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]