On Wed, 16 Sep 2020 16:20:03 +0000, Young, William C <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> [...] And what if the information was not used by patrons?  Is it not useful for the catalogers who come after us??  Are we not users too?

I'm with you 100% on this. The more data there is in an authority record, the less likely it is that catalogers will confuse that person or corporate body with another with the same or a similar name. And as time goes on and more and more records are added to World Cat, I am more and more astonished by how often people with the same or a similar name can be found writing on the same or a similar topic in the same time period, even when the name at first blush would seem to be an unusual one. To say nothing of how often people with the same or a similar name who write on completely different topics, or lived at completely different times, nevertheless get confused by catalogers!

I do wish the lay users of library catalogs had direct access to this data. But they are still helped indirectly when catalogers get the right names attached to to the right resources, enabling them to find what they are looking for.

--
Kathie Coblentz
Rare Materials Cataloger
Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs
The New York Public Library
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
476 Fifth Avenue, Rm. 313, New York, NY 10018
nypl.org

My opinions, not NYPL's