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Richard,

 

No surprise that I agree with you, although I don’t look forward to more work.  If we are able to qualify both/all on an existing undif. authority record, then the entities that have never had an authority record would be less likely to be changed by mistake. I’ve always wondered why we had to qualify both in the case of a corporate body and geographic name, but not for personal names. I guess it goes back to all the BFM.  Anyone have a real answer as to why?

 

Mary Charles Lasater

 

 

From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Moore, Richard
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2012 9:25 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCCLIST] RDA - additions to distinguish personal names

 

I  am sending this again, as there seems to be some doubt as to whether it got through, the first time ;-)

 

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I'm interested in hearing any views on the following approach to RDA, as it relates to distringuishing identical personal names.  

 

9.19.1.1 says:

 

Make the additions specified under 9.19.1.39.19.1.6 if they are needed to distinguish the person from another person with the same name.

 

9.19.1.3 says:

 

Add the date of birth (see 9.3.2) and/or date of death (see 9.3.3), if necessary, to distinguish one access point from another.

 

and the following sections have similar wording.

 

It seems to me that it would be perfectly valid to apply these rules by qualifying both access points when a conflict arises. In the past we've only considered it necessary to qualify one of them on LC/NAF, and in multiple cases have often left one name unqualified.  Also, we have not considered a new unqualified name to conflict with an existing access point that uses the same preferred name with a qualifier. However, nothing in the rules quoted above demands that we qualify only one of a pair of conflicting names. 

 

I think that  past practice has caused problems, because incorrect bibliographic records for oth the wrong people keep attaching themselves to the unqualified headings, especially in catalogues such as ours, that have large numbers of legacy records and also import a lot of metadata.  

 

This happens often with names that are well-known; for example n 2009007346 "Blair, Tony" refers not to our erstwhile prime minister, but to a theatre perfomer from the 1940s; whereas the access point for the former premier has dates.

 

It would be much more useful to aim to qualify all personal names used by more than one person whenever a conflict arises, especially once undifferentiated records have been done away with.  

 

For new RDA NACO authorised access points for personal names, we could seek to qualify the access point if another authorised access point, or heading in our own database, already exists, and uses the same preferred name, whether or not the existing access point is itself qualified. 

 

I'm not suggesting for the moment that we should change an existing authorised access point in the LC/NAF purely to add a qualifier when no actual conflict exists.

 

 

Regards

Richard

_________________________

Richard Moore

Authority Control Team Manager

The British Library

                                                         

Tel.: +44 (0)1937 546806                      

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