Bruce,
I haven't had time to absorb all your comments, and I would like to. Since
my background is in traditional library authority control, the MADS schema
makes sense to me, but I would welcome some alternative vision.
As I look at your suggested structure--
So, structure might be:
person
names
primary
given
family
variant
given
family
roles
roleTerm
temporaral
birth
death
place
address
etc.
it occurs to me that what you are outlining is a bit of a biography. The
person, the various forms of name, roles, dates, etc. In fact--at least to
catalogers--authority records are not so much biographies as records of a
standardized and unique form of heading. That heading may, depending on the
circumstances, integrate name, dates and/or role. When you deconstruct the
heading into the biography, you make the record pretty much useless as an
authority record. It might be of interest to a metadata creator to know that
a person was born in 1934 and was a doctor of physics as well as an author,
but it wouldn't help her know how to construct a unique heading.
That said, maybe the concept of uniqueness of headings isn't as critical in
an online environment. Anyway, you gave me something to think about.
Would it be too much to ask you to "redo" one of the sample MADS records at
the MADS web site, in a way that makes sense to you. I would find it
interesting.
Ruth
Ruth A. Bogan
Head, Database and Catalog Portal Management Section
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
47 Davidson Road, Busch Campus
Piscataway, NJ 08854-5603
Ph.: 732-445-5906
Fax: 732-445-5888
Email: [log in to unmask]
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