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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.