Hello Ted
“Fictional” should be coded somewhere on the authority for fictional persons or other entities.
It is recorded as part of the authority data, at least, it is in NACO records, where any responsible cataloguer would record it as an “other designation” in 368
$c. In our NACO contribution we use the LCSH terms “Fictitious character”, “Anonyms and pseudonyms”, “Horses”, etc., for fictitious, pseudonymous or non-human entities.
We also think that the fictitious nature of the entity should always be recorded in the authorized access point, regardless of whether dates or other qualifiers
are already present. I was the original author of the RDA proposals to record these attributes; we tried and failed on more than one occasions to persaude JSC (as was) to make the qualifier mandatory in the authorized access point.
Regards
Richard
________________________
Richard Moore
Authority Control Team Manager
The British Library
Tel.: +44 (0)1937 546104
E-mail:
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“You’re very clever, young man, very clever. But it’s turtles all the way down.”
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Ted P Gemberling
Sent: 05 April 2016 23:40
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] FRBR-LRM: The bibliographic universe and non-human and fictitious agents
Stephen Hearn said, “We inhabit both the real and the bibliographic universe.” I agree there needs to be a place for fictional persons and other entities in the bibliographic universe, but catalogs are more valuable if they give the user some way of evaluating whether someone is real or not. I still think that when you use dates, as I said a few months ago, with someone’s name, you are implying they have a place in the real universe. “Fictional” should be coded somewhere on the authority for fictional persons or other entities.
Disciplines like science and history are all about what is real. I suppose if you were creating a catalog entirely for science fiction works—or maybe better, science fiction characters—it would make sense to treat all dates as equal, whether real or fictional. But in a catalog that includes materials for disciplines like science and history, I’d rather have James T. Kirk’s dates somewhere besides the 100 $d. If they were in some other field (maybe 046 with a special code meaning fictional?), someone could create a database of fictional persons from the authority file without confusing people who are looking for real persons.
Just my two cents.
Ted Gemberling
UAB Lister Hill Library
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Moore, Richard
Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2016 1:22 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] FRBR-LRM: The bibliographic universe and non-human and fictitious agents
Bob
As you would perhaps expect, I agree completely. Either the LRM definition of “Person” needs to be less restrictive, or agency needs to be expressed as a relationship
rather than with the “Agent” superclass. The latter, in my view, is more semantically correct and also more effective. It’s much more useful to be able to assign an agency relationship to anything presented as an agent, rather than enumerate the things that
could be agents – especially in the restrictive way that the LRM draft has it.
That way if a fictitious character or non-human animal is presented as an agent in relation to a work or expression, we can record that relationship (whether we
call it authorship, or purported authorship).
This is akin to the way we might treat entities as subjects. The class describes what an entity is, but “agent” or “subject” is a relationship. Not a superclass.
Otherwise, the only way we can express the agency relationship of the Nomens of these entities to works or expressions, is by pretending they are really the Nomens
of real humans who are associated with them in some way.
Regards
Richard
________________________
Richard Moore
Authority Control Team Manager
The British Library
Tel.: +44 (0)1937 546104
“You’re very clever, young man, very clever. But it’s turtles all the way down.”
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Robert Maxwell
Sent: 29 March 2016 19:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] FRBR-LRM: The bibliographic universe and non-human and fictitious agents
Just to bring this back to my original point, details about what is or is not fictitious or how it should be labeled are moot in the LRM as proposed
because anything other than so-called “real” persons (that is, those that exist in the “real” universe) are excluded from the category of person or agent. Being able to label instances of the person entity (or for that matter, corporate body or family) as
“fictitious” or “legendary” or “deity” or whatever is great, but the model has to permit you to describe the instance in the first place before you can apply a label. Not recognizing the agency of non-human persons results in an inaccurate model of the bibliographic
universe. In my opinion, this needs to be reversed before we can start talking about including an attribute such as “fictitious/legendary/real” in the entity description.
Bob
Robert L. Maxwell
Ancient Languages and Special Collections Librarian
6728 Harold B. Lee Library
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801)422-5568
"We should set an example for all the world, rather than confine ourselves to the course which has been heretofore pursued"--Eliza R. Snow, 1842.
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Stephen Hearn
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2016 11:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: FRBR-LRM: The bibliographic universe and non-human and fictitious agents
The use case for labeling fictitious entities would be to enable users to exclude them from searches for real entities. Someone searching for male authors living in London in the late 1800s might not want to find Dr.
Watson in their results. Someone searching for women in Rome might not want to include the goddess Diana.The option of labeling Watson and Diana as fictitious entities (or with some such term and/or code) would resolve that. We have the option now to a degree,
but the terminology used to indicate fictitiousness/irreality varies.
Whenever I play "Who am I?" one of the first questions asked is, "Are you real?" It's a primary sort for most people. Occasionally that question is hard to answer in the game, but mostly it's easy. Without questioning
the value of more fine grained philosophical analysis, I think we should generally categorize entities with games like "Who am I?" and "Twenty questions" as our model of inquiry.
Stephen
On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 8:38 AM, Steven Folsom <[log in to unmask]> wrote: