Hickey and Coyle on relators
Thom Hickey posted Relator Codes and Terms late last month, about MARC relator codes, which “allow the relationship between a name and a work to be designated by codes in the MARC record.”
Karen Coyle followed up last week with Relators. She says:
Thom Hickey did a study of relator codes and relator names ($4 v. $e), which he reported in his blog, and came up with the figures below. His interest was in the interaction between the code and the name. Since his study was done in the OCLC WorldCat catalog, I think it points out that these key roles are not being coded in our records, which essentially results in a lot of false hits for our users. If we can’t get these simple relationships coded into our data today, what hope do we have for a relationship-oriented bibliographic view in the future?
A good question. Better and easier cataloguing tools that help identify these relationships will help. Doing that, and making the best use of the existing defined relationships, will be part of OpenFRBR.
Ok, let’s see:
- relator codes/terms were introduced mid-stream (90′s perhaps?)
- national level coding was (is still?) Optional (not Mandatory)
- LC’s practice was not consistent, and most libraries
just derive records from LC; hence, inconsistency populates downstream
and repopulates Worldcat
- how to use/code/apply “relator codes” and “terms” was not adequatelycommunicated/advertised/proselytized to general cataloguing community
- “relator” is not a term in common everyday parlance. What exactly is it? When you make a concept fuzzy or too ambiguous, it is not likely to be taken up with great enthusiasm.
- the need to retrofit and retool is fine, but one must understand
what to redress.
- further, the “relator” concept (imho) did not fit quite comfortably into the 1XX/7XX subfield schema, in the sense that subfields were pretty well alphabetic for a long time. The departure into non-alpha notation within the tag was “foreign.” It ran somewhat counter to the established pattern of mnenomic alpha or numeric devices, so key to the uptake (and persistence, in my view) of MARC adoption.
Finally, codes that are “Mandatory” and “Mandatory if Applicable” at all levels, are coded and used. When well understood and digested,
they are applied Consistently.
Relationships (ala FRBR) are key. Relator codes are not it.
As for consistency, key fields are prescribed as Mandatory. If they aren’t, they don’t (and shouldn’t) pass validation points.
Mia
Comment by Mia Massicotte — 8 November 2006 @ 10:16 pm