Thanks Jonathan.
As you say, there are other identifiers available, and others that have far
more inbuilt consistency.
It seems to me that the only reason RDA might be continuing with this is to
accommodate the MARC requirements. If so, that's fair enough.
But if we are looking at moving beyond MARC (e.g. DC based application
profiles) I don't see the need for a 100 / 700 division at all -- seems to
me to only create difficulties.
Neil
On 4 May 2010 22:28, Jonathan Rochkind <rochkind_at_jhu.edu> wrote:
> This is just my interpretation....
>
> I think "preferred access point" is a really bad choice of term. What they
> should have called this is "Citation Heading" or something like that,
> something involving the word "citation" or perhaps "reference".
> It's purpose is so you can "cite" or "reference" a different record in (for
> example) a 700 name-title. In order to do that traditionally, you would use
> the "main entry" heading. You need to be able to put a certain string in
> that field that can unambiguously identify a referenced/cited record. This
> is the purpose of the "preferred access point", and the only purpose I can
> see.
>
> Now, in 2010, the _better_ way to do this kind of "citation" or "reference"
> is with an actual controlled identifier (an accession number, a URI, etc).
> I wish that RDA made it clear that this is _preferable_, and allowed you to
> use _only_ an identifier when available. I am not sure if it does. But
> even if it did, I think it is a good idea to -- as our legacy practices
> always have -- allow this kind of reference/citation using a controlled
> "heading" instead of an actual modern identifier, for backwards
> compatibility purposes if nothing else, but I'm not sure it doesn't have
> other utility as well.
>
> Jonathan
>
>
> Neil Godfrey wrote:
>
>> Apols if I have missed any previous explanation of this, but I am
>> wondering
>> what reason/s lie behind RDA continuing the concept of "a preferred access
>> point" in cases of multiple authors for a work.
>>
>> Is the reason primarily to accommodate the contingencies of MARC-based
>> cataloguing? Are there other reasons such as data exchange and
>> identification or other?
>>
>> What difference/s does "a preferred access point" make in online databases
>> and user interfaces?
>>
>> Thanks
>> Neil Godfrey
>>
>>
>
Received on Wed May 05 2010 - 00:18:53 EDT