Adam,
You've said what I was trying to say, only you did it much better.
Thank you.

Frankly, many institutions are already in the position of requiring their
catalogers to treat a broader range of subjects, languages, and formats
than any one individual can really handle.  Of course, not all of us are
aware of what we do not know, but that is another problem.


Larry
-- 
Laurence S. Creider
Interim Head
Archives and Special Collections Dept.
University Library
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM  88003
Work: 575-646-4756
Fax: 575-646-7477
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On Wed, May 16, 2012 5:09 pm, Adam L. Schiff wrote:
> On Wed, 16 May 2012, John C. DeSantis wrote:
>
>> I too disagree with the suggestion to make cross references from
>> non-nominative forms of names.  This is not just a question of Latin--
>> many language groups have inflected forms, including Slavic and
>> Finno-Ugric.  I would think it would suffice to record the inflected
>> form as usage in the 670.  Unlike some others, I would actually be
>> horrified if I saw an authority record with an inflected form in a 400
>> field; it would suggest to me that the cataloger was not familiar with
>> the language of the item being cataloged.
>>
>> John DeSantis
>> Dartmouth College
>
>
> And that never happens, does it John?  ;-)  I fear that as we lose people
> to retirement and cutbacks, the truth of the matter is that we will be in
> the situation more and more of having generalist catalogers without the
> broad spectrum of language skills that staff in large academic or public
> libraries might once have had.  To say nothing of smaller libraries that
> might only have one or a few catalogers and might still have to catalog in
> a multitude of languages.  As we all lose staff, how long before no one
> has the ability to catalog well in some languages or in a large number of
> subjects/disciplines.  The copy that I see regularly for natural sciences
> is full of horrific subject analysis and ignorance or inadequacy.
>
> Adam
>
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