At 06:43 AM 7/23/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>I probably wasn't being clear. By saying MODS "enforces" I am simply
>meaning that there is, AFAIK, not any facility to indicate in MODS "this
>is an unsure date, the name of the author of this record is unknown."
>
>I am thinking about stuff like:
>
><date qualifier="unsure">1923</date>
>
>or...
>
><namePart qualifier="unknown"/>
>
>Surely there are better terms than those I use above, of course...
There is a date qualifier in MARC in the fixed field area for dates. That
has bunches of codes, including "questionable date" and "date unknown."
That element wasn't included in MODS, however. For authors, it's covered in
library data by the cataloging rules but there isn't any coding in the MARC
record. It's a bit more complex because there are legitimate reasons why a
record might not have an author, so lack of an author is not equal to
"unknown". Would you insist on a code for "no legitimate author?" The
problem with allowing the absence of a field to have a particular meaning
("no author") is that you then can't tell the difference between a record
where the metadata creator consciously left off the author, and broken or
incomplete metadata. In other words, once you start coding for things like
"unknown" you also end up needing a code for "not here for a good reason".
My argument against such coding is that the people who would be so inept as
to leave off an author would also be so inept as to not code that they had
done so. (In MARC we have places where there is a code for "no attempt to
code." One could take this to extremes.) So although it might make sense to
have codes for "anonymous" (meaning you know for sure that the author's
name isn't on the piece) and "unknown" (meaning you couldn't figure out who
the author was), in the end it doesn't really solve the problem of
interpreting what a record with no author means. You could decide that
every record with no author entry and no author code is one that
legitimately doesn't have an author, and you'll be right part of the time
and wrong part of the time.
If there were two codes, say "anonymous" and "unknown" -- how would this
information be used in a bibliography? My "Manual of Style" has drifted out
of sight -- do citation rules cover this?
kc
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Karen Coyle [log in to unmask]
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