Geographic name reconciliation (and geographic subdivisions in subject headings)

From an email exchange:

EDG:

... Can you remind me what the practice in MARC to record URIs, particularly for subject headings? This came up in a convo with Rob S where for pre-coordinated headings in MARC records time and place are appended to the subject to restrict the scope. He was thinking that it would be helpful to reconcile these place names from the libraries with the museums’. ...

FL:

URIs are added to MARC records in Voyager through a 3rd-party vendor (Backstage Library Works). The process is completely automated (on a weekly basis?), trigged by the creation of a new record or editing of an existing record (and clicking “export”). This process started about three (?) years ago. For the most part, records edited before that date have not been matched with URIs.

To be matched to a URI, the entire subject or agent heading must match the Library of Congress authority. Which means: most pre-coordinated headings – i.e. those with subdivisions (topical, geographic, or chronological) – do not have separate headings in the LC file, though there are a growing number of exceptions (example). A pre-coordinated heading like “Etching – Great Britain” will not be matched to a URI, even though the root term has a URI. As you’d imagine, this creates a bit of tension as we evaluate the utility of subdivisions for pre-coordinated headings.

Place names used as subdivisions do follow the LC authorized forms, but with messiness. For example:

LC heading: Great Britain Used as subdivision: Painting – Great Britain.

LC heading: London (England) Used as subdivision: Painting – England – London.

ycba-cia / blacklight-collections2

Geographic name reconciliation (and geographic subdivisions in subject headings) #269