> I'm fine with the idea of testing computational linguistics' ability
> to distinguish David Johnsons, but I wouldn't wave the banner of
> AACR2/LCRI authority control's achievements too high on this one.
> When I checked just now, LC's undifferentiated personal name
> authority for "Johnson, David" had 12 differentiated identities
> resident under that one heading. Current AACR2/LCRI rules restrict
> the allowable qualifiers fairly narrowly. Even if sound statistics
> could sort out the works of "David Johnson" among these twelve
> identities, the rules would still have them all sharing one
> heading--as a matter of principle, I suppose. :)
The non-unique names are not the fault of the bibliographic standards: the problem is that the cataloger did not have enough information to distinguish the author from the others. All non-unique names should be seen to be in a type of temporary mode: a separate heading will be made sooner or later when somebody has more information.
But the other issue you raise is more important: should there be more and other ways to distinguish forms of names, other than dates, e.g.
Johnson, David, writer on railroads.
There used to be this sort of flexibility at one time, but this type of practice disappeared as the rules began to expand and networks grew. Perhaps it's time to reconsider these kinds of practices--although I am sure that people could find lots of problems with it immediately, and I am personally skeptical, but it could be tried.
As I have mentioned in several postings, before there is a tremendous amount of work done creating new tools that may be unsustainable in the long-run, I wish we would try using the information we have at our disposal in better ways. WorldCat Identities does a great job of giving people an idea of an author by letting users see the bibliographic records immediately with the heading. Perhaps the problem of identifying authors is not so much a problem of not enough information, it may just be a matter of displaying the information we have more effectively.
James (Jim) Weinheimer.
Received on Sun Sep 02 2007 - 08:18:59 EDT