As a cataloger, I don't get reference questions all that often. Once, however, a student approached me and asked if the librarians were Moshiachists. I asked him what he meant by that and he pointed out that the Lubavitcher Rebbe was listed in the catalog as follows:
Schneersohn, Menah?em Mendel, 1902- He interpreted the fact that the years of Schneersohn's life were open ended to mean that we--as librarians--did not believe him to have passed away. I explained to him all about authority records and how (at the time) it was not LC's policy to add the year of a person's death to their authority file. The policy has since been changed and the Lubavitcher Rebbe's authority file now contains the year of his death, 1994. I guess old rabbis never die, they just go out to pastor, Steven Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
