Dear Raffaella Sprugnoli,

Thank you for taking the time to provide such detailed and thoughtful feedback on our Ideas Exchange proposal on behalf of the ITALE Working Group. Please accept my apologies for the delay in this reply; I had unfortunately missed the notification for your comment.

We have carefully reviewed your arguments, and we completely understand your concerns. Your point regarding the loss of important information for disambiguation, especially in cases of homonymy, is very well-taken. We agree that the risk of creating ambiguity and shifting the burden of disambiguation onto the user is a significant issue.

Our initial proposal was driven by a goal to improve the consistency and usability of search facets for the end-user in our discovery interface, where we've noticed that the current level of granularity can sometimes lead to a fragmented experience.

However, given the valid issues you have raised and the clear need to serve different cataloguing practices within our user community, we agree that pursuing the proposal in its current form is not the best path forward. We will therefore be withdrawing our active support for this change. We believe a better approach is to wait for the planned development that will allow for local configuration of PNX facet and search fields (scheduled for Q2 2025), which should provide the flexibility each institution needs.

On a more collaborative note, we were very encouraged by two key points in your response:

Meeting Names: We share your interest in re-evaluating the normalization for meeting names. We look forward to the findings of your group's analysis and would be very open to collaborating on a future, targeted enhancement request on this specific point.
Unique Identifiers: We strongly agree that the most robust and sustainable solution lies in the use of unique identifiers. This is a critical need for the entire community to ensure proper author management. We would be very supportive of a joint effort to advocate for Ex Libris to prioritize developments in this area.

To foster this dialogue, we were wondering if you and members of your working group would be open to a brief meeting during the upcoming IGeLU conference? It could be a great opportunity to discuss our respective needs and explore how we can collaborate on shared goals.

Thank you again for your valuable engagement on this topic.

Best regards,
Alexandre
VP of ACEF

Good morning,
I am conveying the opinion of the ITALE (Italian association of Ex Libris users group) Working Group Cataloguing
standards and integration with the National Library Service-SBN regarding the proposal titled “Alignment
of UNIMARC normalization rules with MARC21 normalization rules for the creation of the author facet”.
We acknowledge the existence of the duplication issue; however, in our view, the proposed solution does
not constitute a significant improvement.
The first concern we raise is that, while the UNIMARC normalization rules for facets take into account all
subfields of the 7XX fields—including elements such as qualifications—the MARC21 proposal, as outlined in
the attached document, suggests limiting the consideration to subfields $a and $b for personal names,
corporate names, and meetings.
This restriction results in a loss of important information and introduces significant ambiguity, especially in
the many cases of homonymy. Authors with identical names are grouped into a single facet, eliminating the
ability to distinguish between them. As a result, the task of disambiguation is entirely transferred to the
user, who—particularly in the case of very common names—is left to reconstruct the correct attribution of
works.
Furthermore, the proposal does not address the duplication and inconsistency issues arising from
differences in authorized forms due to the cataloguing rules of various countries (e.g., the treatment of
ancient Greek and Latin authors). Likewise, it fails to resolve problems related to the use of different
transliteration standards for non-Latin alphabets.
For all the reasons outlined above, the group believes the proposal, in its current form, does not meet the needs of our community.
The only aspect we believe warrants further consideration is the treatment of meeting names. In this case,
the suggested approach of grouping all conferences with the same formal name into a single facet could
prove effective.
The group therefore intends to further investigate this point by analysing a broad set of cases and reserves
the right to share the findings at a later stage.
Finally, the group is convinced that the only real solution for the correct and consistent management of
authors and their grouping in discovery facets lies in the use of unique identifiers, as briefly mentioned in
the French proposal. In this regard, we would find it useful and of great interest to understand whether—
and how—Ex Libris is working towards this goal and, if so, which identifiers are being considered. It would
be important for the Ex Libris user community to be promptly informed about developments in this area, so
they can prepare accordingly and, where possible, adapt and update their cataloguing practices.
Best regards
Raffaella Sprugnoli on behalf of Working Group Cataloguing
standards and integration with the National Library Service-SBN