Separation of Genre/Form Terms from LCSH

Last week the Library of Congress announced its plans to separate genre/form terms from LCSH in late 2010 or early 2011. Presently these terms are limited to moving images, recorded sound, and cartography, while new terms for law, literature, music, and religion are to be distributed in coming years. LC now plans to formally separate genre/form terms from LCSH, in both MARC records and in printed products. While the controlled genre/form terms themselves remain unchanged, they are to be known as Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCGFT).

When LC begins to distribute the new "gf" authority records, LTI will convert 655 headings from the old "LCSH" tagging (655 _0) to the "new" tagging (655 _7 ..... $2lcgft). The Work Specification Profile (WSP) currently offers an option to choose the assignment of content designators using a second "indicator" coding (value - 0) or "subfield" coding (7 ..... $2lcsh). The recommended option has been to use the second "0" indicator in 655 fields. While the second indicator "0" option will be retained, LTI's recommendation will likely change to the revised form: 655 _7, [genre/form term], followed by $2lcgft.

When the newly coded genre/form authority records become available, users of LTI's Authority Update Processing (AUP) service will be provided with the new "gf" authority records as part of regular AUP. During the library's regularly scheduled AUP run, the older "sh" genre/form terms will be distributed as cancels, to be replaced by the new "gf" authority records. Of course the updated bibliographic records returned to client libraries will reflect the revised coding, per the library's profile. The ease with which these kinds of wholesale bibliographic and authority records updates are affected is a strong argument for use of the AUP service.

If you have questions, please contact Marsha Hunt at LTI.