Hi Ted,
No, you don’t need to do anything with these fields. They shouldn’t create any problems since the $wnnea prevents them from displaying to the public and, as you pointed out, they facilitate automated updates of headings.
The 4XXs with $5UtOrBLW are added by our Heading Tracker program. In any authority record where the 1XX has been changed, but the original 1XX wasn’t added as a 4XX, this program automatically adds the former 1XX as a 4XX. This makes sure that all bib headings can be automatically updated to the new form. Since they are not official LC headings, the system makes sure they will not display by adding the $w, and they only appear on your record.
The 4XX headings without the $5 were added by LC. Most of these were most likely added as part of Phase 2 of the RDA conversion of the NAF which changed a little under 400,000 authority records. Most changes made during this conversion didn’t change the heading enough to allow a 4XX to be made under LC’s normal rules, but to facilitate the subsequent need to update bibliographic records with all of these changes, the original 1XX was automatically added as a 4XX to facilitate this. Since all the changes in Phase 2 were done by machine, it wasn’t feasible to choose which of the added 4XXs were valid enough to display and which were not, so it was decided to suppress all of them.
This is probably more of an answer than you bargained for, but I hope it helps.
Kind regards,
Karen
Karen Anderson
Authority Control Librarian
Backstage Library Works
Provo, Ut
801-356-1852 ext. 231
800-288-1265
From: bslwac-bounces@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:bslwac-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Ted Waller
Sent: Friday, May 03, 2013 10:40 AM
To: Backstage Library Works Authority Contol Listserv
Subject: [BSLWAC] 400 $wnnea
Should I be doing anything with the fields in authority records that begin
400 $wnnea ?
These are the fields with the old name forms, and serve to identify headings in records that need to be changed to the new form (such as adding a death date).
There appear to be two kinds: one with |5UtOrBLW indicating they were added by Backstage, and one without this subfield. The fields without the Backstage subfield are in the official LC authority records, the fields with the subfield are not.
Should I be deleting
any of
these
fields
after the quarterly revised authority records are reloaded?
At one point I thought so but now am not sure.
Ted Waller
Carlyle Campbell Library
Meredith College
919 760 8381