relationships

On page 7 (page 11 of the PDF document) the draft Report on the
Future of Bibliographic Control [1] discusses the definition of
bibliographic control and mentions relationships:

   ...Bibliographic control is increasingly a matter of
   managing relationships—among works, names, concepts,
   and object descriptions—across communities. Consistency
   of description within any single environment, such as
   the library catalog, is becoming less significant than
   the ability to make connections between environments:
   Amazon to WorldCat to Google to PubMed to Wikipedia,
   with library holdings serving as but one node in this
   web of connectivity. In today's environment,
   bibliographic control cannot continue to be seen as
   limited to library catalogs.

I think this is a step in the right direction, but not quite far enough.

More specifically, I endorse the idea of relationship-creation, but I
think it ought to go beyond information resources and include users/
people. Using authorities and subject analysis is great for creating
relationships between works. "These works are like those works." At
the same time, if similar processes where implemented to create
relationships between works and people, then those people's jobs
(whether they be patrons or librarians) would be easier. "People like
me used those resources." "This is my collection." Moreover, if
relationships were created between people and resources through
"bibliographic control", then questions like the following could be
addressed as well: "Who are my patrons", "Who are my librarians", or
"Who else is interested in this topic".

[1] http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/lcwg-report-
draft-11-30-07-final.pdf

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Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame