In article <[log in to unmask]>,
[log in to unmask] writes
>Ref. your request for feedback on AngloAmerican Cataloging Rules II, I have
>heard it is because for books, the emphasis is almost entirely on "what is
>the related subject?"  For museum objects, we want to know what it is (what
>form does it take?) and what is the related subject and what is the
>constituent material, and who made it and who else has this object
>been associated with?The main question, for you, is how will people
>ask to see the objects and records?

Actually, AACR2 does not deal with subject cataloguing at all. It covers
description of the item in hand and the provision of access points by
names, titles, series, related items, and so on, but not subjects.
Libraries use a variety of other tools to control subject cataloguing,
such as classification schemes, subject headings, thesauri and text-word
indexes. The MARC computer format has fields for these, but AACR2 does
not discuss them.

As Susan Wilkers implies, provenance, historical association and
collections management information is generally more important for
museum objects than for books, and although some of this can be
accommodated in AACR2 it does not make explicit provision for all the
data which may be needed.

AACR2 is very useful in the museum context, though, for its rules on
choice and form of name heading for persons, organisations, events and,
to a limited extent, geographical places. These names are the same
whether they are linked to museum objects or to bibliographical items,
and there is a big advantage in standardising them. A single name
authority file can then be used for all types of material in an
institution's collections and if you are fortunate in your choice of
system it should be possible to do a one-step search to retrieve items
of all types. The Library of Congress and the British Library have set
up AACR2 name authority files which you can refer to, so that your forms
of name will be the same as those widely used elsewhere. (OK, LC and BL
did interpret the rules differently, :-), but they are now reconciling
the differences so that they will agree on the new joint Anglo-American
Name Authority File.)

Leonard Will

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