Re: [VuFind-Tech] Please comment -- Proposed marc.properties additions

[Demian K. <dem...@vi...>]

As promised, I've just committed the issn/physical/author2-role changes.  I'm leaving the auth_author stuff alone since Andrew confirms that it is not used for anything at this time -- we can revisit when we discuss authority in more detail.  To allow further discussion of the language issue, I have opened a JIRA ticket:

http://www.vufind.org/jira/browse/VUFIND-148

Please feel free to add comments to this if you have an opinion on the best course of action.

thanks,
Demian

From: Demian Katz
Sent: Monday, October 26, 2009 9:50 AM
To: 'Lovins, Daniel'; vuf...@li...
Cc: Arakawa, Steven; Sun, Dajin
Subject: RE: Please comment -- Proposed marc.properties additions

Hello again -- I've looked over these changes more closely and talked to some other people here.  A few notes:

1.) The issn/physical/author2-role additions all seem straightforward and uncontroversial.  I'll commit those on Wednesday if nobody objects before then.

2.) The 041h change seems less clear-cut, since it really depends on how your user community is working with your data.  I'm hesitant to change it without more input.  I've just put in an inquiry with some of our reference team to see if they have an opinion.  Certainly one possible solution would be to create multiple language index fields -- something like language_all (all 041 subfields), language_original (original language) and language_expression (language of current expression) -- and then let users pick which one to turn on in facets.ini.   That seems like overkill for a relatively minor issue, though -- may just be better to leave it to individual institutions to customize their import process appropriately.  I'll give this more time for discussion; if we can't come to an agreement, we can at least put a note above the language line suggesting that 041h might be worth customizing.

3.) It looks to me like we aren't currently using the auth_author or auth_author2 fields for anything.  I assume these are relics of an early and never-coompleted attempt at implementing authority control in VuFind.  I'm not sure if there's any point in changing how these fields are populated if we don't know how they are used yet; in fact, I don't know if there's any reason to keep the fields around.  Is anybody using these in local customizations?  Does anyone know if they serve any current purpose that I'm missing?  For what it's worth, I just noticed that the auth_author2Str field was not being populated at all due to a bad <copyField> entry; I've committed a fix even though I don't know if there's really a point.

- Demian

From: Lovins, Daniel [mailto:dan...@ya...]
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:15 AM
To: Demian Katz; vuf...@li...
Cc: Arakawa, Steven; Sun, Dajin; Lovins, Daniel
Subject: RE: Please comment -- Proposed marc.properties additions

Hi Demian.

I agree with the changes, and would even add some others (see below). I recommend removing 041h from the file, though, since this indicates the original language of a translated text.

-language = 008[35-37]:041a:041d:041h:041j, language_map.properties
+language = 008[35-37]:041a:041d::041j, language_map.properties

When patrons limit by language in VuFind, I believe they expect it to help identify the actual text they're seeking, not a different text which happens to be the original edition in the original language (a.k.a. FRBR first "expression"). Recent feedback at our local implementation seems to confirm this. A long term goal, I guess, would be to map 041h to its own separate Solr field, i.e., "language in which work was initially published" or something like that.

Some other suggested additions to the *revised* file, but let me know if I'm taking this too far.

-  issn = 022a:730x:776x:780x:785x
+issn = 022a:730x:776x:780x:785x:440x:490x

- auth_author = 100abc
+ auth_author = 100 abcdefgklmnopqrtu:110abcdefgklmnopqrtu:111abcdefgklmnopqrtu

- auth_author2 = 700abcd
+ auth_author2 = 700 abcdefgklmnopqrtu:710abcdefgklmnopqrtu: 711abcdefgklmnopqrtu
- author2-role = 700e
+ author2-role = 700e:710e


-physical = 300abce
+physical = 300abcefg

-issn = 022a:730x:776x:780x:785x
+issn = 022a:730x:776x:780x:785x:440x:490x

 Hope this helps.

Daniel




From: Demian Katz [mailto:dem...@vi...]
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 10:09 AM
To: vuf...@li...
Subject: [VuFind-Tech] Please comment -- Proposed marc.properties additions

I've just talked to one of our catalogers, who suggested a few additions to the marc.properties file (see attached patch):

- 041j contains the language of subtitles/captions -- this seems worth adding to the language index.
- 505r contains authors listed in the table of contents -- seems worth adding to author2.
- 130 and 730 both contain multiple subfields that may be relevant in searches -- these have been expanded in the title_alt index.
- 300e (accompanying material) is probably worth adding to the physical index.
- Additional ISSN numbers can sometimes be found in 730x and 776x.

Does anyone object to adding any/all of these adjustments to the trunk?

thanks,
Demian