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Based on long reading in scientific/technical literature (cataloging thousands of unpublished research reports), the use of initials is a really convention imposed upon people writing professionally in many sciences,  the military, and business.  Therefore it is not, strictly speaking, used "purposefully" as an author's choice.  It is somewhat like the fact that the sciences use a different footnoting/citation convention.  In private business communications, the convention was first initials for letters and nothing but initials for memos, which creates a lot of problems of identification for researchers and catalogers.  If Gen. Grant were known only from his military correspondence, his "preferred" form would have been "Grant, U.S. (Ulysses S.)."


Personally, I am not sure what to do, especially when the person does not write in separate genres.  The problem is that using simple initials without trying to find fuller forms makes it difficult to find other accounts of the person in other data bases such as online obituaries, faculty profiles, Social security, census, etc., especially when the surname is relatively common.  We have run into this repeatedly with our RCA Laboratories research reports,  where the authors aren't even consistent, some times using one initial and at other times, two.


This will become a really serious problem if scientific writings are ever cataloged at the article level, for example, by being digitized separately, because the main form of scientific communication is the professional paper, not the monograph, which is more often a summing-up or popularization.  Many cutting edge scientists and other researchers publish only articles for most or all of their careers, particularly if they work in independent institutes and laboratories, teaching hospitals, science museums, botanic gardens, etc.  Their works are abundantly represented in libraries, but within journals and not in author statements.


I think the best solution might be to take as the preferred form the name that appears when the author is writing for a larger, more public audience, and if that option is not available, taking a bit more trouble to find the fuller form to put after the initials.


I am not sure what works best in this case where there are different forms for different genres.  Are science and science fiction separate "enough," as opposed to cases I have seen where an author writes in drastically different fields, such as for a profession and for a hobby?  Is the corpus of one genre significantly larger to be able to establish a preferred form that way?  Is the community of science readers larger than that of the science fiction readers?  Another case for uniform numerical identifiers?


Chris Baer

Hagley Museum and Library



________________________________
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Adam L. Schiff <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 3, 2017 4:56 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCLIST] Alternate identity is a variant of real name and not a pseudonym


I would treat these names as separate identities, especially since the author purposefully used different forms for different genres of writing.



Adam Schiff
University of Washington Libraries



From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Marshall, Linnea ([log in to unmask])
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2017 1:53 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Alternate identity is a variant of real name and not a pseudonym



Colleagues,



If an author has used a variant form of her name for some of her writings could it ever be considered an alternative identity under RDA 9.2.2.8 and have a separate NAR or should it always be treated as a different form of the same name under 9.2.2.5?



The case in hand: there exists two NARs for the same person: �Mitchell, Victoria E.� and �Mitchell, V. E.� The author has used the two forms of her real name to differentiate her publications in two different genres. The former heading was used by the author for her professional work in geology, the latter heading for her work as an writer of science fiction.



Should the two NARs be related to each other with 500 cross references or reported as duplicates with her professional name as the preferred name and �Mitchell, V. E.� as a 400 variant name heading?



Although the answer seems to me to be that the two NARs should be reported as duplicates, merging them would do our users a great disservice. In our catalog science fiction fans would have to scan through a long list of Idaho Geological Survey publications (131 records) posted under her name heading in order to find which of her fictional works our library holds (8 records).



Thank you for your guidance.



Linnea Marshall

Catalog librarian

University of Idaho Library

Moscow, ID 83844-2350