So for all it’s worth I did look at the PCC-List archives because I remembered this coming up before, but the discussion does not seem to have concluded in a definitive way.
I’m trying to figure out how best to handle the merging of two corporate bodies to form a new one. In this case the evidence from the sources is extremely clear (literally a press release saying, “Body A and Body B have merged to form Body C”) so I’m just a
little puzzled how to handle the RDA relationship designators.
In Appendix K we have a relationship designator, “Mergee” (reciprocal form: “Mergee”) as well as “Product of merger” (reciprocal form: “Component of merger”). Because it’s not clearly spelled out in the appendix, is the intention here that we should use the
first term to relate the two merging bodies to each other, and the second to relate the merging bodies to the new body?
E.g.
Body A
Mergee: Body B
Product of merger: Body C
Body B
Mergee: Body A
Product of merger: Body C
Body C
Component of merger: Body A
Component of merger: Body B
In viewing the archives I found an interesting mention from 2014 that SCT suggested we don’t use “merge” language and instead rely on just “Predecessor” and “Successor”. That was in reference to the PCC Guidelines for the Application of
Relationship Designators in NACO Records” but that language no longer seems to appear in the document (as of the 2019 version.)
--Ben
Ben Abrahamse
Metadata Librarian
MIT Libraries