Wow, showing most commonly used subject headings next to the name of an
authority-controlled author sounds like a really great idea to help the
user disambiguate. I like that one. Totally feasible (if we had any
control over our interfaces, anyway). Nice idea, Jon.
Jonathan
Jon Gorman wrote:
> On 5/14/07, MULLEN Allen <Allen.MULLEN_at_ci.eugene.or.us> wrote:
> > I am of a mind, however, that authority control as presently
> configured is
>> designed by and largely for librarians than other users. Birth dates
>> and initials as a primary means of differentiating names in a browse
>> listing is pretty sad customer service. [OK, do I want the Mullen,
>> Allen born in 1957 or the one with middle initial Z. born in 1923 or
>> perhaps the one with a middle initial P. and born in 1988? - yikes!]
>>
>
> One thing that I've mentioned other places that I've always been
> struck that libraries don't help sort out authors by the one key piece
> of information they already have....what did they write? It's
> entirely possible that someone may be looking for works by an author
> and not think to look up a particular title. But what if they were to
> see a list of some of the titles associated with an author as
> browsing? I would hope it could help them quite a bit in figuring out
> that "Smith, John" that wrote "Dynamics of ferrate compounds" might
> not be what they're looking for, but the "Smith, John" who wrote "25
> ghastly ways to die" and "Murder in the Rogue's Morgue" might be that
> mystery author they've heard about. Subject headings used in their
> work also might help.
>
> I haven't had enough time to implement something like this, but I'd
> really like to try an author search that doesn't throw you immediately
> into a pile of titles. Instead, it'll give you the chance to narrow
> down the author or likely authors, then return the books. Worldcat
> Identities look like a similar approach.
>
> Jon Gorman
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Mon May 14 2007 - 15:22:06 EDT