[Evergreen-catalogers] Fingerprints

[Thomsen, Elizabeth]

Is your system using Group Formats and Editions for search results and
placing holds?  We are, and we mostly love it, but we're running into
problems with overgrouping because the fingerprint isn't specific enough to
distinguish between different works.  This results in patrons getting an
item that isn't really another format or edition of the work they wanted,
as they expected.  This is a public service issue, but the data making this
work is all about the cataloging.

Here are a few situations we've run into:

   - *Identical 245 |a for series:*  Popular series like "Diary of a Wimpy
   Kid" and "Big Nate" often use what's really the series title as the title,
   with the specific title as a subtitle, which creates identical fingerprints
   so they all end up in one big group:   *Title:bignate Author:peirce
   PartName: PartNumber:*


   - *Generic collective uniform titles:*The current fingerprint formula
   uses the 240 rather than the 245 when present for the title portion of the
   fingerprint.  This makes sense for "true" uniform titles like "The
   adventures of Tom Sawyer," bringing together editions that have that title,
   or just "Tom Sawyer" or variants.  It doesn't work at all for collective
   uniform titles like "Works" or "Selections."  For example, in our system it
   groups together many different collections of Ibsen's plays that all share
   the fingerprint T*itle:selections Author:ibsen PartName: PartNumber:*


   - *Coincidences: *Sometimes fingerprints match because they are just a
   combination or a common surname and short title -- for example, this
   fingerprint matches both "Undercurrents" by Willo Davis Roberts and "Under
   currents" by Nora Roberts: *Title:undercurrents Author:roberts PartName:
   PartNumber:*

We were able to "fix" some of the popular series by batch editing the *|b*
to* |p*, which isn't really sustainable -- new titles and editions keep
getting added, so we'll have to repeat this regularly.  The other issues we
don't really have a good fix for.

We're going to experiment with editing the fingerprint formula on a test
system to be more specific, adding the authors first name and the
subtitle.  (Not sure what to do about the 240's.  I know adding the
subtitle will split a lot of titles because of the presence or absence of
"a novel" but we'd rather have the system undergroup rather than overgroup
and fill holds with items that don't really match at all.

Any thoughts?

-- 
Elizabeth B. Thomsen
Member Services Manager
NOBLE: North of Boston Library Exchange
Danvers, Mass.
www.noblenet.org
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