Well, it's not merely a matter of not believing, if what David was saying was that catalogers will need to (and should) assume that no subfield b = (name not given). Gary Strawn's been a cataloger long enough to know that NAR's created during the recon era of the mid-1980's don't have |b information as a matter of course (these are the "n 50--" series of records). Certain of the British Library's contributions in the mid-90's, with electronic input by LC, lack |b information, I suppose because LC didn't receive anything but the heading and the title of an item. So to say that one should take as an article of faith that the absence of |b in a 670 can be reliably presumed to mean the name didn't appear in the work cat 1) flies in the face of history, and 2) discounts what happens in the near future, when the folks seasoned enough to know the history of the authority file will be retired. Without knowing this history, one can (and almost certainly will) make unwarranted assumptions about an authority record. Just curious--has someone published an article or section of a book that details the history of the machine-readable authority file? Mark Scharff, Music Cataloger Gaylord Music Library Washington University in St. Louis [log in to unmask] > -----Original Message----- > From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On > Behalf Of David M Saah > Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 2:07 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] DCM Z1 undeleted sentence in CDT > > You've gotta believe! > > >>> [log in to unmask] 03/04/06 10:17 AM >>> > At 09:02 AM 3/4/2006, David M Saah wrote: > >The first part is correct. We are just omitting the 'b' subfield for the > >resource we are cataloging from. > > So, just to be clear: If the name doesn't appear in the item for which the > heading was created, there will be no subfield $b, right? Meaning that > there will be no way to tell whether the name doesn't appear in the item, > or the 670 is simply deficient? > > > 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.