Many authority records for music people and musical compositions have
such information. Brief inclusions of this sort are encouraged by the
NACO-Music Project, which is the funnel through which all non-LC music
headings go, and some LC music headings also get these additions. We're
not talking about a lot of information - maybe adding the term "jazz
pianist" or "soprano" somewhere in a note, or in a name/title record for
a musical composition, specifying the original medium, such as "for
violin and orchestra." If the situation is complicated, the note might
be a bit longer, but it is never a bio, just an indication of enough
crucial data to clarify what the authority record is talking about.
Little additions such as this take almost no time to do - the person
making the authority record already has that information and just needs
to type it - but they make the records vastly more useful to librarians
and, if they could see them, to patrons, than simple records with little
more than the name and date(s).
--
Jean Harden, Music Catalog Librarian
Libraries
University of North Texas
PO Box 305190
Denton, TX 76203-5190
(940) 565-2860
jharden_at_library.unt.edu
>>> On 8/22/2007 at 1:12 PM, in message
<A7983021DC8E6545B8A60BBE2994D8DA2363_at_EXCHANGE2.SF-Library.org>,
Stephen
McLaughlin <sMcLaughlin_at_SFPL.ORG> wrote:
> Karen Coyle wrote:
>
> "3) The name authority record contains virtually nothing that could
> interest a user -- no bio about the author, nothing to help the user
> know who it is we are talking about."
>
> I guess this idea bothers me because a lot of discussion centers
around
> how we don't have time to do this or that current cataloging
function,
> and now we're supposed to spend time compiling author biographies?
Is
> that really our job?
>
> If the response is, "No, we won't write it, we'll link to something
on
> the web," that really opens up a can of worms. Which web sites?
> Wikipedia? What happens when the website vanishes? Or will we buy an
> author database from a vendor, in which case everybody who wants
> authority records will have to buy access to the same database.
>
> I can see a lot of ways in which authority headings could be
improved,
> but this just doesn't seem like a useful direction to me.
>
> Steve McLaughlin
> San Francisco Public Library
> smclaughlin_at_sfpl.org
>
> The views expressed in this message do not necessarily represent the
> views of the San Francisco Public Library.
Received on Wed Aug 22 2007 - 13:07:28 EDT