On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:42:33 -0700, Karen Coyle <lists_at_KCOYLE.NET> 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.
I completely agree. This is a huge issue in our library, or in fact any
library that collects and catalogs Congressional documents that are
communications from the President.
AACR2 21.4D1 states that official communications from heads of state/heads
of government are entered under the corporate heading for the head of
state--for example "United States. President (1993-2001 : Clinton)". The
rule then goes on to state "Make an added entry under the personal name for
the person."
This rule means that when you look up Bill Clinton as an author in our
catalog, you get 851 hits. Only a handful of those 851 hits are
commercially published materials that were actually written by Bill Clinton,
the person. Those materials are what people mean when they say, "what do
you have by Bill Clinton?" The others are Congressional publications that
fall under the auspices of 21.4D1--official communications from a head of
state. The main entry on these records is the corporate heading for Clinton
as head of state/head of government:
United States. President (1993-2001 : Clinton)
The added entry is the personal name heading
Clinton, Bill, 1946- .
People hate this, they really do. I hate it. There is a work-around, but
why should anyone have to bother? The ILS we had before this one actually
allowed you to differentiate author searches. You could specify whether you
wanted to search primary author (1XX) or additional author (7XX). Those
field labels could definitely be improved, and the distinction between
primary and secondary author is probably meaningless to patrons, but our
reference librarians loved it. Once I explained the difference, it was then
quite easy for them to answer the question "what books do you have by Bill
Clinton?"--they would search for Bill Clinton as primary author, and those
handful of commercially published books would show up, and the zillions of
Congressional publications would not. Not foolproof, but much better than
having to limit the search to books in the LC classified collection, the way
we do now. Patrons simply shouldn't have to do this, and my confreres in
reference shouldn't have to either. To me it is a perfect storm of a
misguided rule and poor ILS design.
I don't think this is a minor issue--any prolific author is extremely
problematic to search in library catalogs. I for one would be quite glad to
apply specific codes to personal authors/responsible organizations if it
would improve precision.
Betsy Moon
Cataloging Supervisor
U.S. Senate Library
SRB-15, Senate Russell Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
betsy_moon_at_sec.senate.gov
202-224-5581 (phone)
202-224-0879 (fax_
Received on Mon Mar 16 2009 - 15:47:40 EDT