Someone pointed out to me that I should clarify my last remark, talking about the separating of people into "Creator" and "Contributor" I was thinking about what happens when mapping MARC to the Dublin Core Creator or Contributor elements, which are loosely defined - not to the RDA concepts which have a different and more distinct definition:
Creator - A person, family, or corporate body responsible for the creation of a work. Contributor - A person, family or corporate body contributing to the realization of a work through an expression. Contributors include editors, translators, arrangers of music, performers, etc. Is there any way to determine the RDA distinctions within the current MARC21? Without the use of relators, I can't see how... Laura -----Original Message----- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of Akerman, Laura Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2011 2:00 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Offlist reactions to the LC Bibliographic Framework statement I'm posting this to the BIBFRAME list as well since it seemed relevant... To me, the original "main entry" concept could more usefully be thought about in a larger context of "for any field that is repeatable in a set of bibliographic description fields, is it useful to be able to designate one such fields as "primary" for purposes of selection for display, categorization (where a particular application requires one to "select one box" to characterize a resource) or other functionalities? If so, should the designation be stored with the field, or separately from it? Other MARC approaches that serve that function include choice of "format" (which one goes in Leader byte 6, which one gets reflected in an 006, when a resource has characteristics of two "formats"?). For fields like subject, I believe there was a convention that the most important subject (the one upon which the primary classification number was based) had the first position in the record. Since many modern systems permit or even force re-ordering tags in numerical order, that positional value can and often is easily lost. Many of us stopped lamenting this a long time ago, but was it valuable? What I don't think is valuable, is having to pick one author of a work with multiple authors and designate that person as the "main" one, based on the almost arbitrary factor of position of the name on the title page, (which is often alphabetical), and ending up deeming this person "Creator" and relegating the other author(s) to "Contributor" status. (Nor do I think that dichotomy is particularly useful.) Laura Laura Akerman Technology and Metadata Librarian Room 128, Robert W. Woodruff Library Emory University, Atlanta, Ga. 30322 (404) 727-6888 lib...@emory.edu<mailto:lib...@emory.edu> -----Original Message----- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA]<mailto:[mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA]> On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2011 11:24 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA<mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA> Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Offlist reactions to the LC Bibliographic Framework statement Jim said: >Getting rid of a *single* main entry would be the equivalent of DC's ><creator> and <contributor> where <creator> is repeatable, thereby >creating multiple main entries. How would you produce single entry bibliographies? How would scholars cite in footnotes? How would cataloguers construct subject and added entries for works? Libraries are part of a larger bibliographic universe, and should adhere to its standards and practices, which would include returning to compiler main entry. __ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca<mailto:m...@slc.bc.ca>) {__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/ ___} |__ \__________________________________________________________ ________________________________ This e-mail message (including any attachments) is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this message (including any attachments) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please contact the sender by reply e-mail message and destroy all copies of the original message (including attachments).
