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hi,

fyi, the proposal that initiated the more radical proposal from CPSO
was from the Music Library Association, Bibliographic Control Committee,
Authorities Sub-Committee. the original proposal was simply
to allow NACO libraries to add brief death date information to
680 (Public General Note) [or to 678--Biographical or Historical
data--it is not clear whether 678 is public or not].
the intention was to allow for the display of information about a person
dying, even though the heading itself may not have a closing
death date. the hope was that such a public note would eliminate
some of the problems associated with the open dates--letting
the public know that we know that bob hope died even though
the heading has an open date. that hope may be naieve because
of the lack of including authority records in keyword indexes
in most (or all?) systems.

i still haven't formulated an opinion about cpso's radical
proposal to allow for the change of existing headings
by adding dates at will. although we are about to enter
the high tech land of frbr, etc., i just don't see how
it's going to be possible to synchronize thousands (maybe
tens of thousands) of library catalogs. maybe that
argues in favor of the radical proposal--since library
catalogs are already un-ynchronized, what would be
the harm of changing headings willy-nilly by adding dates?

--ralph p.


A. Ralph Papakhian, Indiana University Music Library
Bloomington, IN 47405 812/855-2970 [log in to unmask]
co-owner: [log in to unmask]