the @#$%^&*(*&^%$#@ contributor

[Juliet McLaren]

Hi all ~ having thoughtfully read and considered the varying responses I
would like to toss in my present thoughts.

	1. We are discussing 'terms' here, not codes, which are designated by the
MARC folks at LC and are available to anyone as they exist.

	2. Our decisions about 'terms' for rare materials are not dependent upon
nor necessarily related to the 'codes' used for other types of cataloging.
I have been advised by the code folks that what we do about 'terms' is up
to us and they are cool with it.

	3. As others have suggested, one wants a succinct word (or two, max) which
designates one aspect of the possible relationships a named person or group
may have to a specific work being cataloged.  There may be more than one
relationship of that person or group to that work, any or all of which may
be described in other added entries.

	4. In the serials world, which was the one I was mentally inhabiting when
this whole nest of termites came up, there are many writers, artists,
investors, etc. who are involved with a newspaper or periodical.  If one
wishes to designate the precise relationship of one of these persons to a
journal--for example, the word 'contributor' is less precise than
'illustrator' or 'engraver' for the artist, but more accurate than 'author'
or 'publisher' for one who bears some relationship to textual content.  I
do not know how else to designate Oliver Goldsmith's or Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's written contributions to a journal which they have not edited,
financed or published nor of which they are not the sole or joint authors. 

	 Journals and newspapers also include excerpts from previously published
writers such as Aristotle, Juvenal and Cervantes (both living and dead).  I
would not consider them 'authors' in this context, since they were not
responsible for the intellectual content of the whole work, or even for one
issue of it; they may be unwitting contributors, if dead, but they have
contributed their work to the published whole.  How else would one describe
them?   

	5.  Richard Noble has pointed out that someone looking at a record for an
anthology would not have a great deal of difficulty in figuring out the
relationship that Poe (or Aristotle for that matter) to the work if he (or
in the case of Sappho or Jane, she) was so described. Would they? I do not
think the scope note as written is terribly obscure or hard to understand.

	6.  And I guess finally my attitude is rather like that of people in the
pro-choice camp: if you don't want to use it, or it doesn't seem helpful to
your target audience, don't use it, but leave those of us who want it or
need it alone.

	 ~ juliet