[rak-list] Corporate authorship

[Bernhard Eversberg]

Um einmal einen kleinen Eindruck zu geben, was mit AACR auf uns zukommt, will ich 
hier eine Message weiterleiten aus der US-Liste AUTOCAT. 
Es geht um die Frage der Eintragung unter Koerperschaft. Man beachte den letzten 
Satz von K. Randall:

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Thu, 14 Feb 2002 13:03:39 -0600
To:             	AUTOCAT <AUTOCAT at LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>,
From:           	"Kevin M. Randall" <kmr at northwestern.edu>
Subject:        	Re: [ACAT] Corporate authorship (Was: 810 series statement)

>On 15 Feb 02, at 0:37, Hal Cain wrote:
> > The Paris Principles, in Section 9, ask for main entry under corp. body:
> > 9.11 when the work is by its nature necessarily the expression of the
> > collective thought or activity of the corporate body...
> > 9.12 when the wording of the title or title-page, taken in conjunction
> > with the nature of the work, clearly implies that the corporate body is
> > collectively responsible for the content of the work.
>
At 11:07 AM 2/14/02, Bernhard Eversberg wrote:
>It so happens that Americans chose 9.11 whereas Germans chose 9.12 as
>their main or only criterion. We even eliminated the phrase "taken in
>conjunction with the nature of the work", thus making the decision a
>purely formal one, completely disregarding the nature of the content, not
>looking at "the collective thought" or whatever. Which is not completely
>disadvantageous.
>But therefore, our data are very incompatible when it comes to main entry
>under corp. body.

Kevin M. Randall:
I think AACR2 made a significant error by focussing on 9.11 and basically 
ignoring 9.12.  The writers of the code seem to have had an unnatural 
phobia regarding the idea of corporate authorship, not wanting to consider 
the idea of corporate *responsibility* as being as meaningful as collective 
thought or activity.  Thus we were given that masterpiece of confusion, 
21.1B2, which the LCRI tries in vain to make comprehensible.  In its 
misguided attempt to rid catalogs of corporate main entry, AACR2 has a rule 
that is *much* more in need of cataloger's judgment--and as a result more 
likely to have differing applications--than it would be if it included the 
principle in 9.12.


Kevin M. Randall
Head of Serials Cataloging
Northwestern University Library
1935 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL  60208-2300

email: kmr at northwestern.edu
phone: (847) 491-2939
fax:   (847) 491-7637

------- End of forwarded message -------

Bernhard Eversberg
Universitaetsbibliothek, Postf. 3329, 
D-38023 Braunschweig, Germany
Tel.  +49 531 391-5026 , -5011 , FAX  -5836
e-mail  B.Eversberg at tu-bs.de