Linda Hill wrote, i.a.,
>....I remember from
reports of the first DC meeting that such an idea didn't overcome the
objections of the "traditional" librarians who wanted "Author" to be
there....
The librarians are still around, and some of us aren't very
traditional. To move away from emotive terms: the concept of
authorship is not a technical matter, it is a cultural matter. Indeed
(and there are better cataloging people than I listening in here) the
idea of authorship has differing national library implications, with
Europe less favoring this direction in catalogs than the USA.
It is not irrelevant that contemporary (I almost said modern) critical
theory, out of post-structuralist thought, has cast doubt on the concept
of authorship in profound ways which have been highly informing about
the cultural context of textual discourse. There are others however
(including myself) who believe that authorship retains relevance.
All of this is to say that we are not dealing with a minor technical
differentiation here. As so often, the important issues in what we are
talking about are not technical, but substantive. In the present case,
I think the largest community we are trying to aid is culturally
prepared to deal with the concept of authorship in the tools it uses to
find information, and in fact would be more frustrated than not if that
tool were not readily available to it. --pg
--
Peter Graham Syracuse University Library [log in to unmask]
Syracuse, NY 13244-2010 315/443-2573 fax 315/443-2060 9/98nw4.4
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