Authority Control of Printers, Publishers, and Booksellers

The functions of publishers, printers, and booksellers in the years of hand printing and their connection with the concept of manifestation in FRBR are quite interesting, and the form given to their denotations becomes important when this element turns into a stable and fundamental access point to bibliographic information. The normal access point for the entity responsible for the manifestation must cease to be a mere indexing element and must become part of a thesaurus– that is, the terms it containsmust be subject to authority control, as only this will allow the user not only to access an item, but also to relate it correctly with other items that share certain features with it, such as, for instance, the responsibility for the manifestation. Data about those in charge of the publication of early printed books is often inconsistent, unreliable, and sometimes even misleading, and authority files for such names will of necessity be very complicated. This paper traces the evolution of access points for printers, publishers, and booksellers from the annals of the eighteenth century to modern bibliographical databases and catalogs of early printed materials, and discusses the recent suggestion that an authority file should be designed by each national agency for their printers, publishers,and booksellers–just as happens for authors–to create a Virtual International Authority File. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: ©2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]