not a
source of information; it makes it possible for us to find sources of
information. A parallel case would be Readers' guide in the old
days--if we found a relevant bit of information in an article
identified via Readers' guide, we wouldn't say we found the
information in Readers' guide, we'd say we found it in whatever thing
RG had lead us to.
So 670s along these lines (I've removed specific information to
protect the guilty) ...
670: : |a Google web site, Dec. 29, 2006 |b (<information taken from
some particular page found via Google, without reference to the actual page>)
670: : |a Google search, Jan. 5, 2007 |b (<information taken from
some particular page found via Google, without reference to the actual page>)
... I'd say are particularly non-helpful and should be eschewed.
Gary L. Strawn, Authorities Librarian, etc.
Northwestern University Library, 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. BatchCat version: 2006.51.826
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