Markus Klink wrote:
> > Here some dirty questions waiting for a quick answer:
> >
> > "Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich" or "Cajkovskij, Pėtr Il'ic"?
> > "di Biase, Fausto" or "Biase, Fausto di"?
> > "van Wijngaarden, Adriaan J" or "Wijngaarden, A. van"?
> > "Vu, Quoc Phong", "Vu Quoc, Phong", "Quoc Phong, Vu", "Phong, Vu Quoc" or what else?
> >
> > What are the "proper" variants? And what are the rules?
>
> You see, that is exactly the point why quick and dirty does not work when you intend to
> share data. I am not a bibliographer, but would like DC see to promote some rule
> awareness. It doees not matter which of the of the examples abov you take for the
> "real" one. As long as you stick to one variant.
You can of course require everyone to stick to *your* rules. But they won't play your
game if they think that your rules force them to do something that they perceive as
something wrong.
> Above that would be "Tchaikovsky,
> Peter Ilich", "Biase, Fausto di", "Wijngaarden, A. van", and one of your choice. AACR
> might tell otherwise, but making people learn the AACR in order to fill in a DC set is
> a little bit over the top.
Tchaikovsky is dead and can't complain, but di Biase (he's Italian) has actually
complained when he found "Biase, Fausto di" in our database. On the other hand,
"Wijngaarden, A. van" is probably OK for the Dutch (at least I found it in a Dutch
library catalog; in our database he's written the other way). The Vietnamese would
probably want "Vu Quoc Phong" without comma, who are we to say them that this is wrong?
The problem is that we already *have* different rules in different environments
(here: names from different countries in different languages).
Making one of those rules a must for the others will always be problematic.
There are more than just the technical aspects in this game: You'll have to convince
*people* to use DC, not machines. The "proper" machine readable entry might be deterrent
for quite a lot of potential users.
> I am simply worried that without a strong set of rules DC will lead nowhere...
I would guess that James Weinheimer and Bernhard Eversberg have something to say
here ;-)
Best regards,
- Michael
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