Jim Weinheimer wrote: > It may not be so much a MARC problem, but a conscious decision among > catalogers quite some time back that continuing this sort of access was > unwarranted. Adding relator codes have always been possible > http://www.loc.gov/marc/relators/relaterm.html but, while I cannot point to a > decision from where I am currently, it was obviously decided that it was not > worth the effort. At this point, I can point to some cards > http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_gU8TOkockqs/TKO77DZVvSI/AAAAAAAAAi4/_WHr- > zMo_ac/s1600/loc-card-catalog-entries-sep-2010.jpg, that show earlier > practices of "joint author", and "comp."
As you noted, that decision was "quite some time back" and was pretty much an entirely different world than the one we're in now. Card catalogs were still the norm, and added entries in online catalogs operated in essentially the same fashion as they did in card catalogs. > There is a lot of metadata that could be added to records that is considered > not worth the effort. It's important to distinguish between a complete lack > of access (i.e. when a name is not recorded at all) as opposed to more > "specific" access, such as being able to limit a search to someone as an > editor, a publisher, a producer, a "joint author", and so on, although the > person's heading can still be found. "Not worth the effort" for whom? If we're lucky, we will be moving to a data infrastructure that doesn't impose a "one-size-fits-all" heading string for all libraries and all users. In an ideal system (talking universally here, not meaning individual ILS), an agency would record the data and it would be instantaneously accessible to the rest of the world. What we want to avoid is a system in which recording the data is an *impediment*. Unfortunately, the latter is what does currently happen in most local systems, where headings with the relator terms file separately from the headings without relator terms. I'm not operating under any delusion that we're close to being in that ideal world, but I certainly don't think we should refrain from trying to do what we can to make progress toward it. Just because most systems can't handle this data well doesn't mean they will NEVER be able to handle it well. Collections of bibliographic data have longer lives than the particular programs used to work with the data. Kevin M. Randall Principal Serials Cataloger Bibliographic Services Dept. Northwestern University Library 1970 Campus Drive Evanston, IL 60208-2300 email: [email protected] phone: (847) 491-2939 fax: (847) 491-4345
