Mary Charles, 
Are the undifferentiated name headings really at fault for the kind of
"false flips" you're referring to here? Could you give an example of:
"With a linked authority system those changes can be really bad with
people 
writing books 100s of years before they were born"? My impression is
that false flips by, say, LTI are more likely a confusion between two
unique headings than something caused by undifferentiated headings. For
example, I just looked up "Adams, J. T.," who I know as a male singer,
and found that if you don't add the qualifier "vocalist," LTI would
change that to Adams, Jeannette T. If "Adams, J. T." were an
undifferentiated heading, no change could be made. 

My understanding of undifferentiated authority records is that they are
basically files for recording information about occurrences of very
generic names, like John Smith. As more is learned about particular
authors, they are removed from them and put in their own unique
authorities. So in a way, no date of authorship is implied by the use of
an undifferentiated heading, because no date for the person(s) is known.
	--Ted Gemberling, UAB Lister Hill Library, Birmingham, Ala.  
	


-----Original Message-----
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Lasater, Mary C
Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2006 10:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] undifferentiated name records

Paul,

You have touched on a topic/problem that I hope we can 'do better' 
under RDA. I would like to see us move toward using those phrases 
that we construct as $c's with the author's name and setting these 
authority records up that way. THEN when we find out more about the 
author, we can change the 'distinct' AR instead of the 'non-unique 
AR if necessary. Several years ago I mentioned in a talk at ALA 
that I spend too much time looking for how these have changed and 
would prefer not to even have the non-unique AR. With a linked 
authority system those changes can be really bad with people 
writing books 100s of years before they were born. If instead of 
constructing non-unique's we created individual AR's with the 
phrases (that we already construct for the non-unique authority 
records) and then changed that AR when we have more info, linked 
authority system changes would automatically change the 'correct' 
authority record, only. Much/all of the time spent looking for the 
changed heading that is no longer on the non-unique (Is this the 
Tom Smith born in 1952, or 53, or is it Tom T. Smith or Tom Smith, 
Ph.D.) would be eliminated.

Music catalogers already get to add these phrases and we see this 
type of 'qualification' on various web tools. What are the 
disadvantages? Do they outweigh the benefits?

Mary Charles Lasater

--On Friday, November 03, 2006 2:21 PM -0800 "Paul J. Weiss" 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I note that the practice of bracketing data in one 670 per person
> in an undifferentiated name record is not actually given as
> policy anywhere. The MARC authority format give it as one
> possibility ("subfield $a may contain a descriptive term for an
> author enclosed within brackets "). DCM  Z1 touches on it in the
> introduction and at 670. The NACO Participants Manual describes
> the practice, but our NACO reviewer at LC continues to remind me
> that the PM does not set policy.
>
> Do any of you _not_ follow that practice? If not, what was your
> thinking behind your decision? Have any of you considered some
> other practice?
>
> Thanks,
> Paul
> UCSD NACO Coordinator
>
>
> _______________________________________
> Paul J. Weiss
> Catalog Librarian and NACO Coordinator
> Metadata Services Department
> UCSD Libraries
> 858-534-3537
> [log in to unmask] _______________________________________



---------------------------------------
Mary Charles Lasater
Vanderbilt University
Email: [log in to unmask]