July 16th, 2015 change

Owned by Corinna Baksik
Last updated: Feb 01, 2016
2 min read

Change to handling of added authors and LCSH subject headings

July 16th, 2015
Note: updated to include MeSH as of 12/9/15 

This message pertains to the OCLC Bib Notification Service / WorldShare Metadata Services data loads at the Harvard Library, a process which enhances local bibliographic records with metadata from OCLC.

 To address two problems with the workflow, we are changing the handling of fields from OCLC records for added author names and LCSH and MeSH subject headings. Specifically:  

  • 600, 610, 611, 650, 651  (LCSH, MeSH)
  • 700, 710, 711 

Up to now, these fields were added to fully cataloged records (H08 “c”) if the OCLC field with the same value was not already present locally. This had the effect of repeatedly adding changed forms of the same heading to local records. For example, as a heading iteratively changed in OCLC, each version was received and added to our record, leaving us with redundant headings: 

  • Morgenstern, Oskar, 1902-1977.
  • Morgenstern, Oskar, 1902-1977, author.
  • Morgenstern, Oskar,1 902-1977, joint author.

Similarly, if an LCSH subject heading was updated to a new form in OCLC, the updated heading was added to our record, which often already had the heading in its previous form. When Database Management updates the old heading to the new form, we end up with duplicate headings in the record. Example headings in a sample record immediately after WMS/BNS enhancement:

  • Instructions to juries – Australia -- New South Wales.  [former LCSH term]
  • Jury instructions – Australia -- New South Wales.              [updated LCSH term]

After we receive the updated authority record and we update headings:

  • Jury instructions – Australia -- New South Wales.
  • Jury instructions – Australia -- New South Wales.

To mitigate these issues, we will no longer add these OCLC fields to H08 “c” records if the field already exists in the local record:

  • 600, 610, 611, 650, 651  (LCSH, MeSH)
  • 700, 710, 711

For example:

  • if our record has 650/_0 and the OCLC record has 651/_0, our record will end up with both 650 and 651
  • if our record has a 650/_0 and the OCLC record has any 650/_0, our record will not be enhanced with these fields
  • if our record has a 700 field and the OCLC record has 3 additional or variant 700 fields, our record will not be enhanced with these fields
  • if our record has a 700 field and the OCLC record has 650 and 651 fields (and ours does not), our record will be enhanced with the 650/651 fields

The handling of fields for H08 "i" records remains unchanged.

For more information, visit:

If you have any questions about the process or the changes, please let us know via the Aleph Support Center.