> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: 26 July, 2004 13:58 > Subject: Re: Filing-rules sort subroutine for authors' names? > > Definitely possible--library automation systems and card > printing systems do it. > > I'm not fully conversant with the rules myself, but can tell > you that it's a lot more work than a regex plus a string > compare. (I'm thinking of sorting titles here, actually.) > Handling diacritics, sorting "10" after "9", etc. adds up to > a decent amount of work. It's worth your while to determine > whether you have to implement the rules 100% or have some wiggle room. > >>From: Ben Ostrowsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED] >>Subject: Filing-rules sort subroutine for authors' names?
>> >> Just a sanity check: is it really possible to create a Perl >> subroutine that >> >> would compare two authors being sorted and enforce the ALA >> filing rules? I >> Don't confuse ALA filing rules with NACO normalization rules. If you are trying to compare two author names you should use the NACO normalization rules [1]. If you are trying to sort the headings into order then use the filing rules [2]. You can probably write a simple Perl routine to do the NACO normalization rules. The filing rules are much more complex, since you need to take into account numbers, e.g. 9 vs. 999, as well as Roman numerals, dates in a variety of formats, including spans, and articles in various foreign languages. So it's a lot more complex to do ALA filing rules correctly. IMHO, it's almost impossible to do ALA filing by computer, due to the rules, and having tried this for several concordances between LCSH and Dewey. My last attempt was for the publication People, Places & Things [3] where the Editors only found four headings that were miss-filed out of 60,000. And this was a small subset of LCSH. With a lot of work you can get it mostly correct... Andy. [1] http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/naco/normrule.html [2] "ALA Filing Rules", Americal Library Association (ALA), (c) 1980, ISBN: 0-8389-3255-X [3] "People, Places & Things", OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., (c) 2001, ISBN: 0-910608-69-5 Andrew Houghton, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. http://www.oclc.org/about/ http://www.oclc.org/research/staff/houghton.htm
