Re: [RDA-L] RDA question about dates
to do? Maybe
field of activity or best known work, maybe different for
different people?. Life dates are _definitely_ not the best way to do
that in the actual _identifier_, because identifiers work best when
they _never change_, and life dates change (when someoen dies, or when
we discover we had their birth date wrong, etc), which causes real and
serious maintenance and linking problems.
--
John Hostage
Authorities and Database Integrity Librarian
Langdell Hall
Harvard Law School Library
Cambridge, MA 02138
host...@law.harvard.edu
+(1)(617) 495-3974 (voice)
+(1)(617) 496-4409 (fax)
http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/
-Original Message-
From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and
Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 14:29
To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA
Subject: Re: [RDA-L] RDA question about dates
Thomas quoted:
A person known to have been born 100 or more years before the
formulation or re-examination of a heading should be assumed no
longer to be living.
A person born 50 years before being entered, will in five decades have
been born 100 years earlier. I ve been cataloguing since 1953!
Something which changes over time* should not be standard practice.
Hyphens before and after is such a better solution, in terms of
consistency, ease of machine manipulation, and suitability in
multilingual situations.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
*Concepts of time vary. When I was 60 and my grandson was 6, his
mother explained to me that one year was 1/60th of my life, but 1/6th
of his. Of course a year seemed longer to him. At 80, a decade seems
but a moment.
--
-
Prof. Heidrun Wiesenmüller M.A.
Hochschule der Medien
Fakultät Information und Kommunikation
Wolframstr. 32, 70191 Stuttgart
Tel. dienstl.: 0711/25706-188
Tel. Home Office: 0711/36565868
Fax. 0711/25706-300
www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi
Re: [RDA-L] RDA question about dates
On 1/18/2012 3:21 PM, John Hostage wrote:
Maybe the idea of hard-wiring dates and other additions into access points has
outlived its usefulness. It made sense in a card catalog, but maybe not so
much in an online world. Dates and other information can be carried as
separate elements in an authority record and combined as needed for display, as
in the German authority file, e.g. http://d-nb.info/gnd/119545373/about/html
Yes.
In a card catalog environment, a single string is used to serve as
_both_ the 'identifier' (used for collocation, and determining that all
records belong to the exact same 'heading' entity); AND as a
user-displayable display string.
This has a lot to do with the nature and form of our headings, that they
were created in such an environment.
In a computer environment, this is no longer the case.
Now, to be sure, figuring out most effective and efficient (for our
users, and for our back end workflows) way to do things in the new
environment is, well, something. If, for instance, you have two people
with the same name, you still don't want to show two identical headings,
they need to be disambiguated somehow in their display to the user.
Life dates may or may not be the optimal way to do that, in a
displayable string -- it's probably not best for our users, but what
might be best for our users might be too hard for us to do? Maybe field
of activity or best known work, maybe different for different
people?. Life dates are _definitely_ not the best way to do that in the
actual _identifier_, because identifiers work best when they _never
change_, and life dates change (when someoen dies, or when we discover
we had their birth date wrong, etc), which causes real and serious
maintenance and linking problems.
--
John Hostage
Authorities and Database Integrity Librarian
Langdell Hall
Harvard Law School Library
Cambridge, MA 02138
host...@law.harvard.edu
+(1)(617) 495-3974 (voice)
+(1)(617) 496-4409 (fax)
http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/
-Original Message-
From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access
[mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 14:29
To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA
Subject: Re: [RDA-L] RDA question about dates
Thomas quoted:
A person known to have been born 100 or more years before the
formulation or re-examination of a heading should be assumed no
longer to be living.
A person born 50 years before being entered, will in five decades have
been born 100 years earlier. I ve been cataloguing since 1953!
Something which changes over time* should not be standard practice.
Hyphens before and after is such a better solution, in terms of
consistency, ease of machine manipulation, and suitability in
multilingual situations.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
*Concepts of time vary. When I was 60 and my grandson was 6, his
mother explained to me that one year was 1/60th of my life, but 1/6th
of his. Of course a year seemed longer to him. At 80, a decade seems
but a moment.
Re: [RDA-L] RDA question about dates
Richard Moore quoted on Autocat:
As a matter of interest, in its Final Report (August 2011), the PCC Task
Group on AACR2 RDA Acceptable Heading Categories recommended that:
* For persons known or assumed to be dead: if dates of both birth
and death are available, give both dates, separated by a hyphen; if only
a birth date is available, give the birth date preceded by born; if
only a death date is available, give the death date preceded by died
* For persons known or assumed to be alive for whom a birth date
is available, give the birth date, followed by a hyphen
That's just plain silly (apart from the problem of SLC having to know
those terms in every language of the catalogue we serve). How long
after some one is born should we assume they are dead? Some die in
their 50s or earlier. Others live past 100. Are we to go in and
change the hyphen after date to born after X years have passed?
Stupid!!
In terms of other English words in 100$d, we are sticking with ISBD
and using fl. etc. We simply can't afford RDA's anglocentric
practice in a bilingual country, not to mention overseas libraries.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
Re: [RDA-L] RDA question about dates
-Original Message- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod Sent: January 18, 2012 1:15 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] RDA question about dates Richard Moore quoted on Autocat: As a matter of interest, in its Final Report (August 2011), the PCC Task Group on AACR2 RDA Acceptable Heading Categories recommended that: * For persons known or assumed to be dead: if dates of both birth and death are available, give both dates, separated by a hyphen; if only a birth date is available, give the birth date preceded by born; if only a death date is available, give the death date preceded by died * For persons known or assumed to be alive for whom a birth date is available, give the birth date, followed by a hyphen That's just plain silly (apart from the problem of SLC having to know those terms in every language of the catalogue we serve). How long after some one is born should we assume they are dead? Some die in their 50s or earlier. Others live past 100. Are we to go in and change the hyphen after date to born after X years have passed? Stupid!! The footnote in the original document http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/Report%20of%20the%20Task%20Group%20on%20AACR2%20%20RDA%20Acceptable%20Headings-1.docx for point 5.8 restricts the use of the term born: A person known to have been born 100 or more years before the formulation or re-examination of a heading should be assumed no longer to be living. Fortunately, RDA moves us in the right direction for a metadata standard and opens the door to bypassing this issue altogether. The birth date element can be entered as a distinct element in authority records in 046$f using the industry standard ISO8601 date format, or the Extended Date/Time Format (edtf - http://www.loc.gov/standards/datetime/ ) for more complicated date information that has been found in bibliographic data. Issues about display for concatenated headings remain, but that misses much of the point of RDA and what is has begun to address, and will likely continue to be addressed, leaving AACR2 well behind. Thomas Brenndorfer Guelph Public Library
Re: [RDA-L] RDA question about dates
Thomas quoted:
A person known to have been born 100 or more years before the
formulation or re-examination of a heading should be assumed no
longer to be living.
A person born 50 years before being entered, will in five decades have
been born 100 years earlier. I ve been cataloguing since 1953!
Something which changes over time* should not be standard practice.
Hyphens before and after is such a better solution, in terms of
consistency, ease of machine manipulation, and suitability in
multilingual situations.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
*Concepts of time vary. When I was 60 and my grandson was 6, his
mother explained to me that one year was 1/60th of my life, but 1/6th
of his. Of course a year seemed longer to him. At 80, a decade seems
but a moment.
Re: [RDA-L] RDA question about dates
Maybe the idea of hard-wiring dates and other additions into access points has
outlived its usefulness. It made sense in a card catalog, but maybe not so
much in an online world. Dates and other information can be carried as
separate elements in an authority record and combined as needed for display, as
in the German authority file, e.g. http://d-nb.info/gnd/119545373/about/html
--
John Hostage
Authorities and Database Integrity Librarian
Langdell Hall
Harvard Law School Library
Cambridge, MA 02138
host...@law.harvard.edu
+(1)(617) 495-3974 (voice)
+(1)(617) 496-4409 (fax)
http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/
-Original Message-
From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access
[mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 14:29
To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA
Subject: Re: [RDA-L] RDA question about dates
Thomas quoted:
A person known to have been born 100 or more years before the
formulation or re-examination of a heading should be assumed no
longer to be living.
A person born 50 years before being entered, will in five decades have
been born 100 years earlier. I ve been cataloguing since 1953!
Something which changes over time* should not be standard practice.
Hyphens before and after is such a better solution, in terms of
consistency, ease of machine manipulation, and suitability in
multilingual situations.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
*Concepts of time vary. When I was 60 and my grandson was 6, his
mother explained to me that one year was 1/60th of my life, but 1/6th
of his. Of course a year seemed longer to him. At 80, a decade seems
but a moment.
Re: [RDA-L] RDA question about dates
Steven Arakawa posted:
Smith, John, approximately 1930-1985
Smith, John, 1949-approximately 1990
Smith, John, approximately 1890-approximately 1970
The simple use of ca. would avoid our having to find out what
approximately is in French, German, Chinese, etc., just as hyphens
before and after dates would avoid out having to know what born and
died are in various languages, as well as having duplicate records
with the various languages.
RDA is *so* Anglocentric!
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
