On 5/15/07, Ted P Gemberling <tgemberl_at_uab.edu> wrote:
> Jonathan,
> I realize that the undifferentiated practice is not exactly what Jon was
> proposing. I was only saying there's a certain similarity between the
> two things, based on a stress on works and subjects associated with
> names.
>
I guess I'm just completely missing your point. I suggested a way to
improve the current author browse. I'm not suggesting any great
silver bullet or modification to current authorities practice. So
what about the problems you listed (mistakes, not knowing the proper
author is, etc) could be solved by any interface? In the current
systems, using connections made in authority files force a user to
jump through many hoops. So....if there's essential flaws in the
underlying authority records that are so bad any attempt to "hook" the
rest of our cataloging data to them, I see that as more an argument
not to do any authority work at all. What I'm proposing is to at
least help give more information from what work we already have. If
an author is in a author browse/listing and we have an authority
record for them, it seems to make sense to connect this to
bibliographic information that uses this authority form.
I consider authority work an excellent part of cataloging and
libraries. Given that, I have to go with "we'll assume what we have
is good, and authority records are correct as we can know.". In fact,
this system might be a good tool for others to quickly scan and see
possible mistakes as well. Similar techniques in combination with
data-mining could also yield some interesting results. As more
resources of knowledge are electronic, the more we can create tools
that might help researches identify possible problem records, etc.
I'm not hugely familiar with authority practice, it's possible that
some institutions create authority records where they purposely lump
together various "Smith, John"'s that they can't distinguish into a
single authority record. That would seem to me to defeat the point of
having authority records. I would hope they do something to indicate
that this authority record is actually a "I don't know" record.
Like I said, I'm still learning some of the authority practices
myself. Still, I'm not a complete stranger to cataloging. I can't
see how my suggestion is any worse the typical author browse that I've
seen in several online catalogs as they currently exist. Some
examples comparing it to a current system and how it would be worse
might help me understand what you're getting at.
Jon Gorman
Received on Tue May 15 2007 - 18:01:14 EDT