The full entry below includes the announcement from LC's Cataloging Policy and Support Office of how LC will implement the new policy regarding adding death dates to personal name headings with open birth dates, and how we will be implementing the policy locally.
Please note two things in the LC announcement below:
1. There are pieces of the process for managing these updates (an RSS feed from OCLC, the list of 300 headings that LC will be doing) that are not yet in place. NACO participants, please refrain from making these death date additions until these pieces appear.
2. LC is limiting this practice in general to cases where a personal name heading already has an open birth date; and that at LC, except for a list of "300 prominent persons" to be posted soon as a special LC project, the practice will be limited to names that come up on current cataloging or conflict resolution. Through our participation in NACO we will be able locally to add death dates to LC/NACO Authority File (LNAF) headings; but I would encourage NACO participants to be similarly conservative in their approach to this until the volume and impact of these changes in the LNAF is clearer.
As these changes occur, Database Management will endeavor to update the authorities in UMN10 and on the corresponding bib records. We still do not have a means of automatically loading or overlaying new or updated individual authorities from LC, and have not yet implemented routine batch updating of the authority records in UMN10. For now, staff should feel free to edit the date fields in personal name authority records when they find that the LNAF record at http://authorities.loc.gov has been updated, or to report such cases to Database Management, where we will also be working to keep up with the changes as they are reported on the OCLC RSS feed.
If you have questions about implementing this revised practice, please let me know. I'll be posting a version of this message to the "Control Freak" authorities blog available via the Communications/Blogs & Mailing Lists link on the Tech Services home page.
Stephen
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 16:09:27 -0500
From: CPSO
Subject: [PCCLIST] LC Policy statement on LCRI 22.17 and BFM reminder
The LCRI 2005 Update, no. 3-4 is now available on Cataloger's Desktop. Included in this update is revised LCRI 22.17, that now contains an option for catalogers to add death dates to personal name headings with open dates. Although NACO institutions may apply the option (or not) in the manner that best utilizes their cataloging resources, the following information on how the Library of Congress will implement the policy change is provided for your information:
1. In order to begin application of this policy in a manner that minimizes the impact on LC's catalog (and the ripple effect on catalogs worldwide) and maximizes the efficient use of cataloging resources LC's policy on addition of death dates will be the following:
Unless working on *authorized special projects, LC catalogers are asked to apply the option to add death dates to existing personal name authority records with open dates only when a personal name heading is being used on bibliographic records currently being cataloged and/or in the course of routine authority file maintenance (e.g., resolving conflicts between different persons).
Once the impact of this change is fully understood, a more liberal policy for adding death dates may be announced in the future.
2. Please be reminded that dates (either birth or death dates) should not be added to personal name headings on existing authority records that currently do not have any dates, except in cases of conflict, according to current policy.
3. If a name authority record is being established for the first time, birth and death dates may be added to the heading, even if a personal name heading without dates for the same person exists on bibliographic records in LC's catalog.
Bibliographic File Maintenance for NACO Libraries
As long as the only change to the heading is the addition of a death date, NACO libraries are not required to report these changes to LC. In response to a request from LC, OCLC has agreed to provide an RSS feed that will serve as an alert service for authority records to which death dates have been added. LC and the PCC are grateful to OCLC for providing this service that will greatly assist libraries in the maintenance of their catalogs-- an announcement regarding the details of the service will be forthcoming from OCLC.
Note that if the heading warrants other changes (besides the addition of a death date), and is thus no longer a one-for-one change, then BFM should be reported to the coop liaison as usual (cf. BFM FAQ at: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/naco/bfmguide.html This BFM FAQ and other relevant FAQs will be updated to include information in regard to the addition of death dates.
Catalogers are reminded that when making a change to a date in a 1XX all references must reflect the change and all related NARs must also be changed, e.g., name/title NARs, and BFM reported if appropriate.
* CPSO will shortly be announcing a special project to add death dates to the headings of about 300 prominent persons. To minimize duplication of effort, the announcement will include the names of the persons involved.
Questions, comments, etc. should be sent to cpso@loc.gov
Posted by s-hear at February 2, 2006 11:46 AM