RE: Initial articles in foreign languages

["Stephen McLaughlin" <sMcLaughlin at sfpl dot org>]

Thanks for the correction, Mary! Your last paragraph leads me to wonder
if I should run a report looking for 245 second indicators that are
different from the Innovative skip value. I'll have to tinker with
that....

Steve
San Francisco Public Library


-----Original Message-----
From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org
[mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org] On Behalf Of Strouse, Mary
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 12:22 PM
To: IUG INNOPAC List
Subject: RE: Initial articles in foreign languages

Steve,

This is exactly right, except that what you are calling the "skip"
feature is officially the OPAC Option called "characters removed from
beginning of user typed search", not to be confused with the skip
fixed-length field in the Innopac codes area of each bib record.  Also,
the OPAC option applies only to title phrase searches (searches of the
title index).  

In the keyword search context, the result is the same but has a
different cause.  Each library signs off on a keyword stopword list as
part of the advance keyword profiling, and that list includes the major
English articles. This can be defeated in a keyword search by enclosing
"the" in quotation marks.  See manual at #101148. 

What I don't know, and it'd be a question for the OPAC product manager,
is if a signal such as quotation marks could be set up for title index
searches to override initial article-dropping. This would be most useful
in the case of articles in one language that aren't articles in a
different one.  It would require a bit of sophistication on the part of
the user, but at least we'd give them a mechanism.  Leaving practicality
aside for now, would this be useful?

The 245 second indicator does not act on indexing directly.  It is
copied to the III "skip" field during record loading.  But after the
fact, changing the 245 does not automatically update the skip field nor
does it change the indexing.  Manually changing the skip field and
saving the record does change the indexing. 

Mary

Mary M. Strouse
Head of Technical Services
Judge Kathryn J. DuFour Law Library
The Catholic University of America
Washington, DC
(202) 319-5547   strouse at law dot cua dot edu
http://law.cua.edu/library/