Re: [IUG] Cataloging for Encore

[Elizabeth Thomsen <et at noblenet dot org>]

Stephen raises some good and interesting questions.

I think  "All-terrain cycling" vs. "Mountain biking" is just one example 
of LC Subject Headings that use arcane or academic or otherwise 
unfriendly terminology.  ("Cookery" would be my top choice.)

Having "mountain biking" as a see reference doesn't help people using 
keyword, and on the issue of whether people are planning to analyze all 
subject see references for use as tags, that could be done, but there 
are probably a relatively small number of headings that are known to 
cause search problems for the public.  Being able to stick "mountain 
biking" in all the records with the subject heading "all-terrain 
cycling" is a band-aid approach to the problem, but at least it's some 
attempt to fix an immediate and ongoing access problem.

Another approach would be to use something like the III keyword synonym 
function, which lets us merge the keyword index for pairs of words, for 
Hanukkah = Chanukah.  But this only handles single words, so we can't 
relate a word to a phrase (rainforest and rain forest) or two phrases. 
And the user can't see what terms have actually been searched, which can 
result in confusion.

We would like to handle this sort of problem with a search filter 
approach, so we could maintain a list of terms we want to make search 
equivalents.  The user should be able to see what terms were added to 
the search, and turn the "use related terms" option off if they want. 
That way, we wouldn't be using tagging and trying to edit every record 
to include these tags.

Wynn, Stephen wrote:
> Why do you prefer an Encore tag to an uncontrolled MARC tag?
>
> Since "Mountain biking" is a SEE reference in the authority record for
> "All-terrain cycling," why do you need to add it as an Encore tag?
>
> Do you plan to review all of your authority records for SEE references
> that could be usefully added as Encore tags?
>
> Have you considered any automated methods of adding SEE references as
> Encore tags, in order to avoid the tedious and redundant manual work
> that Encore reps advocate?

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Elizabeth Thomsen, Member Services Manager
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