Stu wrote...
> I would recommend that you follow standard proceedures that you would
> employ for other cataloging activities ... so, for names, I should
> think Last name, first name, middle initial would be most desirable.
First hemisphereism, now nameism... Stu's still carrying around some
cultural bagage, I see :-).
As a practical answer, I certainly agree with following your standard
cataloging rules (apart from anything else, much Dublin Core metadata
will simply be retrieved from existing catalog, so if that's what you
already store, that's what you will see in DC).
Suggesting 'Last name, first name, middle initial' is moderately
problematic in an international context. The Australian Department of
Social Securities once put out a helpful little booklet describing the
naming practices of various cultural groups. The variety of name forms
used was truely astounding. They ranged from one society whose members
might only have *one* name, to societies whose members had names that
included the names of both their mother and father. Even in societies
that did include a 'family' name, it might be anywhere from the first to
the last component of the name.
My bad old days in electronic directories taught me that the best
stored name is the name preferred by the person. This causes the least
amount of havoc when you are suddenly presented with an unusual name
(especially if the person concerned is sensitive about their name).
This is particularly true when you consider that the order of the name
components need make no difference to searching in DC.
You might argue that you can improve searching by identifying the
family name, but to be effective this requires both the cataloger and
the searcher to agree on the family name. One of my favorite authors is
'H. Raynar Wilson' (*), but I have no idea whether his surname is
'Raynar Wilson' or 'Wilson'. Neither do catalogers; I have seen both in
library catalogs.
The other pearl of wisdom I remember from my bad old days was:
Names are a mess. There is no good solution.
andrew
(*) author of 'Power Railway Signalling' and other like classics. He had
a son named 'Francis Raynar Wilson', so it is possible that the surname
was 'Raynar Wilson'. Or they might just have shared the same middle
name.
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