Bill Dueber writes:
 > > What are the ways to accomplish exact title searches with z39.50?
 > >
 > > I'm looping through a list of MARC records trying to determine
 > > whether or not we own multiple copies of an item. After reading
 > > MARC field 245, subfield a I am creating the following z39.50
 > > query:
 > >
 > >  @attr 1=4 "foo bar"
 > >
 > > Unfortunately my local implementation seems to interpret this in
 > > a rather regular expression sort of way -- "* foo bar *". Does
 > > anybody out there know how to create a more exact query? I only
 > > want to find titles exactly equalling "foo bar".
 >
 > Like so many library "standards," z30.50 is a syntax and a set of
 > rough guidelines. You have no idea what's actually happening on the
 > other end, because it's not specified, and you just have to either
 > find someone you can ask at the target machine or reverse engineer
 > it.

The irony is that Z39.50 actually make _much_ more effort to specify
semantics than most other standards -- and yet still finds itself in
the situation where many implementations do not respond correctly to
the BIB-1 attribute 6=3 (completeness=complete field) which is how
Eric should be able to do what he wants here.

Not that I have any good answers to this problem ... but I DO know
that inventing more and more replacement standards it NOT the answer.
Everything that's come along since Z39.50 has suffered from exactly
the same problem but more so.

 _/|_	 ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <[log in to unmask]>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Not raw -- cooked" -- Monty Python's Flying Circus.