On 08/10/2012 09:38, Keith Trickey wrote: <snip> > Point of order! "Main entry" was adopted by AACR2 - Eric Hunter argued > against it at a JSC meeting in the 1970s in York and was timed out. It > goes back to catalogue card days - when full bibliographic data was > entered on the "main entry card" and the other cards relating to that > item were listed on the back of that card. The concept of "main entry" > belongs to the Cutter shortage era when access was limited > (restrictions of the 5 x 3 card and staff to catalogue items and the > bulking out of catalogues) and the researcher was expected to > understand the foibles of the cataloguer when engaged in a search for > an item. > > The cataloguer's arrogance is part of the "main entry" concept. The > searcher approaches with catalogue with whatever information they have > - could be author or title or words from title etc. For the searcher > the information they use to access the item identifies their "main > entry" which may be at variance with what erudite cataloguers with a > head full of RDA thinks! > > Michael Gorman (Our singular strengths p.170 - Filing) illustrates > this beautifully! </snip>
I don't know if it is arrogance so much as not reconsidering what you are doing when there has been a fundamental change in technology. There is a difference between main entry and the need to come up with a *single* main entry. This is also called "creator" and "contributor". In a resource with two authors of equal prominence and status, why should the first one be chosen over the second one, such as Masters and Johnson? As Keith mentions, in a card (or printed book) catalog, a single main entry was a very natural outgrowth of how the card catalog functions, but in the computer world, having to choose a single main entry is an anachronism. In MARC format, the 1xx field could easily be made repeatable, but doing so would have consequences for the rest of the format, for instance, in analytic added entries, where the 7xx would have to handle more than one main entry. This has been discussed at length on other lists; here is one of my posts to NGC4LIB http://blog.jweinheimer.net/2010/06/re-are-marc-subfields-really-useful_07.html Nevertheless, there needs to be a difference from creators vs. contributors. This is one part of FRBR that I have actually liked: I cannot see how a single main entry makes much sense in an FRBR system: there are names attached to the work, or the expression, or the manifestation, even to the item if we wanted. It makes no sense to limit any of them to a single instance. Not having to determine a single main entry would make the job of the cataloger easier, make cataloger training simpler, with no loss of access to the public. Mac and I have differed on this a number of times. -- *James Weinheimer* weinheimer.ji...@gmail.com *First Thus* http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/ *Cooperative Cataloging Rules* http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/ *Cataloging Matters Podcasts* http://blog.jweinheimer.net/p/cataloging-matters-podcasts.html
