how old were you when you figured out what "Corporate Author" meant?

MLA NewsLine: Libraries Through the Looking Glass: "and where were you?"

32 and in a classroom at the New School for Social Research with Arno Kastner. Mind you, I hate corporate author. Thank god main entry doesn't matter so much any more. I was manager of bibliographic services at a special library for a while. We had lots of annual reports and proceedings and the like, hence my hatred of corporate author. I do wonder why UC Berkeley has it as a search function on their catalog. I can just barely come up with scenarios where it might be useful, but then I think, why not use keyword so I don't have to be so exact?

Roy Tennant is one of my faves from Web4Lib. He's so sensible and thoughtful. I have to guess that Arno Kastner would disagree, since I know Roy feels "MARC must die." I wonder what Arno thinks about FRBR.

Roy also points out, "Only librarians like to search, everyone else likes to find." I think that's something to which librarians don't pay enough attention at times. I'm glad I learned what "corporate author" means. I'm glad Arno Kastner made me do a paper on the history of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, even though I never use them. At least I can argue with the cataloguers semi-intelligently, and consider long-range implications of new technology. (Which makes me remember LC changing from "moving pictures" to "motion pictures" in 1989, I think, tee hee.) I think librarians need to consider the information architecture around us. The rigor of cataloguing, classification, and controlled vocabulary are important, and can stand behind the next iteration...longhand bibliography, card catalog, fiche catalog, OPAC, ?