LCCN, September 27, 2012
**
*Adventures in cataloging : a case of split personality*
By Melanie Polutta
The work of cataloging organizes many kinds of information so that it
can be found again. That is its essential purpose. But it does lead to
some interesting oddities. Why? Because the information we are
organizing is a reflection of people and their work -- and people are
not consistent.
This leads me to the discussion of authority work, and some of those
interesting oddities that can crop up. For those unfamiliar with
cataloging jargon, authority work is the creation of data that establish
a unique, "authorized" identity for a person, place, etc. These are the
points of access that you search when you are looking for the name of an
author, or a work that may have appeared under various titles, or one
specific place in the world. Considering how many people, places, works,
and institutions there are, I think it is clear that this can be a
challenging job, especially with common names. How can I be sure that
this John Smith is the one I want and not that John Smith? Authority
work attempts to answer that question by recording as much information
as possible about my John Smith so that I can connect him with the works
he actually created.
So authority work isn't always simple. A lot of the time, yes, it is,
but today I am going to show you one of the more interesting authority
record situations that can occur -- all because an identity is not
always one person.
When I was growing up, the Nancy Drew mysteries were among my favorites.
I still have a large collection of volumes 1-56, some of them bound two
to a volume, with a lovely gray binding. (I never liked the yellow
binding that came later.) They were all written, or so I thought, by
Carolyn Keene. What I didn't know at that time was that Carolyn Keene
wasn't one person; in fact, she wasn't a real person at all. Carolyn
Keene is a collective pseudonym for a variety of many people who all
contributed to the writing of the series. The current authority record
for her name reflects this. (http://lccn.loc.gov/n79084050) In it, you
will find several cross-references to the names of just some of the real
people who contributed to the writing of "Nancy Drew," including Edward
Stratemeyer, Mildred A. Wirt, and Carol Gorman.
When looking up the history of Nancy Drew, even that list is not
complete. But that also points out one of the limits of the authority
record as it exists now; it is not meant to be a complete biographical
record of the person, or even the pseudonym. The authority record
reflects what resources are in the collection, what access points are
needed for the resource, and what information was available to the
cataloger at the time. So, do I need a cross-reference for every single
person who contributed to the writing? Not necessarily. I need
cross-references from the names of those for whom a patron might search
or those for whom a separate authority record exists. I don't
automatically need to have a cross-reference for every single person.
And so the reality of cataloging erased this dreamy childhood image I
had of a nice, motherly woman who had a lovely daughter who looked like
Nancy Drew and undoubtedly inspired her mother to write these fun
stories about a mystery-solving teen. Instead I had an interesting,
complex puzzle of relationships, all swirling around the name Carolyn
Keene. That was better, because now I could make her out to be what _I_
wanted her to be -- Nancy Drew herself, all grown up and writing about
her adventures.
But I must say, I still find it strange that a man originally came up
with the idea for the character of Nancy Drew. <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Drew >
*Source Citation* (MLA 7^th Edition)
"Carolyn Keene." /Contemporary Authors Online/. Detroit: Gale, 2007.
/Literature Resource Center/. Web. 24 Aug. 2012.
*Source Citation* (MLA 7^th Edition)
"Harriet S(tratemeyer) Adams." /Contemporary Authors Online/. Detroit:
Gale, 2002. /Literature Resource Center/. Web. 24 Aug. 2012.
*Source Citation* (MLA 7^th Edition)
"Stratemeyer, Edward." /Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature/.
Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1995. /Literature Resource Center/.
Web. 24 Aug. 2012.
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