Ted Gemberling said:
>Maybe that's a question that bears analysis, what does "personalization" entail
> bibliographically? It seems at least part of it is when we  begin to think of something
> as having an independent agency and goals of its own. As a computer scientist or
> philosopher we might question the reality of that independent agency, but as
> consumers of the resource, it might still make sense to think of the entity as
> personal. As Allyson said, if we had to believe in the reality of every author in a
> fully factual/historical sense, spirit communications might be as questionable as
> Racter as an author. Yet we decided a long time ago to be non-judgmental and
> accept spirits as identities. 

Unfortunately, comparison to spirit communications does not help in the argument against FRBR-LRM.  I believe that the intent of FRBR-LRM is that spirit communications are invalid as Agents, exactly like computers, animals, and fictional characters.  FRBR-LRM specifies that Person must be "real persons who live or are assumed to have lived."  I think the intent is that the Person must have lived _at the time the Work was created_.  The text is ambiguous, so perhaps I am wrong.  But given their express dissociation of Person from fictional characters, I think the authors of the model do not intend to include supposed spirits as Agents, and would instead count the medium as the Agent.

This is definitely an aspect of the model that IFLA needs to clarify.

					Steve McDonald
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