ALEG

KF: This document has been heavily revised to include a "Pseudo-person" entity. The Indecs model added this entity to allow generalised attribution of characteristics (sex, occupation, events, ...) to the pseudonym where indexers think it appropriate (which it may be for fleshed out pseuds such as Dame Edna Everidge).

"Agent" is the term used by ALEG to represent a person or organisation. "Agents" can be associated with other ALEG entities. For example, they can:

• author, edit, translate, publish works/expressions/manifestations
• influence works
• influence other agents
• be the subject of works

However, as explained below, this relationship between agents and works is not a direct relationship.

This document attempts to describe how ALEG represents the names which agents use: how names are linked with agents, and how names are linked to works.

In summary, ALEG follows the Indecs model in which works are linked to names, and then, in a separate step, names are linked to agents.

Many types of names

What is a name? What is my name? Am I "Kent Fitch", "K Fitch", "Mr Kent Fitch"? If I changed my name by deed poll or marriage, is my new name now my name, or am I forever identified by the name on my birth certificate? If I passed myself off as "Ken Finch" to all my (new) friends, would that be my name?

If I wrote as "Harry Feroka", got mail addressed to me as "Harry Feroka", introduced myself (on some occassions) as "Harry Feroka", does that become my name?

Does it matter?

It only matters because at some point, people tend to want to bind a physical human being to one or more names. This gets complicated however, because sometimes this just isn't clear cut or even possible:

• Eldershaw, M. Barnard was a pseudonym always used for the jointly written works of Marjorie (Faith) Barnard and Flora S. (Sydney) Eldershaw)
• Australie was a pseudonym used by several, otherwise independent writers. Sometimes the specific person behind the works written using the pseudonym will be known, sometimes they will not.
• Sometimes the person behind the pseudonym is not known, or can only be guessed at.

People, Names, Works - how they are linked in ALEG

ALEG treats agents and names like this:

1. Works are linked to Names, (not directly to agents)

2. Persons and Organisations (the two types of Agent) are linked to Names

3. There are 2 kinds of relationships between agents and the names they used:
   1. Most Common Writing Name
   2. Alternative Name (which includes sub-relationships)

4. Pseudonyms are handled like this:
   • There is a special sub-type of Person called PseudoPerson

   • A PseudoPerson is just like a normal Person except that it represents an identity which the system knows is not a natural, independent person, but which is known to be an identity associated with a special type of name: a pseudonym

   • A PseudoPerson is always associated with exactly one Pseudonym

   • A PseduoPerson may be associated with zero or one Person entities with the "usesPseudoIdentity" relationship. Very rarely (see below), a PseudoPerson may be associated with more than one person, but this usage described the uncommon situation of a writing partnership using a pseudonym, not the serial use of a pseudonym by different people over time, or the accidental use of the same pseudonym by two different people. A single Person may be associated with many PseudoPersons.

   • Because a PseudoPerson is in most respects like a Person, they can have normal person-like attributes (gender, ethnicity, birth, death etc) and relationships (influenceOn, visited, etc)

   • There is no equivalent PseudoOrganisation entity for organisations

1. An Agent can be linked to a Name by at most one Most Common Writing Name relationship. This records what people would expect to see as the name of that Agent.

   For example, the person: "Patrick Victor Martindale White" would be linked via a Most Common Writing Name link to a Name entity containing the name "Patrick White" (or would that be "White, Patrick"?)

2. An Agent can be linked to Names by any number of Alternative Names relationships.

   For example, the person "Patrick Victor Martindale White" would be linked by an Alternative Name relationship to a Name entity containing the name "Patrick Victor Martindale White" (or would that be "White, Patrick Victor Martindale"?). That particular Alternative Name relationship would be of a special sub-class: "current substantive name".

   At any one time, an agent can have at most one relationship of type "current substantive name". The "current substantive name" may change over time, for example when a person marries, divorces, changes their name via deed poll, or whatever. Alternative names may just be variants on the agent's name, such as "Tom Keneally", "TG Keneally", "Tugga Keneally", etc (from the "Thomas Michael Kenneally" Person)

   

3. A Person can be linked to a PseudoPesron by any number of usesPseudoIdentity relationships.

   For example, the Person associated with the name "John Clarke" would be linked to many PseudoPerson entities which themselves where each linked to names such as "Benaud, Derek", "Blath, Sylvia", "Burns, Rabbi" and "Milne, R.A.C.V.".

   

   What of the case where a pseudonym is 'used' by multiple people? There are two cases:

   1. The Eldershaw, M. Barnard case - one pseudonym used as author-name of works created jointly by two people. In this case, the two people (Barnard and Eldershaw) are both individually linked to the same single occurrence of the PseudoPerson/Name Eldershaw, M. Barnard by two usesPseudoIdentity relationships.

      

   2. The Australie case - one pseudonym used by different people, but not to jointly author a work. In this case, multiple "Australie" PseudoPerson/Name entities are created, each linked to a different person (if known) by the usesPseudoIdentity relationship.

      

   If the 'real' person behind a PseudoPerson/Name is not known, then the PseudoPerson/Name will not be linked to any person - it will just be a PseudoPerson and Name entity pair in ALEG.

The following attributes can be recorded against every Agent - Name and Agent - PseduoPerson relationship:

• date range - can be absent (implies no time limit, or on of the from or to times can be absent

• notes - providing additional non-structured information

• probable - if the link is not entirely certain, but highly likely (!?!)

• source - providing a reference for this information where appropriate
  MLA: plus explanatory notes

Linking Works to Names

As mentioned above, works are linked to names, not to people. That is fine where names resolve one to one with people (or, in the case if Barnard M Aldershaw, always one name to two people).

But a possible problem could arise with the "Australie" case when it is known that, say, a work written under that pseudonym was created by Emily Manning, not Jane Feroka.

This is resolved with the above design by linking the work to a particular Australie:

Linking works to names, not to creators: it provides a neatish solution, I suppose, and it seems to conform with long standing cataloging practice (it is hard to see what 'creators' would be in the MARC world as it just puts names against works, and linking them together is a hit and miss affair of text-string matching). But it just seems a bit odd to me - a person 'creates' a work, not a 'name'. Maybe the above design is a useful logical model, but it doesn't imply how the system will be implemented nor what the user view of the system will be.

Recording information about serially used pseudonyms

Sometimes ALEG will want to record information about serially used pseduonyms such as "Australie" and "Larry Kent". ("Larry Kent" is a 'house-pseudonym' used by many authors of a particular publishing house.) As the system will store many Pseudo-Persons called "Larry Kent" there needs to be a way to "group" or "classify" those "Larry Kent"'s for at so that:

• Information "common" to all uses of the pseudonym "Larry Kent" can be stored in a common place
• All common uses of the pseudonym can be identified

It is proposed that this grouping be achieved by defining "Larry Kent" (and "Australie") as a special type of Topic (maybe "commonly used pseudonyms") and extra information could be recorded against that topic (such as "house pseudonym used by XYZ Publishing". This extra information could be output whenever the pseudonym name would be output (just as birth-death dates are output).