ABSTRACT
The evolution of library cataloging in response to the ever-expanding world of electronic materials, online access, and library holdings in general, is looking to institute radical changes as we move into the second decade of the “new” millennium. The radical nature of the changes underway is refl ected even in the name of the proposed resource tool, as the community shifts from use of “Anglo American Cataloguing Rules” to guidelines for “Resource Description & Access.” One of the most radical-and potentially welcome-changes concerns the potential interpretation and practice regarding “persons.” Under traditional cataloging rules as formulated in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, only human beings were considered “persons;” and only a person could be established as the author, contributor, or other responsible party in relation to a book. The rules were continually updated and adapted, eventually broadening the scope of responsibility (and catalog entry) to include various categories of persona along with persons, adding juristic persons such as pseudonyms and corporations. Although more expansive than the concept of natural persons, these juristic persons still nonetheless refl ected exclusively human beings, just with diff erent secret identities or in groups. The rules never embraced nor allowed the entry of non-human authors. So while the canonical cartoon celebrated an Internet in which no one would know you were a dog, the library community that began to catalog the Internet was insistent upon that knowledge; no dogs allowed. RDA now proposes that the defi nition of “persons” in respect to library catalog entry be expanded to include non-human entities, such as fi ctional characters and non-human animals12. This revision will make it at least possible for animals to be granted wider access, adding, for example, the concept of animal as contributor, including animal actors and animal authors. But are there indeed circumstances under which such identifi cation and attribution would be warranted?
