I am very taken by the idea of collapsing all "agents" into a single field,
and am in the process of gaining concensus on the benefits of doing this in
our local, non-MARC system, (mainly, as Bernhard points out, so that all
maker/contributor/publisher/manufacturer/firm names in our collection, can
be indexed in a single field). So many times, a single "entity" (mostly
Corporate and Architectural Firm names) in our collection will be listed as
the Creator of some artifacts, a Contributor for others, and a Manufacturer
or Firm still in others. I would like to give our users the opportunity to
search a single field for a creator or corporate name, and pull together all
artifacts, books, letters, papers, photographs, blueprints, etc., that
relate to their search term, no matter what role that person/corporation
played.
Now, our local system, we will soon have the ability to attach a linked
"Role" field to the Name/Agent field, so that we do not loose the richer
information about the role the entity played in the manufacture or creation
of the item/collection.
It seems to me that, if DC Creator, Contributor and Publisher get collapsed
into a singe field, DC would not have 15 elements anymore, but would instead
have 13. Does this mean we have room to add one or two more fields? This
is a joke, however, in a similar fashion to what Bernhard has proposed
below, I would propose the elements this way:
DC.Name (Name of the Creator/Contributor/Publisher/Manufacturer/Firm, etc.,
in standard AACR2 format, one per tag - repeatable)
DC.Role (free text - concatonation of the above name, and following it with
a term chosen from a list of acceptable "Agent terms", such as Creator,
Contrubutor, Publisher, Manufacturer, Firm.....)
It would look like this:
<DC.Name> Adams, Ansel
<DC.Role> Ansel Adams, Creator
Since the elements are repeatable, you could further describe Contributors,
Surrogate creators, etc.
Please explain to me if this is not do-able, and why, because it seems like
such a simple solution to me.
************************************************************
Allison A. Smith
Retrospective Conversion Coordinator
Chicago Historical Society
312 642-5035 ext. 398
[log in to unmask]
Check out the Chicago Historical Society's website:
http://www.chicagohistory.org
************************************************************
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bernhard Eversberg [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, May 14, 1999 3:31 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: agent types
>
>
> Stu writes:
>
> > I would like to see a solution that acknowledges the readily apparent
> > logical relationship among agents. Among the many who oppose the Agent
> > proposal, there are few indeed who would argue that these three elements
> are
> > not related. ...
> > Acknowledging this relationship does NOT make later acceptance of the
> agent
> > proposal a fait accompli.
> > It certainly WILL make it easier to reconcile the DC-15 with other
> > initiative including INDECS, but perhaps more importantly, with Z-39.50,
> > which has basically adopted DC as the cross discipline searching set,
> but
> > has decided to conflate the three agent elements into an abstract
> element
> > they call NAMES.
> >
> Assuming that "It" here means the acceptance of the agent proposal, I'd
> like to add one remark and suggestion:
>
> Cataloging rules have long since differentiated between descriptive
> elements
> and access point elements.
> If you want unified access to names on the one hand (regardless of
> functions) but still differentiate between different categories of names,
> this can of course be done.
> MARC does it by providing just one descriptive field into which you enter
> the "Statement of responsibility" in the form given on the piece being
> cataloged. For the access points, there are different fields for persons
> and corporate bodies, their functions can be coded in subfields and/or
> indicators. If unified indexing is the goal, one might downgrade MARC
> to have just one repeatable names field, not indicating any functions in
> it. The functions are only in the descriptive field - which does not and
> need not get indexed.
> This would suggest a different approach for DC: instead of the three
> fields
> there are now, one would have
>
> DC.Responsibility Text, not intended for indexing, saying who's done
> what,
> containing names as given
>
> DC.Name repeatable for all persons and bodies involved,
> containing the forms of names suitable for indexing
>
> B.E.
>
>
> Bernhard Eversberg
> Universitaetsbibliothek, Postf. 3329,
> D-38023 Braunschweig, Germany
> Tel. +49 531 391-5026 , -5011 , FAX -5836
> e-mail [log in to unmask]
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