Rinne, Nathan (ESC) wrote:
>
> The purpose of authority control is to
> provide a unique way of identifying something, so as to distinguish it
> from other things.
... which makes it possible to "bring together what belongs together",
a key function that sets catalogs apart from search engines.
To accomplish the latter, one has to either include the authority name
form with every document record (as MARC does) or include some other
ID that would effectively establish the relationship with the authority
entity (person, body, concept, work).
It is widespread practice in Europe to do both: have the personal
name in the form found in the book but in an access point field in
addition to the statement of responsibility (where the textual,
uninverted form goes), AND add the authority ID in order to enable
collocation functions. MARC practice has the name character string do
double duty as an identifier - which is fine as long as no need ever
arises to change a iota in the spelling, and everybody understands they
must not fiddle with what they find in the 100, 110, 700 and so on.
However, in that model the inclusion of the authority records in your
local system is mandatory because otherwise you wouldn't find the
document when searching for the non-authority spelling found in a
citation or the document itself - this is contained ONLY in the
authority record, together with all the "see" references, not in the bib
record.
B. Eversberg
Received on Tue May 15 2007 - 07:27:00 EDT