Display of publication year for serials

[theLinkResolver]

Could the publication year be suppressed for serials in the search results and record display? Or reconfigured to show a range of dates?

Result 4 is the serial record (where we have 2002-2010 volumes), and result 5 is a mono record (2010 ed.) from an AHS library. Ideally, we would all follow the same treatment (serial), but in our consortial reality, this may never be fixed (a common problem).

For the UAL user looking for the 2010 edition, the 2002 date is going to lead them towards clicking the other result, and not finding our holdings.

@redlibrarian I know the topic of publication dates came up before (260 vs 264 vs fixed fields, relevance to serial vs mono, etc), and we can reboot that conversation as needed.

[sjshores]

If we could display a holdings range for serials, that would be ideal. I agree with Scott that displaying a single date for serials is very misleading. The best choice in this particular case would be the 362, I think, rather than the MARC holdings statement. Scott, do we have good 362 data for most of our serials?

[theLinkResolver]

I like the 362, too, for display in the record. Unfortunately, it is not practical for use in search results. Cataloguing rules moved us from a formatted appearance [e.g. Vol. 1, no. 1 (1986)- ] to a textual style [e.g. Began with vol. 1, no. 1 (1986).] and the consequences of that are some very long strings of text and also multiple 362s (first one formatted, second one unformatted [e.g. ceased with...]).

Here is a great example of the two styles in one record (key 922495):

Much more informative than the single year, but it is also a lot of information/text, in this instance.

Now, as for other options, the fixed fields (008, 07-14) would be a good choice (and the only choice for display within search results). They are typically accurate, and very machine readable, so long as there are ways to deal with the coding of uncertain dates (e.g. 19uu) and the Date2 (008, 11-14) code for an active publication (9999).

(For the record, 260 $c and 264 $c should not be considered as useful dates for serial records, while the opposite is true for monos.)

[scastell]

being able to see the publisher info, as well as the publication dates, can be very useful when trying to distinguish between similar serial titles.

[ghost]

We currently have a summary holdings statement in place for catalogued journals (print and electronic); electronic journals from SFX display all our target thresholds for the journal, which I think is the best solution for those. I should be able to suppress the "Publication Date" field completely from the catalogued journals record, leaving the summary holdings statement. Would that be satisfactory?

[ghost]

We should suppress the Year field for Journals for now.

[ghost]

This question is hard to deal with while we have artificial workarounds in place to deal with the duplicate record issue. This will have to wait for that to be solved.

[seanluyk]

Here's an example that came to the desk, reported by Sarah: https://www.library.ualberta.ca/catalog/771772

User needs to look at full catalogue record to determine if we have earlier holdings

[theLinkResolver]

@seanluyk I think I get what you are referring to, although it's not quite the same thing that's being discussed in this issue. The issue you reported belongs with #691. (Just clarifying for those following this thread) :)

[seanluyk]

Thanks @theLinkResolver , but would displaying this field not solve it too?

[theLinkResolver]

The years of publication are not necessarily the same as the years that we actually hold. For this title, it seems to solve the problem because we have everything that was published.

[theLinkResolver]

@redlibrarian Needs a relabel. This is more of a 'project' that hasn't been addressed yet

[theLinkResolver]

logging some staff feedback here, from a ticket