653 fields

[Amy Blackmarr]

Hi, list. Does anyone here use student-supplied keywords in the 653 field or elsewhere in your records? If you do, do you simply list them with commas or do you put them in individual $a subfields? Given that I don't have time to distinguish between student-supplied keywords that might actually be controlled and those that aren't, does it even really matter how I enter them if we're not making these available except in our local catalog (yet)? Should I be more interested in how things display, in this case? I realize this is a philosophical question to some extent and thus very broad, but any thoughts from any of you from a simply practical perspective (or any other) would be helpful.

SCAD has been accepting ETDs for several years. The records are housed in ContentPro, which can accommodate the audio/visual peripherals that often accompany the texts, but duplicate records are created in Millennium in order to make the theses accessible through the public catalog. I'm the first cataloger who has been specifically assigned the task of cataloging ETDs and bound theses (a few departments still require these); you can imagine the vast number of questions I'm having as I create thesis and ethesis templates and work forms and tackle the range of retro-fixes needed to bring our records up to current and consistent standards.

Thanks for your thoughts and your time.

Amy Blackmarr

Digital Media & Copy Cataloger

Jen Library, Savannah College of Art and Design

Savannah, Georgia