I think the definition of "author" in RDA might be a bit too restrictive. I would certainly consider a comic book writer to be an author. The definition should be expanded to include something like "... responsible for the textual content in works of mixed content types (e.g., works consisting of both graphic and textual content such as comic books)".
Kevin M. Randall Principal Serials Cataloger Northwestern University Library k...@northwestern.edu<mailto:k...@northwestern.edu> (847) 491-2939 Proudly wearing the sensible shoes since 1978! From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of Heidrun Wiesenmüller Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2013 12:39 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Relationships and comic books/graphic novels Ben, You get me confused here. I'm not an expert on this kind of material, but I would have thought that e.g. for the early Asterix books both Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny are to be seen as creators in the sense of RDA 19.2: "Persons, families, or corporate bodies jointly responsible for the creation of a work (...) may perform different roles (e.g., as in a collaboration between a composer and a lyricist)." In a joint effort, one of them provided the pictures, the other the text. I think this corresponds to 21.24 "Collaboration between artist and writer" in AACR2. But then the relationship designator "illustrator" seems to be not applicable for somebody like Uderzo, because it is for a contributor, not for a creator. This also fits in with the definition of illustrator as somebody "supplementing the primary content with drawings, diagrams, photographs, etc." So, this seems to be about the cases which used to be covered in AACR2 21.11A1. I conclude that the only possible relationship designator for Uderzo listed in the Appendix would be "artist". This is really rather crude. I also wonder about the relationship designator for somebody like Goscinny. The only possible term from the Appendix seems to be "author", but the explanation doesn't really fit: A person etc. "responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content". Well, the Asterix books are certainly not "primarily textual in content". Heidrun
