The irony here is lovely. The MARC fixed fields for country and language codes and the 043 and 041 were originally designed for automated retrieval at a time when there were if any online catalogs. In the computer environment of the 1960s and 1970s, even the 1980s, retrieval by the codes would have been much faster than any searching by text strings. Evidently, it still is.
Unfortunately, most people did not bother with the 043 field, in particular, because no online system (including OCLC) made use of it. So now we are finding that we shouldn't make use of the 043 because the information is not in online bibliographic records because the online systems could not be bothered to develop a means of retrieving it? I am upset because, among other reasons, I spent a lot of time inputting 043 fields in the hope that they would be useful. The MARC format has enough limitations without folks blaming it for poor implementation by others. Besides, Heidrun's project is gravy. It does not retrieve everything that is relevant, but I have not met a system yet that does. Her work retrieves more, and that is progress. Larry -- Laurence S. Creider Interim Head Archives and Special Collections Dept. University Library New Mexico State University Las Cruces, NM 88003 Work: 575-646-4756 Fax: 575-646-7477 lcrei...@lib.nmsu.edu On Thu, June 7, 2012 11:31 am, Karen Coyle wrote: > On 6/7/12 10:02 AM, Heidrun Wiesenmüller wrote: >> >> The country codes have been there in our authority file for two or >> three decades, but up to now I believe they have never been used for >> actual retrieval. Perhaps something similar could be done with the >> geographical area codes in MARC field 043? > > Definitely, but only if the code is entered into the records. In the > studies done by Moen in 2006,[1] it is shown that the 043 occurs in > about 30% of the records, but that 84% of the 650's have a geographic > subdivision. Those figures can't be directly compared because there can > be more than one 650 in a record. > > What you demonstrate here, though, is something important: coded data > can be more easily utilized for this kind of functionality than textual > data. But we have a "chicken and egg" problem: if coded data is entered > only sporadically, it isn't good for retrieval, and therefore systems > cannot use it; but if systems do not implement features based on coded > data then one can argue that there is no use inputting the data since it > isn't used. We need to break that cycle, but without giving users bad > retrievals for a time before input practices change. > > kc > [1] http://www.mcdu.unt.edu/?p=43 > >> >> Heidrun >> >> >> >> -- >> --------------------- >> Prof. Heidrun Wiesenmueller M.A. >> Stuttgart Media University >> Faculty of Information and Communication >> Wolframstrasse 32, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany >> www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi > > -- > Karen Coyle > kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net > ph: 1-510-540-7596 > m: 1-510-435-8234 > skype: kcoylenet > >
