>Although we have not had such politically sensitive "new name" issues to deal
>with, we have had to accomodate changing manufacturer's names, a few place
>names and personal names.  Using the hierarchical lexicon attached to our
>database (Argus) we have a policy that terms (names) in the catalog records
>reflect the time period of the object being catalogued.  But in the lexicon,
>the current new name is the parent of all previous versions of the name.
>That way Sea of Japan would be Sea of Japan in catalog records of maps where
>it was called that but the current parent of Sea of Japan in the lex would be
>East Sea.  Searches for either name would work but East Sea would produce the
>most comprehensive results.

We are developing a similar facility for NAMES (of
people/groups/orgs) in our Collection Management System whereby the
name used at the time of the work will be the name indexed for that
work. However all 'forms' of the name will be attached to a 'parent'
name, usually the most recent version. This system will be used for
pseudonyms and for past and present forms of names. No matter what
name the user enters, all the names 'associated with' the name will
pop up in a window. The user will then be able to select which of the
names they want to search on from only one to a few to all of them.
This is, I think, a bit more flexible than the Argus case described
above.

We will also be able to relate names which are not exactly the same
person/org eg, John Lennon to The Beatles. If a user searches on John
Lennon a window will pop up with both John Lennon and the Beatles in
it.  The Beatles will not of course have a parent/child relationship
in the same way that past and current forms of the name (and
pseudonyms) will have (since these names are both entities in their
own right) but the user need not know that finer detail at the point
of searching. All they will know is that there are some other names
they may like to search on.

Cheers, Sue


_____________________________________________________________________________

   Sue Terry                      __  /\
                                 /  \/  \
    +61  2 6248 2180 (w)        /        \    Collections Branch
    +61  2 6286 8336 (h)       /         /    ScreenSound Australia
    +61  2 6248 2165 (fax)     \   __  */     Canberra ACT 2600
                                `-'  \_/
   [log in to unmask]

'The secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt' (Rohinton Mistry)
_____________________________________________________________________________

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