Tag: name authority

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The tarot : its occult signification, use in fortune-telling, and method of play, etc. / by S.L. MacGregor Mathers. (OCLC #4237056)

Some authors are most often published using initials for their first or middle names. While it is important to retain this form in the authorized access point, its brevity can cause more collisions (multiple authors having the same authorized form). For this reason, a fuller form (with the abbreviated name spelled out) may also be included in the authorized access point, like:

100 1_ ǂa Mathers, S. L. MacGregor ǂq (Samuel Liddell MacGregor),
  ǂd 1854-1918.

In a MARC authority record, the fuller form is also recorded in 378:

378 __ ǂq Samuel Liddell MacGregor
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The Oprah phenomenon / edited by Jennifer Harris and Elwood Watson ; with a foreword by Robert J. Thompson. (OCLC #900086861)

The foreword by Robert J. Thompson is advertised on the cover, so seemed like useful information to include. Though it does not appear on the title page, I added it to the statement of responsibility without brackets; RDA 2.4.2.2 says that it may be taken from anywhere on the resource, and only needs brackets if it is taken from somewhere outside the resource.

I also wanted to add an authorized access point for Robert J. Thompson, but he has a very common name. A search for “robert thompson” in the authority file brought up more than a hundred results (including variants like Bob and Bobby) many of which had helpful qualifiers like “Musician” but most of which only had a date of birth.

The book does not provide his date of birth, but does note his affiliation with Syracuse University. Using this information, I found a Wikipedia article for him, which provided his date of birth, as well as several other works by him. I searched OCLC for some of these other works, and used them to identify his access point:

700 1_ Thompson, Robert J., ǂd 1959- ǂe writer of foreword.

His name authority record is very brief. Had it identified him as a media scholar (as the title of the wikipedia article does) or included his affiliation with Syracuse, that would have saved some work; I’m glad that RDA is leaning that way for authority work.

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The longest shot : Lil E. Tee and the Kentucky Derby / John Eisenberg. (OCLC #897135902)

The subject heading for the racehorse Lil E. Tee (winner of the 1992 Kentucky Derby) was established as a (topical) subject heading:

    150  Lil E. Tee (Race horse)

which is odd. The section of the Subject Heading Manual on “Establishing Certain Entities in the Name or Subject Authority File” says that Named Animals should be established as a name authority, specifically in a 100. The record was entered in 1995, around the time that these distinctions were in flux.

A search in the name authority file for “race horse” only produced about 13 headings of that form (like Man o’ War (Race horse), 1917-1947), but the search for that phrase in topical headings produced close to a hundred headings (including Barbaro (Race horse), born 2003), so there is still inconsistency in how these are being established.

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The evil eye : the origins and practices of superstition / Frederick Thomas Elworthy ; Introd. Louis S. Barron. (OCLC #1661732)

RDA 9.19.1.3 on including Date of Birth and/or Death when constructing access points says to add that date if needed to distinguish one access point from another, which is similar to the rule in AACR2.

There is an optional addition to add the date of birth and/or death even if there is no need to distinguish between access points, and it is encouraged by LC (for new records), NLA (if readily ascertainable) and BL.

There is no other Frederick Thomas Elworthy in the authority file, but the heading for this author includes birth and death dates:

    Elworthy, Frederick Thomas, 1830-1907
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Within the walls ; and, What do I love? / H.D. ; edited by Annette Debo. (OCLC #890587170)

Though this author is best known as H.D. (reflected in her name authority record), her class number is assigned such that she is filed under the fuller form of her name, Hilda Doolittle. PS3507 is for individual American authors, 1900-1960, name starting with D, and cuttered by second letter so we have:

  • PS3507.I93 – Dixon, Thomas
  • PS3507.O726 – Doolittle, Hilda
  • PS3507.R55 – Dreiser, Theodore

Her class number is subarranged using table P-PZ40, so we use A6 for this volume which contains two titles (Selections). This is not her complete works, and the titles are in different forms (Essays and Poems), so I followed RDA 6.2.2.10.3 on Other Compilations of Two or More Works, and recorded the preferred title for each of the works instead of adding “Selections” to a conventional collective title (like “Novels”):

    245 10 ǂa Within the walls ; ǂb and, What do I love? / ǂc H.D. ; 
        edited by Annette Debo.
    740 02 ǂa What do I love?
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La novela verdadera / Javier Chiabrando ; [edited by Carola Moreno]. (OCLC #872414080)

The author’s name authority record includes a call number that has already been assigned to him:

    053 _0 PQ7798.13.H45

so we don’t have to start by shelflisting the author under PQ7798.13 (Spanish Literature … Argentina … Individual authors or works 1961-2000, A-Z … starting with C). Note that the first letter of Chiabrando is already accounted for in the number, so the letter in the first cutter is H for cHiabrando.

The second cutter is for the title of the book. In this case we skip the initial article La and start at Novela, following the Subject Cataloging Manual on Shelflisting’s Filing rules (G 100), Rule 13 (“Initial Articles”). Our call number is:

    PQ7798.13.H45 N68 2013
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From Aristotle to Schrödinger : the curiosity of physics / Antonis Modinos. (OCLC #867822764)

I didn’t spot the popular copy for this book on my first search because I did a personal name search for the author’s first and last name:

    pn: antonis and pn: modinos

Unfortunately, pn: indexes relatively few fields, all for access points:

    100/a,b,c,d,j,q,u
    700/a,b,c,d,j,q,u

I didn’t find the record, because the author’s name authority has been established only with his first initial:

    Modinos, A., ǂd 1938-

(details confirmed on distributor web sites).

A broader index for author names is au: which indexes the same fields as above, but many more as well, including 245ǂc (which would include the full form as transcribed in the statement of responsibility) but more unusual ones too, including:

  • 505ǂr – Statement of responsibility in a formatted contents note
  • 508ǂa – Creation/production credits note
  • 511ǂa – Participant or performer note
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動物のお医者さん / ǂc 佐々木倫子. (OCLC #881816845)

That ad strip around the bottom of the book is called an “obi” (same word used for kimono sash). On this volume, it covers up a charming feature: the rooster has a soccer ball! (We’ll remove the obi before adding the mylar cover).

The author of this series is Sasaki Noriko, who seems to be a different person than “Sasaki, Noriko” (ethnology scholar) and “Sasaki, Noriko (Soprano)”, so I needed a different authorized access point. I checked VIAF and found a heading for her which matches the information I found in her Wikipedia article.

I initially thought about using an occupation in the heading, like “Sasaki, Noriko (Manga artist)” which might be easier to select at a glance, but RDA 9.19.1.5 says to only use this if date of birth/death or fuller form are not available.

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日本の村ー須恵村 / ジョン・F.エンブリー著 ; 植村元覚訳 = Suye mura : a Japanese village / by John F. Embree. (OCLC #881293935)

The translator of this book died in 1997, but this is not reflected in the authorized access point:

    Uemura, Motokaku, 1916-

This is not unusual. RDA 9.19.1.3 says about adding dates to access points:

    Add the date of birth and/or date of death if needed to
    distinguish one access point from another.

LC-PCC practice for new authority records is to add a date of birth and/or date of death to new authority records, even if not needed to distinguish between access points, but not necessarily to add them to existing records (though the option is there).

The VIAF cluster shows that some vocabularies (Japan’s National Diet Library, ISNI) have added the death date. When our catalogs have more of a “things not strings” model and store URIs for access points (rather than the full text of the authorized access point), such changes will be less costly to make.

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О войне / Клаузевиц ; перевод с немецкого А.К. Рачинского. (OCLC #879375849)

This Russian translation of Vom Kriege was published 100 years after the original, and includes a German title page in the front matter. As that title page has the original publisher and year, I chose not to treat it as parallel title page, and just included its information in a note about the original publication.

I am intrigued by how many forms of the author’s name appear in this record. In the statement of responsibility, he is just “Клаузевиц”, and the original title page has has full name “Karl von Klausewitz”. The authorized form is “Clausewitz, Carl von, 1780-1831” and this appears to be the most common form (though all of these forms appear in his authority record). I wonder which way he spelled it? (or which way his wife spelled it, as she published it after his death?)