The Global Change Queue:Basics and Beyond

Presented by:

Jenifer Marquardt (jkm@uga.edu)

and

Julie Dyles (jdyles@uga.edu)

University of Georgia Libraries

Outline:• Introduction

– What is the Queue? – How is it used?

• Name Headings• Corporate Body Headings• Conference Headings• Subject Headings• Series Headings• Name/Title Headings & Uniform Titles• Forcing changes into the Queue• Using Cataloger’s Toolkit

What is the Global Change Queue? When a change is made to the 1XX field in an authority

record, the change is sent to the queue to let you trigger database clean up

Batch loads (MARCIVE / other vendors) Individual import of authority record Manual change of authority record in Voyager

The queue works by using a combination of a user interface and server batch jobs 11, 12 and 13

Why use the Global Change Queue?The queue lets you change headings on more than one bibliographic record at a time

The colors that you will see in screenshots of the queue throughout this presentation are optional. The queue has

customizable settings for viewing. Under Options → Preferences, choose the Colors/Fonts tab.

At UGA, the Queue is normally loaded at midnight on the 23rd of each month. It will look something like this when you first open it. Only the original (old) headings are displayed

here because no batch jobs have been run yet.

This is the website that

we use to run our batch

jobs . Under “Cataloging

Reports” you can choose job 11, 12 or

13. The System Admin

section has the reports

generated by each job.

After a job has run successfully, the system will send an email to let you know it is finished.

After you run batch job 11, the proposed new headings can be displayed.

The next step is to evaluate the proposed changes.

Unless you forced a change into the queue, consider items in the queue to be proposals only. Many proposed changes are correct, but you usually can’t tell without looking!

Batch loaded records from a vendor (such as MARCIVE) are only okay as far as the authority record itself is concerned.

Human judgment is needed before making changes to bibliographic records, especially because of historical problems that may exist in your database.

To begin investigating/evaluating proposed changes, highlight a heading and choose the Search or Auth button.

The Search button will display the old heading in a list so you can browse and choose to look at bib records or

authority records

The Auth button will bring up the new (proposed) authority record

The Global Change Queue will only change the text of the heading in your bib record. It will not change tags or indicators.It may be a good idea to choose to do the full change manually at this point in the process if tags/indicators need changing and only a few records are involved.

Examples of these types of changes could be:

A heading change from type [geographic area]—[topic] to type [topic]—[geographic area]

651 _0 |a Canada |x Constitutional law

650 _0 |a Constitutional law |z Canada

A heading change from type [corporate name as jurisdiction] to type [name in direct order]

110 1_ |a Toronto (Ont.) |b University

110 2_ |a University of Toronto

After examining the proposed changes to bibliographic records, click on the “Process?” box for each heading that

you want to continue processing.

If you don’t want to process the change to bib records (or if you have already processed the changes manually), highlight the old heading and choose the Delete button.

After you have either checked or deleted all of the headings in the Queue, it is time to run Job 12. You will receive

another ## email when Job 12 is complete

A warning about running Job 12: in the past, name as subject headings have disappeared from the queue after Job 12 is run. We are not sure if it is still the case that the queue works this way (and we didn’t have a chance to try it because our queue is so full of RDA headings right now!) – but it may be something to watch out for.

Because these headings can look like they have zero bibs attached, but when you search them in a browse list …

Search names bySubject also toround up any straySubject headingsif you forget to checkbefore running Job12!

After running Job 12:

Expand the headings again by clicking on the + next to each. In most cases, there will be nothing more to see.

In some cases, a 5XX will appear. If this happens, it is fine – just an indication that another authority record has your proposed heading as a See Also Reference.

In many cases right now, the headings in the queue are changes associated with RDA, such as “Dept.” to

“Department”, and there is no need to investigate each instance of a 5XX appearing in cases such as this.

However, if a 4XX or a 1XX appears, you may have a conflicting authority record in your database.

Be sure to resolve each real conflict before you run the next (and final) batch job!

If subject headings remain in the queue and there appear to be zero bibliographic records attached, be sure to follow

up on these in your catalog. The queue only fixes bibliographic record headings that

exactly match the authority record 1XX, and there may be records where the root heading was changed, but other old root plus subdivision headings remain in your catalog.

In addition to displaying some associated records, running Job 12 also creates a “Heading changeable via name/title change only” report. The global change process will not make changes to uniform name/title headings whether one field or two fields (100/240 for example) are involved. These leftover headings are found in the “Heading changeable via name/title change only” report.

An example of a heading that will need to be changed manually

You must fix these headings manually either before or after running the final job of the queue.

Batch Job 13

After you have expanded each heading in the queue and resolved any conflicts, it is time to run Job 13.

Running Job 13 makes the proposed changes to the bibliographic records.

Most headings will be dropped from the queue.

You will receive another ## email when this job is complete.

Some headings may remain – if there are remaining headings, check them out, fix the attached bibs, and delete

them from the queue.

Evaluating Proposed Name Heading ChangesOne of the easiest possible situations to evaluate is when the

authority record contains the old form of the heading in the 4XX and the proposed new form in the 1XX. Headings like this are fine to change.

At other times, the justification for the proposed change will be somewhere in the authority record, but not in the 4XX field (here it is in one of the 670 fields)

At still other times, though, evaluation of proposed name heading changes can involve a little detective work.

If the old form of the heading covers multiple people in your catalog, you will need to sort out the headings that are appropriate to change to the new form from the headings that are not appropriate to change.

This usually happens when a heading is proposed to be changed from a name that has no dates or qualifiers to a name that does have dates and/or qualifiers.

How can you determine whether to change a heading or not?

Take a look at the proposed name heading. The 670 fields tell us this person is involved with English departments, literature and translation. There is also a 670 with details from an email from the author (“not a tenor!”).

Now look at the titles in your catalog.

The description in the bib record shows this person is a tenor. The other records may be appropriate to change to the proposed form, but this one should be left as

is if an appropriate authority record for Douglas Robinson the tenor cannot be found.

If you do find a record for Douglas Robinson the tenor, import it and make any necessary changes in your bib

record!

There are 3 titles attached to the plain heading Foster, Carl.

Should we change all three?

If we investigate, we see that one title is in the 670 of the auth record.

What about the other 2 titles?Search Voyager, OCLC, LC’s catalog, VIAF or another

authority file.

And the last title?We can’t always be so lucky as to match a bib title exactly.

Based on what we know of this person’s areas of expertise and the fact that he has authored so many articles and books on

the subject, I would feel comfortable assigning the new proposed heading to all three titles. Match based on:

SubjectAffiliationsInternet searchesJudgment

“Name as Subject” HeadingsThe number that appears next to these headings is not always right. Best practice would be to always at least glance at the heading in the browse list to make sure!

Adding death dates : should you investigate?

Usually these will be correct, especially when the name is kind of unusual in the database, as this one is.

However, it is a good idea to look at the heading in the browse list.

In this case, everything looks fine.

But in some cases, there will be other forms of the name that need to be fixed as well!

Or you may find other, unrelated problems that can be fixed.

Evaluating Proposed Corporate Body Heading Changes

As we said earlier, many of the changes to corporate body headings right now in the queue are RDA associated changes,

such as “Dept.” to “Department”

Do all of these changes need to be investigated?Many or most will be like the example below – a correct

change with only a root heading and no other records with subdivisions attached. You can check to make sure that

your record is like this by examining the heading in a browse list (Search button).

However, some headings will be like the example below. The queue tells us there are no bib records attached, but when you

check the browse list, you see that there actually are!

Or sometimes you may discover that there are other forms of the old heading that need to be changed.

Evaluating Proposed Conference Heading ChangesRight now, many conference headings that come into the queue

will involve changes that have been made to make these records RDA compliant.

Here the additions of (Conference) and

numbering are being made

These changes are usually fine to process, but, if you can, you should evaluate them just to make sure. Sometimes there will be associated changes above and below your record in the

browse list that you may want to make now.

Evaluating Proposed Subject Heading Changes

Most proposed subject heading changes will be fine!

However, it is usually a good idea to take a closer look at certain types of subject headings. For instance, subject

headings with closing dates may require special attention.

This proposed change is to change the date “1960-” to “1960-1990”.

In cases like this one, each bib record in your database will need to be evaluated by you individually to ensure that the proposed change is applicable to the work, and that no additional subject headings need to be assigned.

In this instance, you would probably choose to add both headings in order to cover the time period given in the title.

Sometimes you can determine whether subject heading proposals are correct based on information from the bib record….

…sometimes you will be able to check LC’s catalog(catalog.loc.gov)

to see what changes they have made (if any)

…and other times you will need to pull books from the shelves!

Other types of subject headings will also need investigation.

Different ships can sometimes have the same name

In the bib record we see that this ship was involved in an oil spill in Melville Bay, Greenland, in 1977…

…and the authority record for the heading that is the proposed change makes a reference to the same oil spill,

so we can go ahead and make this heading change.

Evaluating Proposed Geographic Subject Heading Changes

Proposed geographic subject heading changes are usually fine.

However, because the queue will not

process changes to geographic

subdivisions in bib records, you will

need to make sure you round up each

instance of the heading in your

catalog.

Remember to change subdivisions manually when geographic headings change – the queue will not make

subdivision changes!

The queue will

change these

The queue will not change these

In order to round up all of the subdivision changes, you can do a Staff Subject Subdivision search and manually check

out each record in the list, or use Cataloger’s Toolkit.

As you manually change headings for the authority record you are working on, you may find other things to fix.

You could fix

these San

Martin headings

also

Evaluating Proposed Series Heading Changes

Formerly, practice was to use:

440 in a bib record to trace the series if the form of the series on the piece and the authorized form of the series were the same

490 / 830 combination in the bib record if the form on the piece and the authorized form of the series were different.

Field 440 is now obsolete, so the 490 / 830 combination is now what should always be used to trace series in bib records.

Many records that already contain the 490 / 830 fields will be fine.

This field will be changed to the new

form

This field will stay the same

Another example of a change that will be fine.

Will stay the same

Will change

An interesting kind of change that is fine to process now, but previously would have needed the 490 / 830 to be merged into one 440.

Series as it appears on the

piece

Will change to new proposed

form – now same as 490

This is a case where a 440 exists on an older record. The best practice would be to examine each record individually

and make corrections manually in cases like this.

This situation is fairly complex because we have two series that were formerly established independently being put

together into one record - a main series with a subseries title.

So our bib record has two situations that need to be resolved:☺ Two series titles on this record are being merged into one☺ We have two 440s, so we need to make 490 / 830 fields

Based on the piece:

Title page Cover

The problem is that it is hard to tell how complex a series heading change will be just from looking at the queue.

Also, you may not find other related problem situations that are elsewhere in the database just by processing series

changes with the queue. Be aware that the queue can be way off sometimes – here it

suggests that we change every instance of the word “Colonies” as a subject heading to our proposed series heading. No way we are going to process that change!

Evaluating Proposed Changes to Name/Title Headings

Processing name/title headings with the queue presents a few challenges.

Remember that the global change process will not make changes to uniform name/title headings whether one field or two fields (100/240 for example) are involved. These leftover headings are found in the “Heading changeable via name/title change only” report.

Running Job 12 creates this report, and headings that appear on this report need to be searched and manually changed (or changed with Cataloger’s Toolkit) in your catalog.

So this means that when you see a name/title heading in the queue, checking the process box…

…will not actually work to change the heading in your catalog.

Name/title headings will need to be changed manually or with Cataloger’s Toolkit.

Right now we are seeing many headings where “Selections” and the language portion of the heading are

switching places. This is RDA-related.

Another example of an RDA related change that we see frequently right now.

And another! This is an example of the RDA related change of “violoncello” to “cello”.

All name/title proposals should be carefully examined – problems and differences are common, and there are many

elements that can contain information.

Elements that can be different include: Date or language of the work

Medium of performance

Number of the part or section of the work

The “arranged” statement

Musical key

As an example, a composer often writes more than one work in the same form and in the same key. There could be more than one section or part of a work in D minor.

Unless one of the 670 fields in the authority record contained the work I was looking at, I would likely pass this

change on to one of our music catalogers to evaluate.

The Global Change Queue is great for making simple changes to large numbers of headings at one time - but remember that there are several types of changes that it

will not handle well:

The queue cannot change tags or indicators The queue cannot make changes to base headings that

have additions or subdivisions The queue cannot fix name/title headings The queue cannot make geographic subdivision changes Because of the sometimes complex nature of series

heading changes, it is best to be cautious when deciding whether to make these changes using the queue