[Koha-patches] [PATCH] Analytical records support

[Jared Camins-Esakov]

Amit,

[ ... snipped a long patch ...]

I am concerned about the impact of the way you are using subfield 'w' and
subfield 'o'... those subfields may be used by other libraries, which could
lead to incorrect linkages when sharing records. The standard usage for
subfield 'w' is to include the library's MARC Organizational Code in
parentheses to indicate the source. For example "$w(NNAN)12345" indicates
that the record control number is from the American Numismatic Society. To
use subfield 'w' for LCCN, one would use "$w(DLC)##2010000034#". Could I
suggest that rather than assuming every subfield 'w' and subfield 'o'
contains correct and relevant analytic coding that the linking take into
account both biblionumber/001 and 003? So rather than just looking for a
record with biblionumber/001 of '12345' (in my example), we'd need to look
for a record with that in the biblionumber/001 and 'NNAN' in the 003.

One of the nice side effects of this is that one could then easily extend
the analytic support to handle LCCNs, ISBNs, and other standard numbers
stored in 0XX fields in MARC21.

I suspect this probably also applies to UNIMARC... perhaps the subfield '5'
should be taken into account here? I'm a little confused by hdl's follow-up
patch because it seems to equate the contents of the 001 field with the
biblionumber, and I'm pretty sure that there isn't any guaranteed
relationship. Actually, on second thought, this is a problem with the entire
concept. Biblionumber is not a robust identifier, and using it will break,
for example, union catalog situations (this seems to be the case with
BSZ-BW).

Following on the discussion about this currently taking place, perhaps it
would make sense to store the biblionumber in $0 or $9, reserving $w for 001
identifiers, and adjusting import/cataloging to automatically convert robust
$w links to local $0 or $9 links.

Regards,
Jared Camins-Esakov

-- 
Jared Camins-Esakov
Freelance bibliographer, C & P Bibliography Services, LLC
(phone) +1 (917) 727-3445
(e-mail) jcamins at cpbibliography.com
(web) http://www.cpbibliography.com/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: </pipermail/koha-patches/attachments/20101111/dacc3617/attachment.htm>