Karen Coyle wrote:
> Absolutely! I did a search once for Vladimir Nabokov and had to wade
> through dozens and dozens of records where he was the translator, or the
> author of the prefix. I wanted books written by him! Lots of people are
> authors and editors and maybe even illustrators and composers. This
> makes a big difference in searching, especially in a large catalog.
>
> That the list is long is a red herring -- most catalogers will use only
> a small percentage of those, and a system could easily present those at
> the top of a list in a drop-down.
>
> And, BTW, 'searching' doesn't mean that the user has to specify when
> doing the initial search. It could easily be a faceted choice when the
> user gets results that have a lot of different roles for that particular
> person. If the person has only been an author of whole works, no problem.
I don't question that this coding can be useful in certain cases, but as I wrote, is it worth it? Is it worth it to devote the time of a cataloger to discussing these fine points (not such a red herring when you get into it, unless an institution decides that it's all either main author or editor. I can imagine the long, involved debates over whether to use "storyteller" or "adaptor" or "really, in this case, I consider it more in the nature of a compiler" !!!).
We should focus on increasing productivity and doing the jobs we do now at a higher quality than it currently is (since it is clearly going down), instead of taking on additional work. I have read more and more that people want the "single box." The faceted choice you mention would be the only real justification for it, but perhaps there would be better ways to use the information we have now, using scapes from statements of responsibility from the records, or something. Separating main entry from added entry (which would solve at least most of your Nabokov problems) could be done, and trying some other methods.
But I still believe that taking on additional human coding would not be a wise thing to do right now and should be the last thing we do.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Mon Mar 16 2009 - 12:08:53 EDT