I still do not understand the need to dispense with the possibility of
"Publisher". It has always been a critical component of the record.
If we think that with the onset of the web, publishers will go the way
of the dodo, maybe this tendency would be correct, but on the contrary,
I see a great interest on the part of publishers to stake claims in the
Internet, and feel that they will only grow in influence.

It has always been important to be able to differentiate those
responsible for the "physical" content (be it print or electronic
formats) from those responsible for the "intellectual" content. I see no
reason to believe this will change in the future. 
For example, imagine trying to search for items authored by "Macmillan
Publishing Company" if nobody had ever bothered to distinguish
"Publisher" from "Author". In Princeton's online catalog, there are over
16,000 items published by Macmillan, but only 9 items authored by them.
Doesn't this show that differentiating publishers is useful? 
Do we really want to force users to go through 16,000 items to find 9?

Besides, if determining a publisher is difficult for the metadata
creator, just leave it out. Catalogers do that all the time.
Getting rid of "Publisher" seems rather short-sighted. 
	Jim Weinheimer
	Princeton University
	[log in to unmask]

"Smith, Allison" wrote:
> 
> 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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