[tei-council] on regularizing names

John A. Walsh jawalsh at indiana.edu
Thu Sep 21 21:02:59 EDT 2006


Christian,

I understand what your saying, but I also think in practice there is  
a very fine distinction between regularizing a name and pointing to a  
person.  If my document refers to both Thomas Wyatts, I don't think I  
want one <regName>Wyatt, Thomas</regName>. I probably want something  
like <regName>Wyatt, Thomas, Sir, 1503?-1542</regName> and  
<regName>Wyatt, Thomas, Sir, 1521?-1554</regName>, which are the full  
Library of Congress name authority headings.  In this case, the  
regularized name clearly identifies a specific person, as well as a  
regularized form of the name, so having a key here on <regName>  
doesn't seem that wacky.  But recognizing that the regularization of  
a name often disambiguates the identity of the person having that  
name and at least implicitly points to a specific person, maybe we  
should just change the name of the <regName> tag to something that  
reflects the potential multivalence of the element.

John
--
| John A. Walsh
| Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Science
| Indiana University, 1320 East Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405
| www: <http://www.slis.indiana.edu/faculty/jawalsh/>
| Voice:812-855-8758 Fax:812-856-2062 <mailto:jawalsh at indiana.edu>


On Sep 21, 2006, at 8:07 PM, Christian Wittern wrote:

>
>
> Syd Bauman <Syd_Bauman at Brown.edu> writes:
>
>>> Could another option be a twist on (j)? Instead of a pointer to a
>>> regularization, with no key= on the <regName>, what about a pointer
>>> to a regularization, with no key= on the <persName>? It seems
>>> having key= on both <persName> and <regName> is redundant, and
>>> having to include a key= and reg= on every <persName> is excessive
>>> when one could include just the reg= and find the key= in the
>>> referenced <regName>.
>>
>> Yes, for a project that is both keying and regularizing it would make
>> good sense to use reg= on <persName> (w/o key=) and key= on
>> <regName>. But we need to permit key= on <persName> for those
>> projects who are keying, and either not regularizing or are
>> performing regularization via whatever database the key= points to.
>
> Sorry guys, I do not get you here.
>
> To me @key on <regName> seems outright wrong.  @key is supposed to
> point to records of persons, whereas <regName> has only to do with
> the *regularization* of names.  So I do not understand what role @key
> has on <regName>, other than a convenient shortcut for those special
> cases where only one person of that specific name exist in your
> records (but you are out of luck if a second one shows up).  If that
> is indeed the use case, I do not think we should recommend this.
>
> Christian
>
>
> -- 
>
>  Christian Wittern
>  Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University
>  47 Higashiogura-cho, Kitashirakawa, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8265, JAPAN
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