*Hi and thank you Ross, Jonathan, and Andy,

I do wish someone from LC would answer Jonathan's questions for all codes
and geographic subdivision or subject implications. There's so much
self-inflicted pain I can go through trying to revive my cataloging days.
Here are some clarifications though:

List of Geographic Areas is the macro list, whereby List of countries
includes only countries as a subset from the macro list.

MARC Code List for Countries [choice of a MARC code is generally related to
information in field 260 (Publication, Distribution, etc. (Imprint)).  The
code recorded in 008/15-17 is used in conjunction with field 044 (Country of
Producer Code) when more than one code is appropriate to an item.]

MARC Geographic Area Codes are codes entered (according to geographic names
in the 6xx fields) in field 043.*
*
*
*The Country Codes and Geographic Area Codes are entered bureaucratically,
bypassing Jonathan's refined distinctions. These tasks are outsourced to
agencies separate from the catalogers assigning LCSH.*
*
*
*Now it starts getting uglier, since upkeep for these lists differs in time
and agency. Possibly new territory names are done now by NATO ... You would
expect to see the same name in a code list and in a geographic name (151) .
Sometimes you won't. Sometimes you'll see redundancies which confuse even
more.

So since:*

   1. *LCSH has mistakes, inconsistencies*
   2. *LC doesn't talk to CODE4LIB to answer our questions*
   3. *OCLC will not talk to LC on our behalf*

*we can create the geographic name list(s) we need. Since we know that 6xx
forms for geographic names appear in 151 and 781 fields, we can create an
index for those names for matching to 6xx in LCSH. Andrew, please
complete/comment-on this list.*
*
*
*Ya'aqov*
*
*
*



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