Bernhard Eversberg wrote: > In this regard, the "preferred access point" is of course a misnomer. > The important function here is not the access aspect, but the naming > aspect. An entity needs a name! For wherever an entity is mentioned, > cited, listed, referred to or related to, the question is what should be > the name (or name-title reference) displayed to the end-user so they can > best make sense of it? Internally, URIs can serve to do all the linking, > and other new tricks, but externally we need consistent naming of works > and everything else.
I think we're in agreement, but the main point I want to make is not to confuse "An entity needs a name!" (with which I agree) with "An entity needs a [single] name!' Today, this is no longer necessary and all of the variant names can be found, and displayed, in all kinds of ways. It's also important to realize that this is nothing new. Thomas Hyde's catalog of the Bodleian library from the 1600s appeared to work in a similar manner. Although I can't find a copy of his catalog online, his headings were remarkable in that they included all of the variant forms. I remember the heading for Peter Abelard was something like: Abaelardus, Petrus, seu, Abelard, Peter, Abeilard, Pierre, Abelardo, Pietro, [..]. and there were references from each form. I personally found this method of presenting all the variant forms along with the heading to be excellent, and it was much clearer for the user than the modern methods (except that everything in his catalog was in Latin!) I can see something very similar with URIs. The "gathering point" will be the machine-readable URI, and the display of the heading[s] would be based on various factors. No. 1 would be based on the user's search, but the others could be based on IP address, user preferences, or who knows what else. Of course, the machine could be set to display only one or two lines and if this is not enough to display all the variants, then "[more...]" can be displayed. This would demand some changes in our policies and procedures however. One example would be that each heading should have a language component, and there would be other changes as well. But it is important to realize that today, all forms can be "equal" and there is no need for "preferred form" anymore. This would be looking toward building something for the future, which is what we need to do. Jim Weinheimer
