I agree with Ricky.
Additionally, we should be very careful of discussing how systems index
records. Any system will be able to index any field, and different
administrators will decide to index fields in their own way. It should
be our task to give administrators clearly delineated fields for them to
index.
At a minimum, I believe that, based on the admitted ambiguity of the
terms "Creator" and "Contributor," any responsible system should index
these two fields together. If someone wants to index "Publisher" also,
they can--but others should have the ability to *not* be forced to index
"Publisher" together with "Creator" and "Contributor". The only way to
do this is to make sure that "Publisher" is coded separately from the
others, and to have some sort of guidelines for "what determines a web
publisher."
As I remember it, the impetus for the agent proposal was based on an
unclear understanding of what constitutes a "web publisher" vs. a
"responsible person/corporate body." It wasn't over any defects in the
coding, itself.
I believe that the present DC guidelines allow for fully adequate coding
now and don't need to be revised. If we decide to code the three
concepts separately, does the coding:
dc.agent.creator
dc.agent.contributor
dc.agent.publisher (or whatever the precise coding)
have any advantage at all over:
dc.creator
dc.contributor
dc.publisher
Jim Weinheimer
Princeton University
[log in to unmask]
"Smith, Allison" wrote:
>
> Some systems work that way (multiple fields can be linked to a single
> index), but, not all systems work that way. In our local system, one field
> = one table. If you have a Creator field, all terms go into a Creator field
> table (index). If you have a Publisher field, the terms go into a Publisher
> table. There is no way to cross search on these two fields, as if they were
> one.
>
> In this kind of system, if a user did a search on the Creator field for
> Macmillon, all it would retrieve are those records where Macmillon appears
> in the Creator field. It would not retrieve any Macmillon's in the
> Publisher field. This is a problem, and is why a linked "Role" field is so
> important.
>
> ************************************************************
> 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: Ricky Erway [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> > Sent: Friday, May 14, 1999 4:11 PM
> > To: Smith, Allison
> > Cc: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: RE: agent types
> >
> > Re: Allison Smith's saying "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."
> >
> > At the risk of stating the obvious, one can combine creator, contributor,
> > and publisher in a SINGLE INDEX so that searchers can find all things in
> > which a person played a role. It is only when these elements are combined
> > in a SINGLE FIELD that flexibility is lost and there is no easy way to get
> > it back.
> >
> > Ricky
> >
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