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On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 5:02 AM, Owen Stephens <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Then obviously I lose the context of the full heading - so I also want to > look for > Education--England--Finance (which I won't find on id.loc.gov as not > authorised) > > At this point I could stop, but my feeling is that it is useful to also look > for other combinations of the terms: > > Education--England (not authorised) > Education--Finance (authorised! http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85041008) > > My theory is that as long as I stick to combinations that start with a > topical term I'm not going to make startlingly inaccurate statements? I would definitely ask this question somewhere other than Code4lib (autocat, maybe?), since I think the answer is more complicated than this (although they could validate/invalidate your assumption about whether or not this approach would get you "close enough"). My understanding is that Education--England--Finance *is* authorized, because Education--Finance is and England is a free-floating geographic subdivision. Because it's also an authorized heading, "Education--England--Finance" is, in fact, an authority. The problem is that free-floating subdivisions cause an almost infinite number of permutations, so there aren't LCCNs issued for them. This is where things get super-wonky. It's also the reason I initially created lcsubjects.org, specifically to give these (and, ideally, locally controlled subject headings) a publishing platform/centralized repository, but it quickly grew to be more than "just a side project". There were issues of how the data would be constructed (esp. since, at the time, I had no access to the NAF), how to reconcile changes, provenance, etc. Add to the fact that 2 years ago, there wasn't much linked library data going on, it was really hard to justify the effort. But, yeah, it would be worth running your ideas by a few catalogers to see what they think. -Ross.