I've periodically brought up my problem with the mods:name element, but
have just come across another reason why I think it needs to be fixed
now. If this structure is brought into MADS, the problems will be
compounded.
Problem 1: role should not be a child of name
Problem 2: name needs a wrapper
Explanation:
I'm working on some citation formatting stuff for MODS, and so asked a
PhD student I know who works across English and Japanese to send me a
MODS example with the data he feels he needs. Here's what I got for
the names:
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Ichiro</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Suzuki</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal" lang="jp" script="kanji">
<namePart type="given"> $B0lO) (B</namePart>
<namePart type="family"> $BNkLZ (B</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
While its great to have the language coding here, it is crippled
because of the structural problem that in this case this is the same
person, yet because MODS has no wrapper for name, there's no way to
tell. To leave it to authority records to solve the problem is not an
adequate solution, particularly if you're trying maintain compatibility
across MODS and MADS.
Example 2:
It should be possible to xlink the MODS author/creator/contributor to
its MADS authority file. Strictly speaking, you cannot do this now
because while role indicates a relationship between an entity and the
work in question (and so is contextual), mods:name wrongly assumes that
role is internal to that entity. This is going to be a mess as a
consequence.
What I suggest:
Fix the representation of names and the things they represent (people
and organizations) in MADS so that you can do the same with MODS in v4.
Here's one possible solution, though I imagine there are others (the
details are less important than the principle).
<contributor role="info:marcrelator/author">
<person xlink:href="info:lccn/n79055297"/>
</contributor>
Alternate 1:
<contributor role="info:marcrelator/author"
xlink:href="info:lccn/n79055297"/>
Alternate 2:
<person role="info:marcrelator/author"
xlink:href="info:lccn/n79055297"/>
For my Japanese example (I'm out of my element on the language coding
stuff here, but I'm sure the idea is clear enough):
<contributor role="info:marcrelator/author">
<person>
<name variant="transliterated">
<namePart type="given">Ichiro</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Suzuki</namePart>
</name>
<name lang="jp" script="kanji">
<namePart type="given"> $B0lO) (B</namePart>
<namePart type="family"> $BNkLZ (B</namePart>
</name>
</person>
</contributor>
Bruce
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