LISTSERV 16.0 - PCCLIST Archives

Nancy,

I agree, especially regarding Authors. I train people that it should only be used for people who write belles-lettres, because otherwise nearly every authority record for people who have written any kind of work would have Authors added. I use Editors sparingly as well, for people who edit journals or as you say work for a publishing house. I've not run into Compilers, but it sounds like a pretty useless term to put in the occupation field.

In bibs it would make no sense to add 386 Authors to every record for a textual work. No one would come in to the library and ask if you have any books by authors. Or any scores by composers.

That's just the tip of the iceberg of course. I was successful in getting policy in the DCM Z1 that said not to include gender, nationality, ethnicity, etc in combination with profession terms, but I still see people adding it (e.g. Authors, German; Jewish novelists; African American dancers). You don't go to school to learn how to be an African American physician. I clean those up when I encounter them.

Adam Schiff

University of Washington Libraries

Hi all,

I have questions about the use of certain terms in 374 fields of NARs. Would you record "Editors" in the 374 field for a person who edited, say, a book on neurotransmitters? What about recording "Authors" for someone who wrote a book on European history? Does it make ever make sense to record "Compilers"?

In the course of correcting NARs I frequently come across records like these and I don't know whether to update them or not. To my mind, "Editors" makes sense only for people who work in the publishing industry; otherwise, it's a agent-work relationship and not an occupation. I think only authors of belles lettres are correctly identified as "Authors"; otherwise that too is a relationship designator. I'm not sure anyone is a compiler by profession but I could be persuaded otherwise.

Do you agree? If so, should I be removing those terms as I encounter them? (Such NARs are only reported to me if they contain additional errors; there are probably a lot more in records without other mistakes.) Is this something the PCC can weigh in on and remind NACOers of?

Thanks.

Nancy

-- 
Nancy Sack
Cataloging Department
University of Hawaii at Manoa
2550 McCarthy Mall, Honolulu, HI 96822
phone: 808-956-2648
fax: 808-956-5968
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