[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Family names as Creators/Subjects

[Karen Miller]

Happy Friday, everyone!

I’ve been using my WFH time to do some ArchivesSpace cleanup and have a question about how people are using family names. We are a NACO library and have been creating personal and corporate body name headings for people and organizations represented in our collections. When we have a collection that is created by a person or corporate body and also includes biographical or historic information about the person or corporate body, we assign the Agent record as both Creator and Subject.

This works fine for LC NAF records for people and corporate bodies, but for families, we have a dilemma. RDA says that families can be “creators” and specifies that they are to be established in a format like this:

            Abdurahman (Family : 1872-1963 : South Africa)

But when a family is the subject, it’s supposed to be established in a format like this (the SACO format):

            Abdurahman family

which can refer to any family with the surname Abdurahman, not just the family that existed in South Africa from 1872-1963.

I don’t think the SACO format is all that useful, but we used it for a long time, before RDA came along. Then when RDA came along, we established some family names in the NAF and used them in ArchivesSpace. Now we have family names in both formats, which looks a little weird. We only have 13 of them, so cleanup isn’t an insurmountable task.

I’ve been considering several options:


1.    Use the NACO format for all family names, including as both Creator or Agent. This goes against RDA, but it looks more consistent to the end user and I think is provides more information for browsing patrons.

2.    Use the SACO format for all family names, including as both Creator or Agent. This also goes against RDA, but it looks more consistent to the end user. I think it’s not as useful, though, for people looking for families with common names (like Baker instead of Abdurahman)

3.    Use the NACO form for Creator and the SACO form for Subject. It’s inconsistent, but follows RDA. Since these aren’t BIBCO records, it’s not as if this is a mortal sin!

I’m sure there are more options, but I think I’ve gone on enough here. What are other institutions doing?

Karen


Karen D. Miller
Monographic Cataloger/Metadata Specialist
Northwestern University Libraries
Northwestern University
1970 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
www.library.northwestern.edu
k-miller3 at northwestern.edu
874.467.3462


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