IFLA WORKING GROUP ON CATALOGUING

Makes a cr it ical study of the sections on corporate au-thor heading found in the Interim Report on the Francis Com-mittee. Points out the consequences of the failure to startwith a provisional definition of the chief concepts and terms.Shows the patchiness, and the omission of many importantproblems in the • Points for further study •.

1 INTRODUCTION

At its meeting in Zagreb in September 1954,Ifla set up its Working Group on the Co-ordina-tion of Cataloguing Principle s and asked it toreport on Corporate Autho r Heading and onHeading for Anonymous Work, at the Brusselsmeeting in September 1955. For shortness,the group will be called Francis Committeeafter the name of its Chairman. An "Interimr epo r t s was released in time for the Brusselsmeeting. Part IIA gives the analysis and PartIlIA give s the conclusions on Corporate AuthorHeading. This paper is on the sections of thelatter part.

2 DE FINI TION

IIIA1 ·Any Government or organ of Govern-ment, 'or any corporation, institution, associa-tion, and any meeting or assembly of personsmay be a corporate author provided that it isknown by a distinguishing narne s ,

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21 ·Government", This is taken as an as-sumed term. It is not defined. In commonusage, it does not denote a Local Body. Butsection III A4(b) implied its inclusion. Sucha ·smuggling in' of a new item in the meaningof a term without its explicit inclusion at thestage of definition is a grievous fault.

22 "Organ·. This is taken as an assumedterm. The failure to define it leads to aclumsy jumble of terms in III A4(c) in thephrase, "If the corporate author is an organbranch or administrative division of anotherbody". Does this include kinds of corporateauthor not covered by the definition in Section1 or is it mere tautology?

Further organ is mentioned only in thecase of a Government. But it is also possi-ble in any other kind of corporate body. Infact, this is taken into account in sectionIII A4(c). This is an inconsistency.

23 ·Corporation, institution or as socia-tion". What is the need to mention all thesein one breath? A careful definition of thiskind of corporate body and a single term todenote it are necessary to avoid trouble inthe later discussion and in the rules.

24 "Meeting or a s se rnb lv s , What aboutConference and Congress? Here also asingle defined term should be established assugge sted in 23.

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25 The correct course is to provide acareful definition for wGovernment", -Insti-tut ion ", and -Conferences for use in thecontext of cataloguing. So also SOrganS

should be defined and a criterion should beset up to distinguish an organ from an in-dependent corporate body, for cataloguingpurposes. It is pestering to meet these atthe stage of discussing or forming a ruleon the choice or rende ring a he ading.

26 sDistinguishing names. This hasbeen inserted without sufficient thought.Many an institution does not have such aname e.g., National Researc h Council,Library Association, General Post Office.These are authors of documents. Cata-loguing practice has rules to resolve ho-monym. In a note to section IIA 1, thereport speaks of scollective or corporatename, as di stinct from the name s of thepersons composing its in defining corpo-rate authorship. Why is this abandonedin Section III Af ,

27 Much of this looseness is due to failureto set about the problem of definition con-sciously and in a scientific way and to toocasual and drifting a beginning. Some of thedefects are also due to slovenline s s andfailure to focus on the definition of all thevarietie s of corporate authors arising inactual work. The resulting defective andhaphazard definition of the basic conceptand term in the field of investigation isunfortunate in a responsible document.

21 Amplification

III A2 ftFor the purpose of entry in anauthor catalogue, a corporate author isregarded as the author of any document forthe content of which it take s collective re s-ponsibility and which relates directly to itsown activities eg., constitutions, regula-tions, minutes, reports, proceedings, mani-festoes, statements of objects or policy etc;also of serie s whose title s inc lude the nameof corporate author s.

211 The advantage of having a section onSmay be author" and ,another section 8 isauthor" is not seen.

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212 WEntry in author c ata lo gue ", Whatis the purpose of the restrictive epithetSauthor ft? Will the definition of corporateauthor be different for an accession cata-logue, classified catalogue or dictionarycatalogue? Surely a corporate body beingthe author of a document is a fact intrinsicto the document itself and is independent ofthe nature of the catalogue in which it is en-tered, and independent even of its being cata-logued at all.

213 S Acorporate author is regarded asthe author of any document'. Except in rela-tion to a document there can be no corporateor personal author. Perhaps scorporate body"is meant. This is a bad copying of the ALACode. It states lIa corporate body may be re-garded as the author of publications etc. '.

214 'For which it has collective respon-s ibility ", What does "co l lec tiv e " imply? Isit that the re sponsibility is not that of anyindividual person(s) constituting the corporatebody? If so,i tis tautological.

215 WWhich re late s to its own activitie spolicy etc.' The term 'its ownw is a wrongre st r ic tion . When the title page of a documentmentions the name of a person in the author-statement and also indicates the name of acorporate body to which he belongs, the above-mentioned restriction is used to distinguishbetween personal and corporate authorship.But it is open to one corporate body to producea document on some other corporate body.Thus, the above re striction has been insertedout of context having been taken from someother documents, code or book.

216 ft Also of series whose titles includethe name of the corporate author'. Themeaning of this is beyond comprehension.

217 Even when read together, Sections IIIA1 and III A2 fail to function as a satisfactorydefinition. This cannot be played with in thisway. A long series of concepts and termsshould be defined, before "corporate author'can be defined. A long chain of definitionswill have to culminate on the definition ofthis term. In my ftHeading and canons: com-parative study of five catalogue code sft(1955, April), the chain of definitions coverssucce ssively Thought, Work, Corporate body,Organ of Corporate Body, Author of Work,

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Personal Author, and finally Corporate Author.Sacked by the first six definitions as prelimi-na r ie s , the definition of Corporate Author isgiven in sect ion 2232 as 'Corporate body asauthor, the re sponsibility for the thought andexpression in the work resting solely on itand not on personal author{s)'. No doubt, wecan combine all the six definitions into asinghl one. But it will be clumsy. It willviolate an essential principle in drafting viz ,the principle of unity in thought as well asexpression. It will also be difficult to apply.It will be bad in eve ry way.

3 Rendering of Name

III A4 'The heading for any corporateauthor is the official name or title of corpo-rate author, except that' (five exceptions arementioned viz. )

(a) shorter or more familiar name, incertain case;

(b) name of geographical unit, in caseof Government;

(c) and (d) name of parent body followedby Organ in certain cases; and

(e) name of the corporate author, if acorporate author as a whole is res-ponsible, even though composed orissued by an organ).

31 'Official name or title'. If 'title' is asynonym for "-name' it is tautological. Tauto-logy serve s no purpose in a technical or scien-tific document.

32 The definition of 'corporate author' hasbeen disposed of in Section III A 1 to 3. Butexception (e) again refers it up and adds to it,in a section on rendering of name. This is bad.

33. 'Issued by an organ'. In section II A3(a) dealing with analysis, the problem' Author-ship or publications' had been correctly decided.The right place for the incorporation of thedecision is the section on definition and not theone on the rende ring of name.

34 The exceptions in section III A4 aremany time s more formidable than the basicrule. Elegance in drafting requires that thisshould be stated as a number of distinct pres-criptions. It will make application also easier.

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35 Fundamentally, the above uncouth sec-tion is due to clarifi cation not having be enmade about the different kinds of corporatebodie s and about the decision whether theauthorship of a document re sts with a parentbody or an organ of it, at the stage of definingthese terms and concepts.

4 Patchy Presentation

At the end of Part III A, 'Points r e qui r mgfurther study· are enumerated. Only fourpoints are enumerated. The fourth pointraises the question of "Responsibility forthought content viz , Re sponsibility for issue'.This is answered by the definition of 'corpo-rate author" in section III A2.

42 The list is too patchy. It has omittedSOme very important points requiring furtherstudy. The se are the following:-

421 The determination whether the corpo-rate author of a document should be renderedas if it were an independent corporate bodyor as if it were an organ of another corporatebody. There is no uniformity in the prescrip-tion on this po int by the different cataloguecode s. Nor is the pre scription of some ofthe codes clear and easily applicable. Thereis first the issue 'Government or Institution'.This issuebecomesdifficult since nowadaysa Government assumes an increasing numberof functions which were in the private sectorin the past. Some functions are dischargeddepartmentally. Some are entrusted to auto-nomous institutions created by legislation orexecutive order. There are all grades oftransition between the se two extreme s , There

is a similar problem in ecclesiastical polityalso. This problem appears again as Institu-tion vs. Institution. This presents complica-tions when the parent body is a University ora National Academy as the one in Moscow. Itlooks as if there can be no simple formula tosolve this problem. Solution by enumerationhas been suggested as the only course in sec-tion 2288 of my "Heading and canons".

422 Re solution of homonym in the name of aGovernment, of an Administrative organ of aGovernment, and of an Institution. Elaboraterule s on the re solution of the fir st two kinds of

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homonyms are given in the Indian Code s - my

Classified catalogue code and Dictionary cata-logue code. The Vatican code and the ALA codealso have rules on the resolution of the firstkind of homonym; but they are not sufficientlyfull on the second kind. The modern tendencyto give special weight to the micro documentsproduced by Government bodie s make s thisissue impo rtant. Inte rnational documentationwill suffer unless the rules in the various codeson this pt;.oblem are co-ordinated and strength-ened. _

423 Inversion of the words in the name ofan organ so as to make the word denoting thesphere of action of the Organ the entry wordused in the subheading contributed by theOrgan. The words like Board, Bureau, Depart-ment, Div i sion and Ministry occurring in thename of an Organ have little potency. Nor arethey "sought" words. Nor are such words"permanent'. Nor are they correctly r e rne m+be re d. And yet in some language s, the seimportant words occur at the beginning ofthe names of Organs. As Organs of Govern-ments are becoming prolific authors inmodern times, an impotent entry word willbe a great barrier to the effectiveness of thecatalogue. Therefore, there should be anagreed pre scription on this problem.

424 Determination of the main headingfor a document of the delegation sent by onecorporate body to another, particularly, toa Conference. Three corporate bodies areinvolved. The Delegation is the author. Ithas an amphibious existence in relation tothe other two corporate bodies. It has tochoose one of them as the main heading. Herethe code 5 do not agree. Some code s do notconform to the basic definitions with whichthey had started. Readers themselves arenot able to make up their mind as to wherethey should expect the concerned documents.This is an irripo r t ant problem on whichFrancis Committee should arrive at sc rrieco-ordination.

5 POOR REPORT

The "Interim report' is a poor produc-tion for reasons of the meagreness of theground covered. superficiality, lack ofclarity, bad drafting and ineffectivene ss in

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capacity for comrnunication. The communi-cation was difficult even when the membersrnet face to face ami considered it sitting ata round table. Unawareness of all the diffi-culties besetting the concept, choice, andrendering of corporate author headings andunfamiliarity with important regions of theexisting literature on the problem are dis-closed by the report.

6 WHY HASTE

And yet there was too much reluctance andimpatience to set about rectifying the defectsin a systematic and thorough manner, basedon the scientific method of clarifying termi-nology and establishing equivalence amongthe term s used by different code s , formula-ting some agreed guiding principles as a basisfor spotting out and stating the differencesamong code s in terms of objective s and in-ternal consistency, and isolating all the prob-lems involving idealogical differences. Asense of haste was visible. It was allegedthat the re was no time to improve the reportfundamentally. According to a contract withUnesco, the report should be submitted to itin some shape or another by November next.Time was allowed to lapse for eight monthsin the year. The "Interim report" bears nodate. But it could not have been draftedbefore June. For my "Heading and ~anons I

figures in it organically. This was publishedin Madras only in April and copies did notreach Europe till June. If time had been lostheavily for one reason or other, the propercourse is to ask for extension of time and notto nominally fulfil the contract with a poorand incomplete report.

7 GRIEVOUS OMISSION

The list of catalogue code s forming thebasis of investigation is given in section 16It includes 18 codes. All of them areof the West. Codes of the East are severelyavoided. Ignorance of the latter cannot bepleaded. The two codes of India, publishedby the Madras Library Association, havebeen in the field for a long time. The"ClaSSified catalogue code I date s from 1934.

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It is in the third edition. "Dictionary cata-logue code- is in the second edition. Manycopie s are available in England including theBritish Museum Library. The omission ofthese two Indian codes become s grievous ifit is remembered that the Zagreb Meeting ofthe Ifla gave a specific direction to the FrancisCommittee that the se should be included amongthe code s to be used in its work.

8 HOPE

It is hoped that this serious mistake will berectified in a proper manner in the redraft ofthe report before it is sent to Une sc o , It isalso hoped that the problem of further inve s-tigation will be enumerated more fully in the

re-draft. It is further hoped that the qualityof the re-draft will be characterised bygreater clarity and capacity to form an effec-tive medium for communication. No doubt, itis good for Unesco to enforce a time table.But it is equally essential that the report isof proper standard, that it is not partial tothe Wes tern School of thought, that it doe snot exclude any Eastern School of thoughtand particularly the Indian Code s which itwas asked to include and that it is morec ornpl e se and not a mere make-believe. Be-tween accepting a poor, incomplete andsuperficial report and giving extension oftime for the production of a proper report,it is expected that Une sco will prefer thelatter. Surely, Une sco should be reallyinterested in substance and not in ritual.

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