> Has anyone contracted for authority clean-up with a vendor who has
been
> able to handle the above situations correctly?
Ten years ago, NYU contracted with WLN (before it was bought by OCLC
but after it was the authority cleansing unit of BNA) to do processing
based on our authority records (not on the bibs). It was new for them
and new for us, and generally speaking not very effective.
I asked my last contact at WLN/OCLC (Bob Thomas) about the revised art
subject headings and he said that he thought some of the work they'd
done on our records might enable them to do the kind of conflation of
headings that the revised art subject headings entails. I don't know if
Bob Thomas is still with the MARS authority control service which is
now part of Backstage. The means of processing our records would have
precluded doing it for us; that is, you can't do it from the authority
records.
> If so, who?
We are now in the process of migrating from Geac to VTLS. We have
looked at authority control vendors and pretty much settled on LTI. We
looked at their literature, called or emailed some customers of LTI and
Marcive, and then talked with a sales rep at LTI.
> did you
> have to contract for manual review to fix these problems?
LTI says they have a minimal manual review that comes with processing.
We do not plan on contracting for manual review beyond that.
I'm quite distressed at the bad revisions you're getting. It would be
better to just have the old headings. When I was doing some searching
for a presentation on the revised art subject headings a couple years
ago, I found several opacs where they had clearly decided to change the
heading with chronology to the right form and not worry about the
broader heading. That is, they changed "Art, Modern -- 19th century --
France -- Paris" to "Art, French -- France -- Paris -- 19th century"
but kept "Art, French -- France -- Paris." We did some of this at NYU
but I have mostly cleaned up the headings record-by-record.
I have found that LC has mostly fixed their records. For those records
in your database which have LC copy, you might be able to arrange some
replacement of LC's subject headings?? I didn't myself usually go to
check the LC record to see what they'd done; it was easier to do
the "translation" myself.
The translating did however lead me to a bigger question about the
revised subject headings. Maybe I'll bring that question to CPDG in
Banff. Basically, the question is if you put chronology deep in the
subject heading (as the 3rd or 4th subfield or deeper), do you include
multiple headings with different time periods if more than one period?
Or do you just drop chronology?
Good luck. I'll bring you a drink to your muttering corner spot. On the
rocks? Salt?
Sherman Clarke
New York University Libraries
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