[DCRM-L] FW: early printed books : yikes

[Deborah J. Leslie]

Let me add my thanks for bringing this up. In my fantasy world, significant algorithms OCLC uses to "update" descriptive cataloging data would be shared in advance with important stakeholders, to help prevent mistakes like this one. At least they can be fixed after the fact.

Deborah J. Leslie | Folger Shakespeare Library | djleslie at folger.edu |

From: DCRM-L [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Matthew C. Haugen
Sent: Friday, 23 February, 2018 10:21
To: DCRM Users' Group
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] FW: early printed books : yikes

Thanks for sharing this! It reminds me of a similar phenomenon I noticed a couple years ago and reported to OCLC Quality Control.

It appears OCLC went about converting Latin abbrevations [s.l.], [s.n.], and [n.d.] to the RDA phrases such as "place of publication not identified," but in some cases, other initialisms in place or publisher names containing S. L., S. N., or N. D also got swept up in the change:

#71309469
Lemberg : ǂb Druck des S. L. Flecker, ǂc 1862.
Lemberg : ǂb Druck des Place of publication not identified Flecker, ǂc 1862.

#874816261
New York ; ǂa Oxford : ǂb Oxford University Press for the U.N.D.P, ǂc 1992.
New York ; ǂa Oxford : ǂb Oxford University Press for the U.date of publication not identifiedP, ǂc 1992.

#874495167
Karnal : ǂb N.D.R.I., ǂc 1972.
Karnal : ǂb Date of publication not identifiedR.I., ǂc 1972.

#2252304
Bismarck, N.D. : ǂb Dept. of Agriculture.
Bismarck, date of publication not identified : ǂb Dept. of Agriculture.

It appears OCLC QC has taken action to fix these and other instances not long after I reported them, and I don't know how widespread the problem was to begin with. But keep an eye out in case any have slipped through OCLC's algorithms or into your local institutions' catalogs.

Matt


On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 3:32 PM, Andrews, Susan <susan.andrews at ubc.ca<mailto:susan.andrews at ubc.ca>> wrote:


From: Deborah J. Leslie [mailto:DJLeslie at FOLGER.edu<mailto:DJLeslie at FOLGER.edu>]
Sent: February-05-18 7:14 AM
Dear

Subject: FW: early printed books : yikes

Dear Rare Book people,
First of all my apologies for the delay in passing this on to you. I was away on vacation, then got inundated with urgent cataloguing issues to deal with when I got back.

I started to think this e-mail thread was too stale to pass on, but you can always delete something you already know all about!
Many if you will be on the OCLC-CAT listserv, so this will be old news.
For others, you might want to read the following, and to check samples of your records in OCLC to see if they got affected.

Best wishes, Sue.


*******************************************
Sue Andrews
Principal Cataloguer
University of British Columbia Library
2198 Health Sciences Mall, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z3<https://maps.google.com/?q=2198+Health+Sciences+Mall,+Vancouver+BC+V6T+1Z3&entry=gmail&source=g>
Tel. 604-822-4995<tel:(604)%20822-4995>  Email: susan.andrews at ubc.ca<mailto:susan.andrews at ubc.ca>



From: OCLC-Cataloging [mailto:OCLC-CAT at OCLCLISTS.ORG] On Behalf Of Bremer,Robert
Sent: January-30-18 1:58 PM
To: OCLC-CAT at OCLCLISTS.ORG<mailto:OCLC-CAT at OCLCLISTS.ORG>
Subject: Re: [OCLC-CAT] early printed books : yikes

Hello,

Thank you for letting us know about this issue.  We will work on getting the needed adjustments made to all the affected bibliographic records.

Robert Bremer
Senior Consulting Database Specialist
OCLC Metadata Quality

From: OCLC-Cataloging [mailto:OCLC-CAT at OCLCLISTS.ORG] On Behalf Of Andrews, Susan
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 3:30 PM
To: OCLC-CAT <OCLC-CAT at oclclists.org<mailto:OCLC-CAT at oclclists.org>>
Subject: [OCLC-CAT] early printed books : yikes


Hi folks,

First of all:  sorry if this has been mentioned on this List already!!

I just wanted to alert you (and hopefully some programmer for OCLC!) to a problem I discovered yesterday when cataloguing an early printed book.

I always get excited when I have a book with numbered columns (instead of pages or leaves) because I get to apply that lovely collation rule that talks about the extent of  text in terms of columns.

At first when I searched OCLC to find matching copy I was confused by 300 fields that looked like there were illustrated versions of my book!

Then I realized that some program had unhelpfully expanded “col.” (for column) to “color”.  Now  to be fair, this might have been the fault of a contributing library, but I did a quick search and found that it is now quite rampant in the database!  It is hard for me to imagine that so many libraries modified their local rare book records so dramatically.

Here are some suspicious records to look at:

82679282  (Berkeley please check your copy)

367569195 (Brigham Young please check your copy)

702171855 (Yale please check your copy)

The holding/contributing libraries are very wide-ranging including both national libraries, and other major research libraries.



I hope someone at OCLC has some way to reverse this damage!   Specifically in 300 “a”, of course.



Sue.

*******************************************
Sue Andrews
Principal Cataloguer
University of British Columbia Library
2198 Health Sciences Mall, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z3<https://maps.google.com/?q=2198+Health+Sciences+Mall,+Vancouver+BC+V6T+1Z3&entry=gmail&source=g>
Tel. 604-822-4995<tel:(604)%20822-4995>  Email: susan.andrews at ubc.ca<mailto:susan.andrews at ubc.ca>


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--

--
Matthew C. Haugen
Rare Book Cataloger
102 Butler Library
Columbia University Libraries
E-mail: matthew.haugen at columbia.edu<mailto:matthew.haugen at columbia.edu>
Phone: 212-851-2451
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