> Three years or so ago I thought, "finally the significance of what > authority data can do for improving data management is understood" but more > recently it seems to have been lost in the dust. I would add to Bernhard and > Jim's comments that the rules governing the construction of authority data > for automated management are long overdue. Too much of the data and rules > are designed for human intervention. So much of the focus in current > discussions is on bibliographic records rather than authority records, which is > really backwards. A name authority record should have as much data as possible > on a person. Ideally, all known works should be added to a name record, with > additions over time. The relationship to the work should be provided > (author, director, actor, performer, etc.). Birth and death dates, and > other identifying information should all be provided in a manner to help > identify other outside resources like online biography sources. > > Mary L. Mastraccio > Cataloging & Authorities Librarian > MARCIVE, Inc. > San Antonio Texas 78265 > 1-800-531-7678 > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Thanks for highlighting this Mary. I hope the following makes sense (and is correct!) I think this is absolutely correct, and chimes extremely well with the work that Karen, Diane et al. have been doing with RDA - the realisation is that what is true for Author's or Subject's is true for other (possibly less complex) aspects of metadata. Even with something as simple as 'physical description', can benefit from a separation between the metadata record and the detail of the physical description. For example, if we consider 300$b (other physical details), which maps to a number of RDA elements, including 'Production Method' (http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/docs/5rda-parta-ch3rev.pdf, p.26 in doc not as numbered). Karen, Diane et al. have created a relevant vocabulary at http://metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/show/id/33.html - click on 'Concepts' tab to see the list of values. So, rather than inserting the 'literal' value "lithograph" into 300$b, these vocabularies open up the possibility of linking to http://RDVocab.info/termLIst/RDAproductionMethod/1007 - which is the URI for the term "lithograph". RDA refers to this as a 'non-literal value surrogate' - this comes from the language of Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, but basically means that you point at the value using a URI, rather than the use of the literal string 'lithograph' (or whatever) as we do with MARC. As with using Authority files for Author's etc. this use of separated vocabularies opens up the possibility of saying more about lithographs - what they are, alternative terms, translations etc. A weakness of MARC21 is that it doesn't make use of the reference to the Authority record into the metadata record - we rely on 'literals' too much - making it more difficult to ensure consistency, make changes, or draw into our indexing information not held directly in the MARC record. I have to admit that I my understanding of RDA gets a bit hazy at this point, but from what I can see it also treats elements such as 'Creator' as non-literal value surrogates - and anywhere this is true, we can treat as a possible point to establish a link to an Authority file. Owen
