[yul-naco] FW: [RDA-L] RE: Re: RE: Two questions about relationship designators for creators

[Arakawa, Steven]

>From the RDA list. I thought this might be helpful in handling rd's for a common type of book. Kathy Glennan is the ALA liaison to JSC. 

Steven Arakawa
Catalog Librarian for Training & Documentation  
Catalog & Metada Services   
Sterling Memorial Library. Yale University  
P.O. Box 208240 New Haven, CT 06520-8240     
(203) 432-8286 steven.arakawa at yale.edu




-----Original Message-----
From: Kathy Glennan [mailto:kglennan at umd.edu] 
Sent: Monday, January 13, 2014 10:12 AM
To: Heidrun Wiesenmüller; rda-l at ala.org
Subject: [RDA-L] RE: Re: RE: Two questions about relationship designators for creators

In relation to finding the appropriate relationship designator to use for the author of the texts contained in a coffee-table books, Heidrun said:

At first glance, "author" seems to be the right choice, but the definition says: "A person, family, or corporate body responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content (...)". But our coffee table book isn't "primarily textual in content".

And later she mentioned:

Perhaps we could also find a way of broadening the definition. Instead of "A person, family, or corporate body responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content (...)" it might say something like "a work *or a part of a work* that is primarily textual in content".


The problem for a coffee-table book that results from the collaboration between a photographer and the author of descriptive text is that it's an aggregating work (photos + text), each of which are separate works in their own right. Thus the photographer is the creator of the visual work, and the author is the creator of the text. These creators should each receive relationship designators that reflect their relationship to the relevant portion of the aggregating work. With that approach, the RDA definition of "author" is fine as-is. Otherwise, the concept of "a work or part of a work" would need to be introduced into the definitions for other types of creators (beyond just authors).



Kathy Glennan
Head, Metadata Creation and Enhancement / Music Cataloger University of Maryland kglennan at umd.edu