Delete [From old catalog]

The note {from old catalog} (pretend it's in square brackets) frequently appears in Library of Congress author fields, presumably indicating that that the record or author is, well, from their old catalog. (I don't know why they felt the need to indicate this on their records. Maybe it had to do with authority control or encoding level?)

Regardless, it gets copied into LT author fields, clutters up a lot of author data, and probably prevents automatic author combining. (If you do an author search on "from old catalog," you will find over 3,000 matches where those words are mistakenly added to the author name.)

I propose that the string, including the square brackets, be deleted or suppressed whenever someone imports LC data. I further propose that the string be deleted from all authors who are currently in LT, although I realize that tampering with already-entered data is a more drastic step.

If it's possible, that would be great! (but I don't know much about 'puters, so . . . ).

If it's easy to do, then I'm all for it as I know I have a lot of these in my own catalog and would like to avoid getting more.

presumably indicating that that the record or author is, well, from their old catalog

My mind went a totally different direction on that one: I thought they meant that they found the info in an old catalog; but I guess maybe they don't just sit around at the LoC and browse through old catalogs all day long, just for kicks.

>4 BOB81:

Ha! Well, I'm sure that's possible, but the note seems to crop up on older records, so I made my own assumptions. :)

Here we go:

What does it mean when I'm searching the LC Online Catalog and see the phrase "(from old catalog)" at the end of a heading on a bibliographic record?

When LC created its current catalog in 1999, it incorporated several million older records that had not been maintained over time into its general catalog. To alert catalogers and catalog users that thses headings may not be up-to-date, the legend "from old catalog" was added to every heading on such recordds. The headings themselves were not analyzed against the authority file, thus, some may match an authority record exactly (except fro the legend), and others may be quite different from the current authorized heading. Many others will not be represented by authority records at all. These records are not distributed by CDS and will not be found (as LC issued records) in the bibliographic utilities.

Sorry to put an end to all the rampant speculation. ;)

ETA: Great, now it's a touchstone.

I think it would be a bad idea for this information to be stripped automatically. Better to have a real person look at it first to make sure the old information is correct.

>7 Katya0133: and what a touchstone it is:

Paesi tuoi by Cesare Pavese

Now how did that happen? Well, the phrase "from old catalog" is included in the title of several copies of this book. Goodness knows why the system picked this book of all others to latch on to, but it did.

>8 kathrynnd:

Yeah, but LT's authors are NOT authority controlled. We pull from all kinds of libraries with all sorts of different authority control systems—and lots of non-controlled names. And we pull from Amazon which has no such authority control anyway.

Can someone confirm that this is still being added, and it's not just about old records that LT added. I *think* that Casey suppressed this on imports now. Can I get a witness?

I just added a new work with the same problem:

http://www.librarything.com/work/6664541

Curses!

So, Katya, since we've talked and, although I haven't confirmed anything, I am lead to believe you are a professional cataloger, shall we just strip this phrase or is there some other use that we can put it to. Maybe stick it in the comments automatically? As I said, we dont' actually authority control, so I'm not sure what else to do with it.

You will notice that, at least, the author string in the URL removes the brackets.

http://www.librarything.com/author/bolotowskyandrew

>12 timspalding:

I can't think of any use to put it to. All it means is that the name may not be in the correct form in terms of the LC authorities files, but LT doesn't really care about those, anyway, as evidenced by the fact that dates, etc., are automatically stripped out. I guess you could add it to the comments field, but I think that many LT users would find it rather mystifying, plus, it's a note about the form of the author heading, not a note about the book or edition as a whole.

>13 timspalding:

Well, that's something, at least. :)

Want to talk to you some time about ‡Biblios—whether LT should do something like it or use it. Do you do consultations for small money and big lobster rolls? ;)

Heh. Sure thing. Talk to me after Thanksgiving and I'll see what my schedule's like.

You having lobster? The Pilgrims did, or so the governor said. :)

Strip it across the board.
It's only purpose is if using the LoC authority records. Otherwise it is clutter.
LT's not using those authority records, so LT should not include the phrase.

Turkey, crab dressing, canned peas with mushrooms and pearl onions, thyme popovers, sweet potato pie, and eggnog.

Agreeing with everything about 18 but the menu. Although half of that sounds good too.

Turkey yes
crab dressing maybe
canned peas with mushrooms and pearl onions okay
thyme popovers intruiging
sweet potato pie meh
eggnog I used to love it; then I drank too much and threw up. Now it's one of those foods you can't eat because of a negative reaction.

TMI, I know.

>17 timspalding:

I don't know if we're having lobster or not. You'd think they'd be hard to stuff . . .

Lobster. Now if our friends were serving lobster, I might get talked into going to Thanksgiving dinner. Both turkey and sweet potatoes are on my inedible list, so I'll just make the Splenda pumpkin pie to send with my menfolk. And a sugar one as well for me to eat. :). (Both my husband and the hostess are on no-sugar diets for their health problems, so I got saddled with the no-sugar dessert.)

3>

I have a lot of these in my own catalog

Um, you realize you can EDIT those, right? Having it stripped out automatically to avoid having it added by non-savvy or apathetic users is a good idea, but anyone who cares about having it in their own catalog can remove them pretty trivially.

Though I did not have that problem in my library I did find it in John Muir's and Aaron Copland's which I edited. Also noticed it appears in the "subject" data. Any "data integrity" reason to delete it from there as well?

That's really interesting that it appears in the subject data. Can you point me towards an example?

Sure. Just run a search like this and make sure you have "subject" selected as one of your column display settings.

>25 Katya0133:
My entry for Travels of Marco Polo (http://www.librarything.com/work/15269/details/18297986) has Asia › Description and travel. {from old catalog} and Mongols › History. {from old catalog} in the subject field.

So it's not just on name headings. Wow. What a mess!