Joan,
Thanks for your ideas.
Are these people are members of the corporate body? If they are, there
is an optional omission in RDA.
/If the members of a group, ensemble, company, etc., are named as well
as the name of the group, etc., omit the names of the members from the
statement of responsibility.
/
I wasn't aware of this rule, but now that I've looked at it I'd say it
is a very special case for music groups and such like. Also, it only
applies to the statement of responsibility, i.e. the bibliographic
description.
True, usually catalogs of collections are prepared by people who work at
the museum in question. I just checked: John Arthur Gere was a curator
at the British Museum, and Amin Jaffer worked at the Victoria & Albert
when the book was published (now he's with Christie's). But still, both
people are/were eminent art historians with a name in their own right.
Certainly they cannot be, as it were, eliminated from the record.
And in fact, they weren't: If you have a look at LC's records, you find
Gere and Jaffer not only recorded in the statement of responsibility,
but also as added entries:
http://lccn.loc.gov/95132400
http://lccn.loc.gov/2002279060
Oops, just noticing: In LC's AACR2 record, Jaffer has main entry instead
of added entry, and the museums do not have entries at all. It's the
same when you look at the catalog of the British Library. Why, that's
certainly funny - but I assume it is a mistake, because I believe there
was no change intended from AACR2 to RDA in this respect.
Anyway, I'm certain that RDA catalogers will make an entry under people
like Gere and Jaffer as well. This makes it even harder for me to
understand why we aren't allowed to see them as a second (or third) author.
/
/
I also find this in the statement you sent yesterday: /
/
/6.2.1.1./
/Corporate body as creator: A corporate body should be considered as /
/the creator of those works that express the collective thought or
activity of the corporate body, or when the wording of the title,
taken in conjunction with the nature of the work clearly implies that
the corporate body is collectively responsible for the content of the
work./ _/This applies even if a person signs the work in the capacity
of an officer or servant of the corporate body/_.
I guess, the reason is that it is a work from the collective wisdom
and effort of a corporate body. So members' roles are included in the
collective wisdom and effort. Just my guess :)
Thanks for drawing my attention to this bit in the Statement of
international cataloguing principles. Indeed I can think of cases where
this may be true, and I believe the phrase "if a person signs the work
in the capacity of an officer or servant of the corporate body" is the
key to understand which cases are meant. Probably, the person in
question would be identified by something like "X, secretary of the Y
Society" in the source of information.
But in the cases I'm thinking of, you might not even realize that the
persons named as authors work in the museum in question. Also, I find it
hard to think of such a catalog as something which has arisen from the
collective effort of the whole museum. Note also that the museum case
doesn't belong to the type "works that record the collective thought of
the body" (RDA 19.2.1.1.1 b), but to the type "works of an
administrative nature dealing with any of the following aspects of the
body itself" (19.2.1.1.1a). So, it doesn't really seem to fit. (By the
way: I don't really see how a catalog of the kind mentioned, which is
most certainly aimed at the general public, could be considered to be a
work "of an administrative nature"??).
Heidrun
On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 1:22 AM, Heidrun Wiesenmüller
<wiesenmuel...@hdm-stuttgart.de
<mailto:wiesenmuel...@hdm-stuttgart.de>> wrote:
Talking about creators: One thing I find very puzzling is the
treatment of collections in a museum. Maybe I only have these
problems because the German rules for main entry for corporate
bodies are completely different from the Anglo-American tradition.
So, perhaps you can help me here.
Bowman says in his "Essential cataloguing" (which was the very
first book on AACR2 I ever read), p. 100: "What happens if the
item falls under rule 21.1B2 but also appears to have a personal
author? The rules tell us nothing in themselves, but the answer
becomes apparent when you start to look at the examples that
follow. From these it becomes obvious that entry under corporate
body, if it applies, takes precedence over personal authorship.
This means that, for example, a catalogue of a collection in a
particular museum, provided that it emanates from the museum, will
be entered under the heading for the museum even if it has a
personal author."
He gives the following example:
Pre-Raphaelite drawings in the British museum / J.A. Gere
Main entry is under the British museum, with an added entry for Gere.
So far, so good. But now when I look at RDA 19.2.1.3, there is a
very similar example under "Works of an administrative nature":
Furniture from British India and Ceylon : a catalogue of the
collections in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Peabody
Essex Museum / Amin Jaffer ; assisted in Salem by Karina Corrigan
and with a contribution by Robin D. Jones ; photographs by Mike
Kitcatt, Markham Sexton and Jeffrey Dykes. — Salem, Massachusetts
: Peabody Essex Museum
The creators are given as:
Victoria and Albert Museum
Peabody Essex Museum
Now, I don't have a problem with the fact that the museums are
seen as creators. But I don't understand why there is no third
creator, namely the personal author Amin Jaffer. Shouldn't this
also be a case of "persons, families, or corporate bodies [being]
jointly responsible for the creation of a work" (19.2.1.1)? I
don't see how this case is any different from others where the
creators perform different roles.
My speculation is that perhaps in RDA's system it is simply not
possible for a corporate body and a person to work together as
creators, i.e. that 19.2.1.1 should be read as "*either* more than
one person *or* more than one family *or* more than one corporate
body jointly responsible for the creation of a work". But if this
is the case, then it should have been clearly stated. Also, I
really can't see a reason why it shouldn't be possible to have a
collaboration of a corporate body and a person in the creation of
a work.
And there is another question: If Amin Jaffer or J.A. Gere in
Bowman's example are not considered to be creators, then what else
could they be? My feeling is that their contribution is at the
level of the work, and not at expression level. So the only
possibility would be to consider them as "other persons associated
with a work" (19.3.1), i.e. grouping them with "persons, etc., to
whom correspondence is addressed, persons, etc., honoured by a
festschrift, directors, cinematographers, sponsoring bodies,
production companies, institutions, etc., hosting an exhibition or
event, etc." This really doesn't seem suitable at all.
Or should they be seen as contributors (i.e. on expression level)
after all? If so, which relationship designator could be used?
Any ideas?
Heidrun
--
---------------------
Prof. Heidrun Wiesenmueller M.A.
Stuttgart Media University
Facultäy of Information and Communication
Wolframstr. 32, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany
www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi <http://www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi>
--
Zhonghong (Joan) Wang, Ph.D.
Cataloger -- CMC
Illinois Heartland Library System (Edwardsville Office)
6725 Goshen Road
Edwardsville, IL 62025
618.656.3216x409
618.656.9401Fax
--
---------------------
Prof. Heidrun Wiesenmueller M.A.
Stuttgart Media University
Faculty of Information and Communication
Wolframstr. 32, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany
www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi
