Re: Authority Records for Uniform Title Headings (Mitch Turitz) Ann Ercelawn 07 May 1997 02:32 UTC
Date: Tue, 06 May 1997 15:54:30 -0700 From: Mitch Turitz <turitz@SFSU.EDU> Subject: Re: Authority Records for Uniform Title Headings (Rick Gildemeister) Rick: I have been making the same arguments for many years now. The issues as I understand them are: Serial Uniform titles (130) were never meant to convey information, only to differentiate seemingly-identical titles. (e.g. Focus (San Francisco) from Focus (New York) ) without any indication of content, etc. The rules for serial uniform titles are buried in the LC rule interpretations. This is mainly because AACR2 treats serials as "funny-looking monographs" and not as never-ending things which need their own unique identifiers. The concept of an "authority record" for a uniform title is problematic at best: a uniform title for a serial should be unique and not repeated in any additional records (as a main entry heading), therefore the authority record for the heading is the bibliographic itself - as it contains all the information about the heading. To create separate authority records for headings which will only be used once is way too labor-intensive. The Anarchist Serialist and Guerrilla Cataloger's solution ;-0 : If you are copy-cataloging, make added entries (730) for ALL the meaningful uniform titles YOU think would be useful. If the 130 is "Focus (New York)" make an added 730 for "Focus (American Optometry Society)" and when the agency changes, add yet another 730 into the record for "Focus (National Optometry Society)" Add as many as you think would best help your patrons. You may even want to consult with some of the more enlightened Reference Librarians. If you are contributing original cataloging to a national database, then create the uniform title according to the cataloging rules, but once you download the record into your own database, make as many added uniform titles that you find useful. Some cataloging purists may disagree with the above, but essentially I am saying, "You need to catalog in YOUR database however it best serves YOUR patrons." Not every library is best served by blindly following that library in Washington, D.C. -- Mitch _^_ _^_ ( ___ )-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-( ___ ) | | | | | | Mitch Turitz, Serials Librarian | | | | San Francisco State University Library | | | | Internet: turitz@sfsu.edu | | | | http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~turitz | | | | | | ( ___ )-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-==-( ___ ) V V "I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather ... ... Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car."