MARC Subject Coding Improved - Update 1/1/19
In 2017, desLibris ceased providing Library of Congress subject headings in the 650 field of its MARC records for Public Documents. This change was necessary in order to support the new "instant MARC" feature of the service. In 2018 a new source of subject data became available to desLibris, which is the controlled vocabulary from the
International Press Telecommunications Council.
This data source was submitted for approved by the Network Development and MARC Standards Office as a valid Subject heading and Term Source Code source; in late 2018 this approval was granted and the source has been added to the OCLC validation tables using the MARC code
Iptcnc.
More information here.
Because the Bibblio semantic index, which analyzes the fulltext of each title for recommendation purposes, also applies terms from the IPTC authority files to each record, we now have a source of subject coding which is more specific and extensive than LCSH.
As of January 2019, here is the general picture for MARC records released by desLibris:
Collection | Release date | LCSH? | IPTC? |
Documents | Pre 2017 | Yes | Yes |
Documents | Post 2016 | No | Yes |
Books | All | Yes | Coming |
Accordingly, if your library wishes to include the IPTC-enhanced records in its catalogue, you should re-download your complete Documents entitlement to replace your current record set.
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