Mike, I don't understand why you think this bypasses authority control.
You can have authority control outside of WorldCat. As a matter of fact,
if your headings are authority-controlled today, they are authority
controlled no matter where your record is (and many library records are
not in WorldCat). The problem is that there is no direct link between
the authority-controlled heading and the authority record, especially
since the latter are not easily accessible. The use of actual
identifiers for authors (rather than text strings) will give us even
better authority control than we have today, and it can function outside
of library catalogs because the authority data will be available to anyone.
(Note: If you have a question or a rebuttal, it might be more effective
stated as such, leaving aside the sarcasm. I've had to interpret your
question, and may not be doing so correctly.) So if your question is:
doesn't this mean that "search would find not only every book by the
author of Tropic of Cancer, but every book by every author named Henry
Miller?" my answer is: no. You are thinking that it's a plain keyword
search against the web, and I'm referring to data that has been
formatted for the Semantic Web, not keyword searching. It's hard to
describe without examples and diagrams. You might want to play around
with this:
http://semanticproxy.opencalais.com/
It's not a perfect example for our discussion because we don't have
bibliographic data that it can operate on, so you have to extrapolate
from web sites what this might mean if we had bibliographic data that
could be interpreted in this way. Go to the demo, and plug in:
http://dublincore.org/dcmirdataskgroup/Scenarios_2f1
And plug in:
http://library.plymouth.edu/search/henry+miller?auth=miller%2C+henry%2C+1891-
This latter is difficult because the Semantic proxy goes against a whole
web page, which in this case has lots of different books and all of the
surrounding non-bibliographic software, so they are all mixed together.
It kind of gives you an idea of how the web might view bibliographic
data in the future. But admittedly this example requires a lot of
imagination. As we work along, I'm hoping our examples will be much clearer.
kc
Mike Tribby wrote:
The question Karen uses for an example ("how many books did Henry Miller write while he lived
in France?") is an interesting choice. Assuming that linking "from the mention of an
author anywhere on the web to books held by libraries. Directly. Not going through WorldCat"
would bypass authority control that search would find not only every book by the author of Tropic
of Cancer, but every book by every author named Henry Miller. Now that's a totally awesome
achievement, dude, as the kids like to say.
Mike Tribby
Senior Cataloger
Quality Books Inc.
The Best of America's Independent Presses
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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