I knitted a pair of socks.
Then I cataloged them.
100 1 Melton, Laura, ‡d 1979- 245 1 0 [Cabled socks]. 260 ‡c [2005]. 300 1 pair socks : ‡b wool, brown : ‡c 54 cm. long. 500 Title supplied by cataloger. 500 Pattern: Reynolds Yarns no. 372.
Non-librarians may wish to stop reading here; it’s going to get technical. Moreover, librarians who don’t give a rat’s behind about the nits of cataloging should probably skip it too, because I’m going to pick some.
The description was pretty easy; AACR2 is clear about how to handle three-dimensional objects. It’s possibly even easier than books, because the areas of description for published works simply don’t apply.
However, choosing access points tripped me up. I gave myself main entry, but I’m not absolutely sure that’s correct. AACR2 doesn’t mention three-dimensional objects specifically in its chapter on choosing access points, so my only clue is the general rule:
21.1A. Works of personal authorship.
21.1A1. Definition. A personal author is the person chiefly responsible for the creation of the intellectual or artistic content of a work. For particular applications of this definition, see subsequent rules in this chapter. For persons who function solely as performers on sound recordings, see 21.23.
The question is, who is chiefly responsible for the creation of the intellectual or artistic content
of my socks? I knitted them, but someone else wrote the pattern from which I created the socks. I changed a couple of details and put in the effort to turn the yarn into something wearable, but amount of work doesn’t factor into AACR2′s rules. It’s all about intellectual content.
In fact, these socks are somewhat similar to a performance of classical music, for example Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. The composer gets main entry, the performing musicians added entry (or sometimes no entry at all). This seems unfair to the musicians, but it does make sense because it’s more likely that I will search for Bach rather than for the orchestra performing the concertos. In other ways it makes less sense.
The pattern (or, by analogy, the score) for my socks was published by Reynolds Yarns but lists no author. That doesn’t make a difference to whether I get main entry or not, but it means that my choices for main entry are myself or title main entry.
Sadly, I come to the conclusion that according to AACR2, I do not get main entry for my own socks but am relegated instead to a mere added entry.
245 0 0 [Cabled Socks]. 700 1 Melton, Laura, ‡d 1979-
I know I’m taking this far too seriously, but is this how a professional cataloger would assign headings? If these socks were in a knitting museum or in a museum about me as a person, would that make a difference to how it’s cataloged in practice (assuming that those institutions use AACR2 and not a completely different standard)?
nichole says:
I like the music analogy. Very apt.
One of my colleagues says, "I believe the title main entry form is correct. She should also have a 500 note to indicate the source of the added entry."
I wouldn't mourn too much for the relegation of your name to an added entry - all entries are equal in OPAC's eyes.
Laurabelle says:
It's nice to have some confirmation from a professional; I'm still fairly new to this cataloging business.
The MARC fields included a note to the effect that I knitted the socks as a gift for another individual, but I decided I should be at least discreet enough to leave that note out of my blog. ;-)
As for OPACs and main vs. added entries, I would argue that all entries are not truly equal. They are all fairly equal as access points, but they tend to be separated on the screen, which has an effect on users' interpretation of the record information. How is a user off the street supposed to interpret the difference between a record with Vincent Esposito as main entry and one with Vincent Esposito as added entry?
I digress, but as long as I'm digressing, the issue of main vs. added entry is one of my gripes with AACR2/MARC (and more recently, with MARCXML, which in my opinion fails to make full use of the capabilities of XML). As I see it, AACR2 provides the ability to distinguish between intellectual/artistic authorship and other kinds of responsibility, but it has no more flexibility than that. Moreover, it does not permit sharing equal credit among more than one responsible party ( etc.).
Now that we have the ability to refine the assigning of authorship, with technologies such as relational databases and XML, I think the concept of main entry should be revised as well. I wouldn't throw it out entirely, but I think we should examine very critically the technological assumptions under which it was developed, in order to divorce technology from philosophy.
I don't have any great answers on how to get there, of course, and there are probably all sorts of things wrong with what I've said here. Please not to rush the genius...
nichole says:
Ah, you're right about record display and main vs. added entries. I was thinking only of searching. Whoops.
Tangentially - you know, the "rule of three" still bugs me. Some savvy authors get around it with statements of responsibility like, "by A, B, and C, with D." Lucky for B and C.
Your thoughts on assigning of authorship reminded me that even though MARC provides oodles of relator codes to express the nuances of authorship and other kinds of responsibility, they're rarely useful because few catalogers apply them because few systems display them...that whole chicken/egg mess.
Laurabelle says:
I suspect that the formulation may be due as much to the publishers as to the authors, but that's beside the point.
Thank you for mentioning relator codes; I had absolutely no idea that such beasties existed. How fascinating!
It really is too bad that OPACs don't support more features of the MARC record. Of course, not all of them are useful in every context, but relator codes (for example) could be extremely useful in clarifying bibliographic record data to the user.
The more I learn, the more tempting it is to grab a few friends and start my own open-source ILS project. Yes, there are already a few out there, but they're not quite what I want. The beauty of open source, of course, is that I can borrow what I want and do the rest myself.
Alita says:
I would give you main entry. In the museum in my head, your socks just became art objects. If I were cataloging Fountain, I would give Duchamp main entry, not Acme Urinal Company.
Lisa K says:
My "pre-cataloging" class included a semester-long project to catalog a collection of our own things -- not books or music -- so we could struggle with just some of the problems you raise. I do agree that AACR2 can be applied, readily, to 3D items; though I know archivists and curators (my first career; librarian being #3, I reckon) disagree.
I might assign them the title "Laurabelle's Socks," thus putting you higher up, but I guess your full name would remain an added entry.
Off to my public library, where I do only brief cataloging for paperbacks. . .
Lisa (MHC 88)
nichole's auxiliary storage says:
(What passes for) fun with MARC
Socks: a cataloging adventure; and, the (in)famous OCLC apple cake, via Thom.