I am interested to see these two issues coming together in the DC
environment. Although I think there is value in authority control, it is
very expensive and not as effective as it might be even in the MARC
environment.
In the MARC-based authority file, we do spend a lot of time
differentiating authors with the same name. I think this is a worthwhile
activity but I don't think THE WAY we differentiate them (governed by
AACR) is very helpful: middle initials, fuller forms of name, birth date.
Are these the kind of things from which a user could recognize and choose
the correct entry from a long list of John Smiths? Not likely. On the
other hand, the author's institutional affiliation or field of work would
be very useful, even for the catalogers trying to be sure the John Smith
in front of them isn't already in the authority list (differentiated, but
not in a recognizable way) as:
Smith, John (John R.) [or any other middle initial for that matter]
Smith, John, 1936- [or any other birth date in the same century]
or even (God forbid!): Smith, J.
Author affiliation (or other work-related data about a person) won't work
for everything but if it's readily available and easy to record at the
time of metadata creation I think it is worth doing.
Celine Noel
UNC-Chapel Hill
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