[With relation to the two snippets at the end of this message,] I can
see where Jim is coming from - but I don't agree with the idea of
granting "importance" to a particular creator/contributor.
My thinking is more in line with David's, where a "creator" is any body
(person or corporate) that was directly involved with the creation of a
resource (as opposed to publisher, which is the body that made the
resource available for consumption after it was created).
A contributor would be any body who provided support, materials,
motivation, etc to the creator(s). For example, a person writing an
article for a magazine could be listed as a *creator*, while that
person's wife, who provided lots of moral support, food, typing and
editorial input, could be listed as a *contributor*.
Trying to draw a line and make a definition of "if a person does X, they
are a creator, if they do Y, they're a contributor", is perhaps trying
to draw too fine a line in a too quickly changing world. Like the child
building a sand castle on the beach below the high tide mark, with the
tide coming in.
The line between "Creator" and "Contributor" is one that will never be
nailed down unless we move to the Agent idea, and have 50 billion agent
terms to choose from (1 term for every role of every person that's ever
had anything to do with intellectual resources).
I believe that as long as the information is in there somewhere, the
results will "come out in the wash" so to speak. It's probably better to
have a lot of not-well-defined metadata out there to search on, than to
have a tiny pool of extremely strictly policed metadata, which is only
of use to people who understand the nuances of the system.
Let's not make the same mistake as other people have, and attempt to
write a "simpler MARC". Let's just get something that's going to work.
Sure, it may not be clean, it may not be cultured, but who wants to make
coal miners wear tuxedos to work?
Alex
"Bigwood, David" wrote:
> Creator is repeatable and does not have the strict requirements of a
> main entry. So Creator would be anyone connected with the creation of
> the work. Contributors could be a lower level of involvement. I think
> many systems will combine searching on Creator and Contributor (just as
> out catalogs combine 100 and 700 MARC fields). That is not to say there
> is not a need for the 2 fields. Some local systems may well treat the
> fields as separate.
Jim Weinheimer wrote:
> "If you wish to give one person or corporate body primary status in your
> metadata record, place it in the CREATOR field. Otherwise, put all
> corporate bodies and persons in the CONTRIBUTOR field. Primary
> importance should be placed on adding enough people and corporate bodies
> to be of use to the searcher."
>
> This does not demand any changes to DC. And it does not equal the Agents
> proposal.
--
Alex Satrapa
tSA Consulting Group Pty Ltd.
Canberra, Australia
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