Bruce wrote: "Search for a journal called "Human Ecology" by typing it into a title search. What do I get back? A long list of virtually identical title headings, with virtually no way to immediately discern which is the journal in question."
In catalogues using MARC codes, you can set up the catalogue to differentiate between monograph titles and journal titles.  E.g. the new British Library catalogue  http://catalogue.bl.uk/ (and there are many others which have been set up in this way).

Bruce wrote: "If I search for an author name like "John Smith", I want the metadata available that at a glance allows me to see which John Smith I want. I'd like easy access to not just when they were born and died, but maybe their country of origin, or something about what they did.  I
want to click on the author name and optionally pull information from an authority file (which I never see of course) that instantly shows me:

John Smith (with whatever unique id) is a person (NOT a ref!!)
he was born in England
he was a philosopher
he authored works x, y, z
here are variant forms of his name

Well,  the British Libray catalogue mentioned above gives you the LC authority, e.g. if you seach under Solvyns as an author:

System number  001775500 
Heading:  Solvyns, Balt. (Balthazar), 1760-1824 
Seen from:  Solvyns, Francois Balthazar, 1760-1824 
Seen from:  Solvyns, Balthazar, 1760-1824 
Seen from:  Solvyns, Baltazard, 1760-1824 
Source Data Found:  His The costume of Indostan, 1804:t.p. (Balt. Solvyns of Calcutta) 
Source Data Found:  Buckland. Dict. of Indian biog., 1968(Solvyns, Francois Balthazar, 1760-1824) 
Source Data Found:  Musical instruments of north India, 1997:t.p. (Baltazard Solvyns) 

Whilke the BNF catalogue http://catalogue.bnf.fr/  gives you (diacritics omitted):

Solvyns, François Balthazar (1760-1824) forme savante a valeur internationale 

Nationalite : Pays-Bas avant 1830
Langue : francais
Sexe : Masculin
Responsabilite : Auteur, Artiste graphique
Naissance : Anvers, Belgique 1760 - 
Mort : Anvers, Belgique 1824-10-10
La vedette peut être employee dans une vedette RAMEAU
La vedette ne peut s'employer qu'en tete de vedette
La vedette utilisee en zone 6XX n'admet pas de subdivision geographique

Peintre marin, graveur et illustrateur

Forme(s) rejetee(s) : 
< Solvyns, Franciscus Balthazar (1760-1824)
< Solvyns, Frans Balthazar (1760-1824)
< Solvyns, F. Balthasard (1760-1824)
< Solvyns, Balthazar (1760-1824)
Notice n° : FRBNF14061963

No doubt all names could receive such lavish treatment if the funding organizations wanted to recruit thousands more cataloguers for this purpose.

William Schupbach
Wellcome Library, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, England
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Catalogue: http://catalogue.wellcome.ac.uk

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