Below are further comments responding to the document The Future of
Undifferentiated Personal Name Authority Records and Other
Implications for PCC Authority Work. I hope
you'll find some if not all of them useful. And thanks to
all those who've worked hard on this very necessary project. Sincerely -
Ian
______________________
"Is it [breaking up
personal name authority records] a worthy goal to achieve?"
Yes.
Undifferentiated NARs cause confusion on a range of issues.
- improper maintenance: data not migrated to a
newly differentiated NAR
- incomplete information "Record includes
additional persons"
- unclear whether a heading with qualifying
information such as year of birth should be allowed as undifferentiated (it is done, and is confusing)
- beyond the domain of catalogers: Other
librarians don't understand NARs very well.
- people think a NAR is associated with a
*individual*, not with a heading
- some undifferentiated NARs have diacritical marks that apply to one person but not another.
______________________
"The
software will not control a heading to an undifferentiated authority record and
so the multiple entities contained within them cannot be synchronized."
Not only that, but they *should* not be
"synchronized". (I'm not sure
what synchronized means in this
context.) The data that pertain to one person in an undifferentiated NAR don't
also pertain to someone else. It gets
*very* confusing when an undifferentiated NAR has 400 fields in it. Surely the data in the 400 field pertain to
just *one* of the individuals covered?
Or if not-- worse still!
Another facet to consider is when a Name-Title
authority record exists whose name portion is undifferentiated. This happens when a reference is needed from
one name-title to another name-title.
But obviously the name is that of just *one* of the multiple authors in
the undifferentiated NAR.
______________________
Rather than delete NARs that are not to be
used, instead retain them but permanently retire them. This includes all
undifferentiated NARs.
If they are retained
then we can consult them.
Code them with
Name use: 008/14
b
Heading
not appropriate for main or added entry and/or
Auth status: 008/33 n Not applicable (not an established heading).
Include a 667 field
documenting the retirement and indicating the LCCN of any replacement NAR(s).
OCLC headings would not be controlled to such
NARs.
Meanwhile, in OCLC's "superseded
versions", a very helpful tool at times: It would help further if OCLC can provide access not only to superseded versions of the NAR
represented in field 010a, but (separately) also to superseded versions of
those NARs with field 010z that have been merged into the retained NAR.
______________________
"By redefining the meaning of
value ‘b’ in 008/32 in this way, we could both identify those headings whose 1XX forms are
knowingly identical and preserve the capacity to detect inadvertent duplication."
Rather than redefining code b, please introduce
new codes:
c to
indicate that (1) the heading is not unique AND (2) the heading was formerly
represented by an undifferentiated heading in a now-retired NAR (which would be
documented in field 667)
d to indicate that (1) the heading is not
unique AND (2) no NAR with an undifferendiated heading exists.
______________________
"Resolution: Explore the use of the ID number of the
separate authority record as the differentiating characteristic of last resort"
Caution: Use of an "ID
number" will be even less popular with some authors than the use of
dates. In recent years, objection to the
disclosure of people's birth year has increased. The use of the year in library catalogs is taken
by most catalog users, not as an element to distinguish between authors (as
catalogers consider it to be), but as providing information (as is borne out by
the users complaints that prompted the change of NACO policy to allow closing
of dates for persons known to be dead, even though such work was not required
for differentiation purposes).
Again: the differentiation is between headings and not between persons. It is not widely known that:
1) a NAR is associated with a heading, but not
necessarily with a particular individual.
2) NARs
for a specific individual can change. An
initially differentiated but unqualified heading can, through undifferentiation
and redifferentiation, represent first one person, later another.
3) An individual can be represented by more
than NAR simultaneously (multiple bibliographic identities.
4) Two NARs both representing the same
individual can be merged (example: Unabomber - Ted Kosinski).
5) A personal name NAR can represent a group of
people, as with some pseudonyms.
______________________
"Perhaps the anomaly of undifferentiated personal name authority records
will be the catalyst to push us to consider a major change in the nature of
authority work."
Another catalyst, mentioned above, is the
preference of users not to disclose identifying information that can be
considered (a) confidential (b) endangering the personal security through
exposure to account hacking and other crimes.
This is not so much a paradigm shift, but a change in
fashion. The use of differentiating
information vs. provision of linking information that can direct a user of an
online catalog, not to other works by or about the same person, but to online
resources such as biographical statements (e.g. Wikipedia, and more
"scholarly" tools).
Qualifiers have some bizarre consequences, as
when one person is given a Ph.D. in subfield c, while another is given
"Dr." , and to the cataloger the two headings have been
"differentiated" whereas to the catalog user no difference is
apparent: both of them have doctorates: and they're unlikely to even notice the
different abbreviations in use.
______________________
Responses to Cases:
1) Evidently saving the time of the cataloger
took priority over saving the time of the user.
This was ecomically necessary but had unfortunate consequences. We do however now recognize that catalog
users do in effect use the catalog as an authoritative source for a person's
dates of birth and death.
2) Marsha Paiste recently asked on OCLC-Cat
about such harvesting, and how to perhaps do a "global change".
3) A name heading must become a link to other
data, not just bibliographic. A heading
can be "flexible" in what data are displayed. In some case, just a name (even just a
surname); in other cases, birth year, occupation - all encoded in fields 3XX,
and all unique to the individual represented.
To accomplish this, we must move towards having NARs represent
individuals rather than headings or "bibliograhic identities."
4) This is an important move. Already, anyone can access NARs via
authorities.loc.gov. However it is rare
for that site to be accessed via an Internet search engine.
By no
longer focusing on the uniqueness of the text string of an authority heading
itself but rather on the uniqueness of the entity it represents
--
an essential aspect of the paradigm shift for authority
work
______________________
"Recommendation: Have the
PCC NACO program review the impacts that the
elimination of the need for a unique text string in an authority record."
I differ in part. A unique text string might not be feasible,
but it is desirable when practicable.
And in all cases, assemblage of appropriate and pertinent data to the
individual (or perhaps to the "bibliographic identity") must be rendered
practicable.
For example:
Winston Churchill, American novelist
Winston Churchill, British journalist, Boer War
correspondent
Winston Churchill, British novelist, British
historian
Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister,
1940-1945 and 1950-1955.
Sir Winston Churchill
All of the above are "identities" of
some kind or another. All but the first
represent the same individual. But in
different contexts, the various data elements can be appropriate.