The Other Half of Cataloguing: New Models and Perspectives for the Control of Authors and Works

Today’s electronic catalogue makes retrieval of specific records very simple and quick in most (not all) cases, but searches aimed at the reliable retrieval of all material answering a well-defined need (author, work, theme, form, etc.) are still long and tiring, and sometimes impossible, in crowded bibliographic databases. In spite of its great relevance, authority control has been, and still is, the “poor relative” of cataloguing, the often neglected or overlooked “other half” ifwe compare it to the creation of bibliographic records. The FRBR study and the new authority control standards (GARR and UNIMARC Authorities) are important steps towards future perspectives. Even today, cataloguing codes do not make clear the difference between the access points for bibliographic records and the relationships (work-to-work, author-to-work, etc.) that are independent from specific publications. With the development of richer authority records and relationships, the bibliographic record might be relieved of information related to entities different from publications, and of all functions more suitably worked out upstreamor downstream in access systems or by links to the images and/or the texts of the publications themselves. A “light” bibliographic record would no longer be the paramount component of library information systems; it would keep its central role rather as a nimble, swift turntable between access and content organization systems, and systems for management and display of digital resources themselves. [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.]