No, no, putting them all in one authority record is definitely NOT the
approach Jon is suggesting.
Even if there ended up being two people _displayed to the user_ as
"Smith, John (astronomy)", they could still be two different authority
records. This gets at the point I tried to make a while ago on the RDA-L
list about the difference between a "linking identifier" (used to
uniquely identify a record to a machine) and a "name/label identifier"
(used to display in an interface to a user).
http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/two-meanings-of-identifier/
But I still like the idea of _automatically_ looking in the catalog to
see what LCSH's are commonly attached to a particular identity, and
displaying a summary of that to the user, perhaps in addition to the
dates already shown. That doesn't need to effect how authorities are
actually generated at all. Change the name/label identifier, without
changing the linking identifier.
Jonathan
Ted P Gemberling wrote:
> Jon,
> There was some discussion of that approach on the PCC list last year.
> The problem is that dates are much more likely to be unique than
> subjects. Especially since subjects are somewhat general. If there's a
> "Smith, John, writer on astronomy" set up, it won't be long before
> there's another person who'd have to be described the same way. Of
> course even dates aren't always completely unique. Occasionally you have
> to add the exact date. For example, there are three John Smith, 1924-'s,
> so two of them have the month and date added at the end.
>
> Your proposal is really already in effect in "undifferentiated" name
> headings. If you can't get any more information about several people
> named John Smith, you put them all on one authority with descriptions of
> the different things they wrote. The undifferentiated heading for Smith,
> John is a really good example of that. When more information is found
> about one of them, that "bibliographic identity" is removed from the
> undifferentiated authority.
> --Ted Gemberling
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jon Gorman
> Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 3:48 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Next Gen Catalog and FRBR
>
> 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 Tue May 15 2007 - 14:31:37 EDT