At 02:13 PM 6/28/2007, D. Brooking wrote:
I agree that trying to combine both display and access in one field (data element, whatever) is very problematic. I would like to see RDA avoid that.
I view this as strictly an encoding issue, and therefore not something that is in the scope of RDA at all.
Some may believe that displays can always be machine-generated from access fields, but I think there are more complex cases where it would actually be easier and quicker just to have a human supply the display version in the record itself. What works best for indexing and retrieval may not always be the most user-friendly for display.
AMEN!!! Having *similar* information in more than one place is not necessarily redundancy. Note that I said "similar", not "the same". The statement of responsibility and the controlled access point serve two entirely different purposes. The data in a given record may *appear* to be redundant, but technically and functionally they are not. Storage is not so expensive that this would be a burden, and computer copy/paste functions minimize the amount of typing that needs to be done.
(A case in point: worldcat.org's current display of all added entries concatenated after the word "by" with no role distinctions, instead of the traditional statement of responsibility.)
I've complained about this (and other serious shortcomings of the WorldCat Local records) on AUTOCAT earlier today. Kevin M. Randall Head of Serials Cataloging Northwestern University Library 1970 Campus Drive Evanston, IL 60208-2300 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: (847) 491-2939 fax: (847) 491-4345
