Greetings to the list,

My apologies if this has been discussed before. My question concerns the use 
of <famname> within <origination> or <controlaccess>. I've seen a few 
instances of encoding guidelines that recommend taking the authorized form 
of a family name from the LC Name Authority File (lcnaf). However, family
names are not in lcnaf but rather in the LC Subject Authority File. So this 
is my first question: Shouldn't we direct encoders to check family names in 
the LC Subject Authority File rather than the Name Authority File?

But ... Until DACS appeared, family names had been formulated following the 
LC Subject Cataloging Manual (specifically, H1631, Genealogy and Family 
Names), not AACR2 or NACO rules. Establishing a family name according to the 
LC SCM requires selecting a preferred form of the name and doesn't seem to 
allow variant spellings to be used as authorized headings (except in the 
case of "similar-sounding names with different meanings and similar names 
from different ethnic backgrounds," which may be established as separate 
names -- eg., Cook family and Koch family). So if the name is established as 
"Adams family" and there's a 400 (see from) reference in the authority 
record from "Addams family," even though the family whose papers we're 
describing spells its name "Addams" and is generally known as "Addams," we 
must use "Adams" in our controlled heading. Am I misunderstanding the 
subject cataloging rules here? This might be appropriate for genealogical 
research, but for archival description, where we really do want to index 
local name variants in our catalog records and finding aids, it seems to me 
this is a problem. Following the rules, we'd have a record that looks like 
this:

100 3   Adams family
245 10 Addams family papers

If you used "Addams family" in the 100, and your repository had headings 
checked by an authority service, the name would still be flipped to "Adams 
family."  Yikes!

I can't quite tell whether DACS 12.29 is intended to harmonize with SCM 
H1631 or not (choose the form of name by which the family is commonly 
known). Can anyone help me out? Thanks, everyone!

Marsha

Marsha Maguire
Manuscripts and Special Collections Cataloging Librarian
University of Washington Libraries
P.O. Box 352900
Seattle, WA 98195-2900
(206) 543-8407 fax: (206) 685-8782
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