Mac,
When I was working the reference desk at the public library, there were
times when it would have been helpful, if it worked.
Students get assigned to read a Black or Hispanic female author. After
all the books by the ones I knew were checked out then it involved some
work. There are reference books with that info, but then the question
was do we have anything by ??? It became an iterative process. This type
of question would only be able to be answered if we also encoded
language they wrote in, their nationality, and their heritage.
Will this be another useful field that is not available in any system?
Seems likely.
Another question is how long before that are enough authority records
with the information to become useful. Until almost all the current
records are coded, too much would be missing to make it comprehensive.
How long before we could answer the question "Show me all the fiction
works in the library written by women before 1900."? (That would also
require the original date of publication. Another possibly useful bit of
info. Where to stop?)
The question does get asked in public libraries, or at least it is part
of a question. Just not sure this is the best way to help the reference
folk deal with it.
Sincerely,
David Bigwood
[log in to unmask]
http://catalogablog.blogspot.com
-----Original Message-----
From: MARC [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 10:24 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Indication of gender in RDA and authority records
There is a proposed new RDA element for personal names: Gender. The
draft of RDA has been made available for public comment:
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/docs/5rda-sec2349.pdf
Presumably there would be fixed field element for gender in the MARC
authority records for persons.
Since this proposed new RDA value would probably be in the MARC
authority record, not the bibliographic record, the chances of it
actually being utilized in some way to assist patronts seem very
remote to me.
If we wish to simplify our practices in the interests of
"interoperability", the need would seem to be to remove redundant MARC
fixed fields from authority and bibliographic records, rather than add
them, particularly since so very few have found actual implemention in
our OPACs. All those redundant fixed fields originated when keyword
searching was not yet a dream.
I'm finding it difficult to imagine why the gender of an author is
relevant to the worth of that author's work. The days when a female
author found it necessary to write under a male name are long past
aren't they?
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([log in to unmask])
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
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