It’s quite correct to say that we don’t add dates to an established authorised access point for a personal name, when we establish a new access point for another person with the same preferred name, that can be qualified.

It’s also enormously frustrating. When we have several access points in LC/NAF, all qualified except one, that one attracts all the uncontrolled bibliographic records that anyone might have, relating to anyone of that name, whether legacy records that have not been authority controlled, or records in process of various kinds. If the name is that of a well-known person whose authority is qualified, the unqualified name is often used by cataloguers, and discovered by users, in mistake for it.

RDA 9.19.1.1 says “Make the additions specified at 9.19.1.2–9.19.1.7 if they are needed to distinguish access points representing different persons with the same name”. It doesn’t say “make the additions only to one of the names needing to be distinguished”. That’s a PCC requirement, arising from the desire to avoid BFM, by not changing access points unless absolutely necessary.

Given that we’re now changing hundreds of thousands of access points, manually and by algorithm, for RDA, I would like to have more flexibility to make additions to common preferred names in established authorised access points, if this will avoid confusion in the future.

Regards

Richard

_________________________

Richard Moore

Authority Control Team Manager

The British Library

Tel.: +44 (0)1937 546806                      

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