52 DePaul Law Review 1193 (2003)
 

The relationship between publishers and librarians is considerably more problematic by contrast.It is often a love/hate relationship, and yet libraries and publishers are very interdependent today.Libraries often are the only purchaser of expensive esoteric works and journals that are invaluable for serious research.Librarians are asked to suggest new titles and useful works that a publisher should consider producing.Publishers like to offer “deals” to libraries on purchases, they sponsor events at library association meetings, present librarians with small company gifts that advertise the company, and the like.But there are many antagonisms too, such as exorbitant journal pricing, (not so much in law, but in science and technology.[12]Not only are journal prices excessively high, but often the library subscription rate is five or six times that of an individual subscription.[13]Commercial journal publishers unabashedly discuss the maximization of profits for their shareholders and view libraries as a huge market, a source of these profits.While library budgets have increased, they have not kept pace with the rate of inflation in publishing; further, the increasing volume of material published annually is overwhelming.

Moreover, librarians watch with alarm what they view as the “great copyright grab” where publishers and producers are holding copyright in more and more of the works produced while at the same time seeking to restrict the rights of users to access these works and to use them.Librarians worry that publishers are moving toward a pay-for-use world, which will exacerbate the problems of the information poor.

In this article I will address authorship generally and then specifically as it relates to libraries with special focus on authors as the central element in bibliographic control.The article contrasts the view of authorship as it is used in libraries with that in copyright law and concludes with particular problems for libraries associated with digital works and authorship.
 

What was it that made human beings first want to document their ideas and share their creative renderings?It may have begun with Paleolithic cave paintings, but it could have begun even earlier.[14]Some of the earliest cuneiform writing is from Sumeria recorded on clay tablets. Sumarian-Bablyonian epic poetry began as oral recitations that were eventually recorded around 1200 B.C. as the Gilgamesh Epic.The same migration from the oral to the written tradition occurred in ancient Greece as evidenced by the Homeric tales between 900-700 B.C., which eventually were preserved in written form as the Iliad and the Odyssey.Recorded by hand, these works were copied over and over again, and it was inevitable that errors would occur in this process of hand copying.Later manuscript copies likely bore little relation to the original.Around the seventh century A.D. wood block printing developed in China and was used to produce books.Wood block printing was slow to be used in Europe, but by the 1300s it had been widely adopted.[15]Although Johann Gutenberg is credited with the invention of moveable type in Mainz, Germany in 1450, there is increasing evidence that it was known and used as early as 1234 in Korea.[16]Books were printed in Europe from the mid-15^th century forward, and printing made it possible for print houses and publishers to develop and profit from producing books.Further, authors now had the ability to distribute their works widely to share their ideas.[17]

As a group of writers began to derive their livelihood from their writings, the concept of authorship in the modern sense arose.[18]

            The new conceptions of writing and reading entailed seeing the writer as an originator one who no longer

In the Romantic construct of authorship, there is a hierarchy that ranks works of the imagination higher than other works.[20]And copyright law presumes that authors who have created the property are entitled to special or unique rewards because of the social value of their creations.[21]The Statute of Anne[22] made the first reference to author in copyright in England in the 18^th century.Although the statute referred to authors, the real intention behind the statute was to protect the rights of booksellers and printers.[23]But gradually, the concept of authorship began to replace the interests of publishers in English law.The term “ … [author] took on a life of its own as individualistic notions of creativity, originality, and inspiration were poured into it.‘Authorship’ became an ideology.”[24]

In the course of the last three centuries, the fiscal imperatives of copyright have become aesthetic and legal constructs, changing our definitions of texts, copyright and authors.In the case of copyright, what was once a law to ensure publishers’ and proprietary rights to products is now an often unspoken belief that solitary authors have original ideas, and that those authors should be able to control those ideas as an expression of their originality.[25]

Yet, copyright is not the only way to support authors.They could be subsidized directly by the government, be awarded grants (such as from the National Endowment for the Arts),[26] or through a Public Lending Right.

Martha Woodmansee writes that society tends to idealize the lone author working to produce a copyrighted work.[27]Libraries also are likely to see authors that way and there certainly are many examples to support this view.We envision the author pecking away on the computer keyboard to produce excellent mystery novels, historical fiction or legal tomes.This is the ideal author – a loner who watches people and gathers characters like most of us gather coat hangers or the author is one who use works of nonfiction just to uncover sufficient historical details to set the work more or less accurately in a period of history.

What of works of nonfiction?Are the writers of these works not authors too?Certainly they are, but we just do not idealize them to the same extent.We think of them as serious researchers working in dusty libraries to uncover little know facts to help support arcane arguments.Or analyzing and synthesizing scientific writings to produce new works that will make a difference, which, in the best view will make a difference in the world at large, and at worst, will at least support the author’s quest for tenure at an in institution of higher education.But creativity is not reserved solely for works of fiction, artistic and dramatic works.
 

The term “authorship” generally is used as a shorthand method to encompass the relationships between a person or persons and the content of an item which denotes responsibility for either the creation or modification of the intellectual or artistic content of the work.[30]For libraries, authorship is a very important key to grouping works or documents by subject matter, quality and level of knowledge. In fact, the author often implies subject matter often since authors tend to write in a limited number of subject fields or genre, and they possess different levels of knowledge even about the same matters.The author also tells readers about the quality of the knowledge the individual has or communicates.A reader may determine this herself or by reading reviews of the author’s works.Further, author tells the reader something about the level of the work since some authors write only for adults, others only for children, etc.[31]

There is a sort of magic in solo authorship because society honors and admires those authors who can produce great works as they labor alone.But that magic is not really related to copyright or to library issues.Additionally, there are others who seek to be considered as authors.

Among professional indexers, for example, there is a movement to call themselves authors and to be credited with authorship for the scholarly work they perform in creating the index to a work.“The interpretation of text for an index is not unlike the process of sifting through hours of transcribed interviews and research materials gathered for a feature story. In both situations, it is necessary to pull the important topics out and make them explicit.”[32]Members of the public seldom consider indexers to be authors, but the same may be said of many indexers themselves who fail to consider that they might be authors.Most indexers are anonymous, and at least one indexer has opined that if the indexer were identified at the first of each work, the quality of indexing itself would improve.Further, if editors realized that they were dealing with authors, then indexers would be given the same degree of editorial control that other authors receive.[33]If a stand alone index meets the copyright requirements of originality and fixation, the index is copyrighted,[34] but those indexes that are described as “back of the book” indexes are not.

Translators are another example of contributors to a work who are not recognized as authors in library catalogs but may be so recognized in copyright law.“Translation is stigmatized as a form of writing, discouraged by copyright law, depreciated by the academy, exploited by publishers and corporations, governments and religious organizations.”[35]Since translations are defined as derivative works in the copyright law,[36] there is only a narrow area for translation.[37]The reason the role of the translator as an author is marginalized might be the prevailing concept of authorship which focuses on originality and self expression.Translation, on the other hand is viewed solely as derivative.“Given the reigning concept of authorship, translation provokes the fear of inauthenticity, distortion, contamination.”[38]Moreover, because of its nature as a derivative work, translation challenges the notion of scholarship. It is impossible to produce a translation that is not somewhat slanted by cultural views, and yet academic institutions venerate foreign language and literature, and do not even want to consider cultural conditions under which languages are taught.[39]While a translation is a derivative work, the copyright law recognized this type of authorship and a work is eligible for copyright if it meets the originality and fixation requirements.Nonetheless, a library will enter the work in the catalog, i.e., “catalog” the work under the name of the author of the original work with only an added entry for the name of the translator, if there is any catalog entry for that individual at all.There are scholars who advocate for translation to be recognized as a distinct type of authorship which involves collaboration between divergent groups as opposed to a form of personal expression.[40]

Co-authorship also is quite common in the publishing industry.If the work is a work for hire, the employer is the author.[44]Publishers themselves may be the author under the work for hire doctrine.[45]A work for hire is defined as a work produced by an employee within the scope of her employment or a work that is ordered or commissioned for use as a collective work.[46]For this latter category, however, only certain types of contributions are defined as being a part of such a collective work.These include contributions to a motion picture, as a translation supplementary work, as a compilation, instructional text, as a test or answer material for a test or an atlas.Furthermore, the parties must agree in writing to the above arrangement.[47]

Collaboration on large research projects and the resulting writing that summarizes the results present complicated issues for determining authorship, and the rules for such determination vary across academic disciplines and fields.Since authorship determines tenure and promotion, it is an important issue for faculty members.Academia is replete with stories of young authors who are entirely omitted from the authorship line unfairly but who have little recourse if they want to preserve their jobs.While there are ethical guidelines for authorship in various disciplines, they do not always make much difference even though it is unethical conduct for a senior researcher to take credit for something produced by a younger colleague.Some researchers have even petitioned the federal government to develop better authorship rules for works produced with federal funding. Perhaps even more promising is that some research labs have decided to solve the problems caused over wrangling for authorship by publishing their work under the name of the lab as the author.[48]

If more writing is collaborative today, the electronic era is hastening the demise of the idea of the author working alone.[49]Moreover, various contributors to works may seek recognition as co-authors.For example, in December 1999, cinematographers from 22 European countries met Torun, Poland, and produced the Torun Declaration 99.The Declaration states that the work of cinematographers on films as works of art depend on their creative work as the author of the images.Therefore, European cinematographers seek recognition as co-authors of films and other audiovisual works, and they claim moral rights as authors.[50]

    Some entire collections or portions of many library collections are simply arranged by author’s last name.For example, the fiction collection in many libraries is not classified by subject but instead is arranged alphabetically by author’s last name.Many libraries still use the Cutter Tables, based on the alphabet, to assign alphanumeric call numbers that reflect last name of the author and shelve materials in this order.[53]Even the Library of Congress (LC) Classification scheme arranges modern works of fiction in class P; they are then alphabetized by the last name of the author within broad time periods.[54]So, although an LC classification number that appears on the book’s spine, a large part of that number is based on the last name of the author.

    In addition to the library’s catalog, there are other finding aids such as bibliographies and indexes.The difference between bibliography and catalog is that the best bibliographies list every relevant item on a particular subject, or every item that is produced in a particular locale or is published during a certain period of time.Also, bibliographies typically do not provide location for the materials listed.Catalogs, on the other hand, list and detail the holdings of a particular library or collection and include the location of the material through a call number or other location device.[55]An index usually provides access to portions of larger items, such as articles in periodical issues, poetry in collections or chapters in books.By contrast, cataloging provides access to entire works, such as books, journal issues, and the like.[56]Early indexes also recognized the importance of author entries even as an adjunct to a subject index.[57]

For any library, the author catalog or author entries in a dictionary catalog, i.e., one that interfiles author, title and subject headings, is an essential finding tool. The principles of authorship for the catalog are closely related to the concept of authorship in copyright law.The reasons that the author catalog is so important to libraries are both historical and practical.The first reason is that the name of the author is printed on the spine of the book and on the title page of the work which makes it the most readily identifiable feature of a book.Second, if the library patron has spelled the author’s name correctly, the author catalog is the only one from which she can determine whether the library has a particular title. In fact, early author catalogs were really an inventory of the bookstock of a library; and in medieval libraries, this inventory feature was particularly important.A third reason for the importance of the author catalog is the assumption that library users will group books by author rather than by title, the other readily identifiable feature of books.But even these purposes are not the most important purpose of an author catalog.The most important reason is one that tracks the copyright concept of authorship, and that is to identify the person who has intellectual responsibility for the creation of work.[58]“The fact that a work is the embodiment of a person’s thought is of supreme importance in relation to that work.”[59]When it is not possible to identify an author, then libraries traditionally designate the title entry for a work as the main entry in the catalog.Thus, the two main criteria for the author catalog are identification and intellectual responsibility.The history of cataloging codes over the past 150 years demonstrates that the view about which of these two criteria is the most important has changed over time, but is somewhat related to what one considers the main purpose of the author catalog to be.[60]
 

The 1908 Anglo American cataloguing code defined author as “The writer of a book, as distinct from translator, editor, etc. … Corporate bodies may be considered the authors of publication issued in their name of by their authority.”[61]By 1967 and the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules defined author similarly “By author is meant the person or corporate body chiefly responsible for the creation of the intellectual or artistic content of as work.”The definition of author from these codes broadens the definition to include editors and compilers.[62]Themodern Anglo-American Cataloging Rules 2d, defines personal author as “... the person chiefly responsible for the creation of the intellectual or artistic content of the work” and defines corporate author as “… an organization or group of persons that is identified by a particular name and that acts, or may act, as an entity.”[63]The concept of authorship in the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules is complex, and is likely to become more so.For library catalogs and other finding tools, some scholars have suggested that the term “author” be replaced with terms such as "originator," "agent" or "creator" as a way to express various facets of the concept of authorship.[64]

Like any modern library, it held the store of knowledge, but in the delicate form known as papyrus scrolls.Ptolemy asked his fellow rulers around the known world to lend him texts which he would have copied; it is rumored that he did so but sometimes kept the originals and returned the copies to the rightful owners!Additionally, when ships landed at the port of Alexandria, vessels were searched, not for contraband but for books and maps.These were confiscated, copied and then returned to their owners.The copies were added to the library.[68]A truly unique feature of this library is that it was not a private library but instead was established by the state.The library was open to all, so it was, in effect, the first public library.
 

Destroyed in 415 A.D., the library was ransacked for gold and silver and burned, although the reasons for the destruction are conflicting and political in nature.What is clear, however, is that the library was destroyed.Today, several excavations have revealed scientific and historical documents that would have resulted in the industrial revolution having occurred 1500 years earlier.Among the lost documents included the methods used to build the pyramids and the Parthenon, alchemy, natural plant medicine and utopian philosophy.[69]The legend of the destruction of the library by Christian monks who feared the pagan content of the library[70] offers interesting parallels to the Internet and modern attempts to control the content of what is on the Internet whether it be offensive material, material that is critical of certain governments or works by alleged terrorist works.

How were the materials in the Library at Alexandria arranged?The physical shelves may have been located in one of the outlying halls or even in the Great Hall itself. Contemporary descriptions indicate that the shelving consisted of pigeonholes or racks for the scrolls, the best of which were wrapped in linen or leather jackets in order to protect them.[71]There was some systematic sorting apparently, probably by classes of authors such as poets, philosophers, orators, etc., and then alphabetically by author within the class.Zenodotus of Ephesus (born ca. 335 B.C.), is identified as the first librarian at Alexandria, and he is credited with developing this system of collection arrangement.[72]

In Roman times, manuscripts started to be written in codex form, i.e., in book format rather than a roll, and began to be stored in wooden chests called armaria.Materials were probably housed in these chests and shelves in the groups in which they were acquired.Callimachus of Cyrene (ca. 305-240 B.C.), the second and most famous librarian of Alexandria, created the first catalog listing of 120,000 scrolls, called the Pinakes or Tables, which lists Greek works.[73]It appears that the Callimachus divided authors into classes such as epic poets, orators, historical writers, etc., and then arranged the authors alphabetically within the classes or subclasses.Thus, from earliest times, authorship was important for bibliographic control.Biographical information was included for each author, when possible. Unfortunately, the library catalog did not survive the destruction of the library intact, but fragments do exist.[74]The scrolls were cataloged by author, if the author was known.[75]So, this is the first recorded use of the name of the author as a finding tool for recorded knowledge.

Most of the early listings of medieval library collections were not catalogs as we know them today but were bibliographies, i.e., a compilation of lists of books.Some of these early listings also contained biographical information about the author of the work.[76] Monastic libraries were first developed in England by the Benedictines, but it was the Carthusians which made provision for books to be lent outside the monastery.By the 11^th century the Benedictines adopted the Carthusian plan and each monastery had two book collections, one from which books could be lent outside the monastery and the second consisted of books that were kept in secure spaces and were considered to be valuable property of the house.These libraries thus had what could be described as lending and reference collections.Books were generally stored in cupboards or wherever there space could be found.The monk in charge of the library was the precentor, who was also the chief singer and archivist.[77]

    The first catalogs of medieval monastic libraries were actually inventory lists often arranged in the order in which the manuscript was received by the monastery.[78]Early library catalogs included information such as title, author, location in library and the name of scribe who copied the book listed on a card.[79]Some catalogs may have been organized broadly by form (literature, music) or by discipline such as science, religion, law, or by authorship or title.[80]One of the earliest such catalogs is that of the Glastonbury Abbey Library, produced in 1017, which was primarily an inventory (and thus was author arranged).Its most famous catalog, however, was produced in 1247, and it adopted an unusual classification based on whether the value of the work was due to the author or its subject.No other library appears to have used this method of classification.[81]Christchurch, Canterbury produced its library catalog between 1313 and 1331, and it was a subject catalog with author arrangement under at least one subject, theology, the largest category.[82]The catalog at the Exeter Cathedral Library was compiled in 1327 and was an author catalog.[83]By the 15^th century, some of the catalogs of cathedrals, monasteries and universities were still author catalogs but the majority had adopted subject catalogs with listings under each subject by author.[84]
 

Although many would identify the 19^th century effort to share the cataloging for journal literature as the first effort at cooperative cataloging, it actually was initiated several centuries earlier.In 1296 the Registrum Librorum Angliae was produced, probably the work of Franciscans.The Registrum lists 183 monastic establishments, each of which had a library and was assigned a sequential number.Following the list of libraries, is the author catalog which lists 94 authors.Under each author’s name there is a list of titles along with the list of libraries that held the item as indicated by the number that denotes the name of the library.[85]Thus, the earliest attempts at bibliographic control were dependent on author arrangement exclusively or on author arrangement within each subject heading.
 

Catalogs of private libraries are few, but many early collections that are detailed in wills and inventories of various estates indicate that some of these libraries were extensive.The inventory listings often are by author unless the listing was prepared by a valuator who cared little for books who may have listed the work as X number of volumes, bound in calfskin.[86]The first bookseller’s catalog was produced in 1595, the Catalogue of Andrew Maunsell, which consisted of two parts, an author listing and a subject listing.The third part was to continue the subject listing but had not been completed at the time of Maunsell’s death.[87]

In the Middle Ages, there were no public libraries, yet the needs of scholars and researchers led to the development of some of the principles from which the modern library developed.Likely the richest library was the private library of the King of France, which by about 1500 had nearly 2000 books, of which some 200 were printed volumes.[88]The library at the University of Leyden dates from 1575, and early engravings show that it was a subject- classified library with a variety of authors in each section.At Oxford University, the library was completely destroyed in 1549; Sir Thomas Bodley proposed that he should refit and restock the library,[89] but he insisted on an author catalog for the new collection as opposed to a subject catalog.[90]The Bodlian Library at Oxford University dates from 1597 and was open to the public as early as 1602.The first librarian, Thomas James was instructed to compile lists and submit them to Bodley so that duplicates would not be purchased.[91]The first Bodleian catalog was published in 1605 and it was the first general catalog for a European library.It was divided into four subject groups:theology, law, medicine and arts.Within each of the four subject divisions, the catalog was arranged by author.The books were not shelved in author order, however, but by size.[92]The second catalog was published in 1620 and it was the first general library catalog to be published in author order abandoning subject classification, but the preface still advised librarians to arrange their collections by size.[93]During the 17^th century the Bodleian catalog tried both author and classified arrangements, and found author to be more advantageous.[94]During the 18^th century, several libraries continued to use author arrangement for their catalogs, including the Bodelian, and some used a chronological arrangement of works under the name of the author.Except for the dispute over author versus subject classification, cataloging was becoming more standardized by this time.[95]

As library collections grew in size and complexity, library managers began to develop listings of these works, not only for inventory control but also to help locate the work when a user wanted to retrieve it.Early catalogs were in the form of book catalogs with entries for each work held by the library – cuneiform inventory lists, manuscript lists of holdings of monastery libraries and lists of holdings in private collections.These tended to be arranged by author, if the author was known, and otherwise by title.[97]

    In England, Sir Antonio Panizzi, keeper of printed books at the British Museum, created a set of cataloging rules to govern the listing of the growing collection at the British Museum.In 1841 he produced his "91 Rules," and documented the practice of using 'entries' and 'references' to refer one to the main entry, i.e., author entry.[98]These rules are said to be the beginning of modern cataloging rules; prior to this time, each cataloger made his own rules, and often they were not committed to writing.The cataloging rules that were then developed in England and the United States were based on Panizzi’s rules.[99] Panizzi refused to develop a subject classification scheme since he believed that the name of the author should form the basis for the arrangement of the catalog.He testified before the Trustees of the British Museum that a catalog arranged alphabetically by the author’s last name was the most useful arrangement since students and other users would know the name of the author of the book they wished to peruse.[100]As late as the mid-19^th century the British Museum still used author as the primary entry element when there was an identifiable author.If the author was unknown, then the primary entry was under title.Multiple authors were listed depending on how many were credited with the title just as is done today for citations in bibliographies.[101]Panizzi’s rules continued to be used by the British Library, but they had been reduced to 41 rules by 1936.[102]In many ways, Panizzi’s code is both pragmatic and practical, and is as modern as any of its successors.[103] The British Library catalog continued to expand, and by 1975 the original 150 volume catalog had expanded to 2000 and would soon be 3000 volumes long; further, there was not sufficient room in the reading room to house the rapidly growing catalog.[104]Virtually all other library catalogs in Britain were subject-classified catalogs by the mid-20^th century with the exception of the British Museum.By this time also, the trend also appeared to favor a dictionary catalog as opposed to a classified one.[105]

    Panizzi's 91 Rules and the principle of authorship formed the foundation of the Anglo-American cataloging tradition – now 161 years of tradition.“The importance of the concept of authorship, whereby libraries acknowledge the creator of a work, is a cornerstone of the Anglo-American cataloguing rules, since librarians believe that users identify a work with an author.”[106]As indicated, the name of the author has been the primary entry and arranging device in library catalogs for centuries.A work is first identified by the name of the author, referred to today as the main entry, and carries forward through the bibliographic description on a catalog entry.[107]Panizzi recognized joint authorship and collective authorship but did not appear to differentiate between them, he also recognized corporate authorship.[108]In the United StatesCharles A. Cutter, who developed widely followed cataloging rules beginning in 1876, identified two purposes of a library catalog:(1) to provide an indication of whether a library has a particular title by a given author and (2) to indicate the library’s holdings of books by a particular author.[109]The first function may be described as the finding list function and the second as the intellectual responsibility function.Early library catalogs were in book form, but by the end of the 19^th century, the card catalog was becoming the preferred format.Under the leadership of the Library of Congress, the standard entry for the card catalog was the main author entry, and it adopted Cutter’s principles by using the main entry to describe the intellectual responsibility for the work.[110]
 

1.  Authorship and Cataloging Rules
 

As bibliographic control grew, the desire for standardization in cataloging increased.Even before Panizzi, some libraries had their own cataloging rules.Panizzi’s rules were published, however, evidencing the fact that librarians sought some uniformity from library to library so that the same book could be identified the same way in each library.
 

Cutter defined authorship for his cataloging rules, and the definition he used continued to be used in later cataloging codes also.

Author.In the narrower sense, is the person who writes a book; in a wider sense it may be applied to him who is the cause of the book’s existence by putting together the writings of several authors (usually called the editor, more properly to e called the collector).Bodies of men (societies, cities, legislative bodies, countries) are to be considered the authors of their memoirs, translations, journals, debates, reports, etc.[111]

    The Anglo-American Code of 1908 (AA) was the result of cooperation between the American Library Association and theLibrary Association (Britain) which was first suggested by Melvil Dewey, the father of library science.In Britain the AA remained the cataloging rules in force for more than 50 years.The AA was designed for large library collections and the primary difficulty for this code was reconciling the needs for card catalogs in the United States with Britain’s book catalogs.Generally entry is under the author and under title if there is no author who can be identified.[112]The definition of author is instructive and somewhat tracks the general definition in copyright law:

1.  The writer of a book, as distinguished from translator, editor, etc. etc.2.In a broader sense, the maker of the book or the person or body immediately responsible for its existence.Thus a person who collects and puts together writings of several authors (compiler or editor) may be said to be the author of the collection.Corporate bodies may be considered the authors of publications issued in their name or by their authority.[113]

The AA recognized joint authorship and multiple authorship as well.For joint authors, the order is the order as it appears on the title page of the work.[114]
 

The 1949 ALA Cataloging Rules[115] were based very closely on the 1908 AA but was intended to reflect the best current practices in cataloging in the United States.At that time, most U.S. libraries used the Cutter principles or rules for the main entry and followed the Cutter definition of author as did the AA.Again, the choice of main entry was first the name of the author whether a personal author or a corporate body.[116]For works with multiple authors, the 1949 ALA Cataloging Rules continued to designate the person principally responsible for the intellectual content of the work as the author which required some work on the part of the cataloger.The rules were complicated with 16 separate rules dealing with authorship, and they followed the AA in departing from the principle of designating as the author the first name listed on the title page. Instead, now the author is the person responsible for the work whether her name appears on the title page or not.If more than three persons are listed on the title page, the title is the main entry.[117]The rules of corporate authorship are quite similar to those in the AA in which four types of corporate bodies are recognized:societies, governments, institutions and miscellaneous bodies.[118]

The long-awaited Anglo American Cataloging Rules (AACR)[119] were published in 1967, primarily to respond to the needs of large libraries, but the needs of smaller libraries are also taken into account.AACR defines author thusly:

By ‘author’ is meant the person or corporate body chiefly responsible for the creation of the intellectual or artistic content of a work.Thus composers, artist, photographers, etc. are the ‘authors’ of the works they create; chess players are the ‘authors’ of their recorded games; etc.The term ‘author’ also embraces an editor or compiler who has primary responsibility for the content of a work, e.g. the compiler of bibliography.[120]

The definition was clearly expanded to recognize other types of creators of copyrighted works.The structure of the code is different from earlier codes in that the focus is on a few basic rules for different types of publications, but the principle continued to be using the tradition of intellectual responsibility for the main entry.AACR modified this principle, however, in that the author entry is normally based on the statements that appear on the title page of the work.This likely is because modern books all have title pages, unlike incunabula.The statement on the title page is not conclusive evidence of intellectual responsibility, however, since rule 1A says that the work should be entered under the author whether the author is named on the title page or not.Rule 1B goes further and states that if the publication itself erroneously attributes authorship to someone who is not the author; the work should be entered under the name of the actual author.[121]
 

The Anglo-American Cataloging Rules 2d (AACR2) uses the following definition:

A personal author is the person chiefly responsible for the creation of the intellectual or artistic content of a work.For example, writers of books and composers of music are the authors of the works they create; compilers of bibliographies are the authors of those bibliographies; cartographers are the authors of their maps; and artists and photographers are the authors of the works they create.In addition, in certain cases performers are authors of sound recordings, films, and videorecordings.[122]
 

The latest revision of theAACR2 seems to use roughly the same definition, but it is less detailed.It defines personal author as “... the person chiefly responsible for the creation of the intellectual or artistic content of the work” and defines corporate author as “… an organization or group of persons that is identified by a particular name and that acts, or may act, as an entity.”[123]The general rule is:
 

Enter a work by one or more persons under the heading for the personal author…, the principal personal author … , or the probably personal author... In cases of shared authorship and mixed personal authorship … enter under the heading for the person named first.[124]

2.  Indexing and Authorship
 

    Another form of bibliographic control is indexing.An index may be defined as a systematic arrangement of entries designed to enable users to locate information in a document. The process of creating an index is called indexing, and a person who does it is called an indexer.[125]There are many types of indexes and some are automatically generated, especially those for digital documents.Increasingly, authors are asked to provide the indexing, especially for nonfiction works.Almost all other forms of indexing also rely heavily on the author as the primary indexing term.Multiple access points likely means that other individuals who had something to do with the production of the work may be named, but indexers do not consider these individuals to be authors either.[126]

   Normally, in published works, authorship is fairly easy to determine and verify, but not always.Archival materials, manuscripts and early printed works present different challenge.Anonymous and pseudonymous works also present challenges.For years libraries have been in the business of trying to uncover pseudonyms and to assign responsibility for anonymous works.Perhaps librarians do not like uncertainty, but eliminating this uncertainty about particular works has been a considerable boon to researchers.It seems today that there are many fewer anonymous works produced, and authors who write under pseudonyms often reveal their identities within a few years after the work appears, so neither of these issues creates the problems for catalog librarians that they once did.
 

   Libraries treat authors of any work alike whether they are artists, photographers, playwrights, composers, etc.But what if the author or artist is truly unknown?Libraries often identify the work by how closely an unidentified artist worked with an identified artist during the expressions, such as “school of Rembrandt” or “copyist of Rodin” which indicates an influence.This is often referred to as “shadowy authorship” and occurs more frequently as librarians catalog more art objects and surrogates of art objects such as slides, photographs and digitized images.[128]

    Typical corporate authors may be companies, universities, other institutions, publishers, etc.The concept for bibliographic control in libraries is to credit the entity responsible for the creation of the work.Unlike patents, the named responsible party does not have to be an individual.Thus, if the work is a work for hire, the copyright law establishes that the employer is the author.[129]Libraries accept this, not because of the copyright law, but because usually multiple individuals within the corporation are somehow responsible for that work, or the company itself has accepted responsibility for the work of some unsung hero and listed itself on the title page of the work as the author.

    Authorship generally is not attributed to editors, translators, performers and the like in library catalogs.These individuals may be referenced in the bibliographic record but not as an author.This is similar to the way these individuals are treated in copyright law, usually that they are not an author, but note that translators may be authors if the work evidences sufficient creative authorship.

    Ownership of the copyright is a tremendously important issue in copyright law because it determines who may exercise the exclusive rights. It is unimportant for library bibliographic control purposes, however.Responsibility for the work is real issue.Many reference works are compilations, and most often the publisher owns the copyright in these works of corporate authorship.The work may have an individual editor, but that person is not the author, and the main entry likely will be under title and not under the name of the publisher.
 
 

In the analog world authorship was finite.Once it was determined, the bibliographic record created, the record was complete (absent errors that had to be corrected).This may not be the reality in the digital world.

    There certainly are unique problems for libraries in dealing with the concept of authorship in the digital environment, but the problem solving techniques from the analog world may be successfully imported to ease some of the difficulties.The problems for copyright are at least as complicated as those for libraries.“Around the complex and muddy doctrine of copyright, spurred by the legal efforts of the culture industries, the web is being articulated to support and reaffirm a corporate, commercial system of cultural distribution, to the exclusion of important alternatives.”[133]By contrast, users of the Internet show scant concern for copyright and its economic rationale, and the real power of the Internet is the potential for dialogue and exchange between users. Interactivity between the reader and the author through hypertext on the web is an example of this change.[134]This will certainly affect libraries and the bibliographic control of digital objects.“Currently, cyberspace is a place where commodification is unimportant. However, traditional authors and traditional industries see a vast market ready for their ‘goods.’ In making this market safe for proprietary goods the possibilities for an alternative may die out.”[135]By contributing commentary to a digital file, the reader has become an author. Some scholars advocate a move toward interchange and away from individual ownership of works on the web.[136]

    Search engines rely on metadata, which may be defined as information about a information.Metadata consists of three types of data:(1) administrative metadata - information about rights, authorship, ownership; (2) structural metadata - used by viewing software, and(3) content metadata - description, title, etc.[138]Metadata is useful for resource, resource discovery, authentication,management, provenance, version control, resource system use and also the tracking of users. It will become especially important for developing interoperable library systems.Metadata also has some similarity to Copyright Management Information,[139] but it is much more extensive.Already there is automated indexing of digitized files is based on metadata using metadata standards.[140]“Until such time as artificial intelligence is perfected, dynamic knowledge repositories will benefit from ‘adding in’ human intelligence to the metadata. Authors or creators of objects are probably the cheapest and most available source of metadata, and they are often quite familiar with their intended audience, whether their information is about cooking, flying, or flying saucers.”[141]

    While metadata is the description given to indexing on the web, to some extent a library catalog is filled with metadata.Each card or entry in the catalog or entry is filled with various elements of metadata about a particular work.Standards for describing digital works hold great promise for ways to address the huge number of documents on the web.But regardless of standards, it is likely that author will continue to be the primary access point for digital works.
 

    As libraries increasingly offer access to online materials, they are adding bibliographic records to these Internet works to their catalogs.There is considerable debate about whether and how to catalog works on the Internet, especially since what is available increases exponentially.Not only that but works that exist on the web disappear with some frequency; and for countless others, the location on the web simply changes.Thus, any attempt to add Internet resources to any library catalog is extremely complicated.“The easy availability of online materials, and the fact that digitized forms can be easily and cheaply created and altered by individuals, have shaken some of our fundamental concepts of intellectual property rights, authorship, publishing, and bibliographic control.”[144]There is a need to assess whether additional relationships between persons and corporate bodies and the content of an item in the context of newly emerging forms of intellectual and artistic expression and multimedia productions should be reflected in catalogs.For example, is it time to reconsider how libraries treat joint and multiple authors, especially for scientific journal articles?In other words, is it time to dump the rule of three?
 

    What about sequential authorship?In the past, sequential authorship was manifested only in new editions of a work or in series of works, each complete in itself.Websites are constantly updated but not necessarily within the confines of the digital equivalent of an edition, and the responsibility for the intellectual content may change.For example, if a law professor creates course webpages she may turn them over to another professor who teaches the course in subsequent semesters.So now, there is a second author.Suppose that the second author makes extensive changes, and then he permits yet another faculty member to use the webpages, and that third author also makes numerous additions and changes.Who then is the author?Perhaps all three are authors, but they never exactly agreed to be joint authors, much less agreed in writing.Further, at some time, the content has changed to such an extent that the only contribution of the first author was the idea to create course webpages.All of the content as well as the design may bear little relation to the original.At present, there is simply no way with bibliographic control to deal with what may be come a norm for digital works;thus bibliographic control may have to develop fluidity to meet the challenge of sequential authorship.

    A related question is when is a work finished or complete so that the bibliographic record can be completed.With digital works, how will libraries and others know when a work is complete?With printed works it was clear when the work was complete: the point at which the publisher distributed copies to the public.Even in the legal world, titles were published in looseleaf format and continuously updated, but the work was considered complete only when a new edition was published. In the digital environment, a work may never complete.Even for authors who create their own original works or permit others to digitize their analog works, there are questions of when an online product is final. Since digital renditions can easily be corrected and updated, libraries need better ways of identifying which version a user is viewing on the screen as well as which versions catalogers will want to describe, and which library selectors will want to obtain and preserve for the future.

Coupled with the problem of sequential authorship or even overlapping authorship, new solutions will have to be found to the problems of authentication.The easy availability of online materials, and the fact that digitized forms can be easily and cheaply created and altered by individuals, have shaken some of the fundamental concepts of intellectual property rights, authorship, publishing and bibliographic control. Individuals can self publish on the web.Moreover, it is far too easy to capture someone else's work and modify it to be one’s own without paying the original creator for that right or receiving permission.[145]How can one determine whether a digital work is authentic?To some extent, this is hardly a new problem that originated with the digital age.Texts in manuscript form that were copied over and over again, were subject to corruption certainly.[146]Who is the author, and who published the work?Can the authors and publishers be trusted (are they worthy of one's research time)?Is the rare e-book what it purports to be?Is the manuscript actually by the person to whom it is attributed, and is its date accurate?These questions are now being asked more openly of objects that originate in digital form because libraries have not yet adopted practices or standards for providing ready answers to them.[147]

    Deciding what is required to authenticate digital objects may be informed from past practices with non-digital objects.Because digital objects bear less evidence of “authorship, provenance, originality and other commonly accepted attributes than do analog objects, they are subject to additional suspicion.Tests must be devised and administered for authentication.”[148]When objects originate in electronic form, it may be even more difficult to certify that the object is the product of its author.Absent a deliberate and distinctive marking (such as a digital watermark) implemented by the author, a mark that could not be guessed by another or altered by anyone, it may be impossible to authenticate an electronic document beyond doubt.[149]
 

    If authors of files or images do not take steps to establish authorship of their work, a library’s only alternative for cataloging is to accept the assertions of others. There simply will not be the same type of evidence that might exist for a physical object such as handwriting, marginal notes, ink, binding, etc., and the work is more changeable, either intentionally or accidentally.[150] On the other hand, it is possible to fight false authorship with traditional tools such as having the author register the work with a third party,[151] or register the work for copyright.For scholars and historians who use digital objects in their research, authentication will continue to be a huge issue, and authorship is one of the principal issues to be authenticated.Electronic files created by someone who has taken no steps to establish authorship are problematic, and the cataloger will be the one to establish authorship.In the case of a digital object, this is more difficult than if it were an analog object due to the lack of physical evidence provided by analog objects -- evidence that offers the means to test the cataloger.[152]

    Reversion of the copyright to the author or her heirs between the 35^th and 40^th year[154] may have interesting implications for digital works that are included in electronic databases.The statute provides that during this five year window, when the author has transferred rights to the work to a third party such as a publisher, the rights revert to the author or to his heirs during this time period.How will this impact the ability to track and identify authors?It could result in a problem similar to that experienced when freelance authors were recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as holding the electronic rights in their articles which had not been specifically transferred.[155]Some publishers that had included articles by freelancers in electronic databases felt they had no choice but to remove these articles systematically.Certainly, publishers could have paid royalties to freelance writers, but the publishers elected not to do so claiming that it was almost impossible to do and would not be cost effective.Further, each author would receive very little in the way of compensation.[156]

    Suppose that the author has assigned the copyright to a publisher, which has included the digital work in a database.When the copyright reverts to the author, if the author exercises the reversion right, then the database owner would have to renegotiate with the author for the right to continue to include the work in the database.Under these conditions, databases of digital objects may not have the stability that was once thought.

    Transfers of copyright also raise issues.Normally, the transfer of copyright in a work does not affect authorship at all concerning the responsibility for digital works, thus it should not matter for bibliographic control.However, if the work is one that continues to be supplemented or changed, then the transfer might actually affect authorship if the updating is done by someone else. 
 
 

    Another possible substitute for author as main entry is to somehow rely on the Digital Object Identifiers.Today, publishers are adopting new Digital Object Identifiers (DOls) to attach to digital information to serve as a tag of sorts in indexing.  The DOI index would then be linked to the full-text of the work.  The DOI will stay with the object regardless of whether the publisher sells the digital work, etc., but there are some concerns about DOls since the content providers would control not only the indexing, but also access to the indexing and through the index, access to the digital object itself.  Access to the indexing would be available to users only through licensing arrangements.[157]  Thus, when a scholar wants to cite an article using a DOI, it would become an inaccessible reference to anyone who does not have access through a license to one of the publisher’s systems in the consortium.  Neutral third parties indexing and abstracting will be a thing of the past, and one may not even be able to ascertain whether a particular work even exists on the web.[158]
 

Because manuscript and archival cataloging is done primarily at the collection level, there most often exists an adjunct finding aid, called a collection registers that is not incorporated in the cataloging record at all.This collection register often includes a box and folder description that gives far greater detail about the specifics of the content of the collection. The collection register may also include an index with locators to the box and folder, and increasingly these are maintained in digital form.For archival collections, however, author continues to be the primary entry.[159]

    It is difficult to predict how will all of this affect library users as they increasingly rely on digital works.Will the user become a co-author when she uses an electronic book and makes extensive notes on her digital copy?Does she have any rights to further publish this work?Will these personally annotated versions be valuable for library collections?Likely, it will depend on who is doing the note taking.So, fame of an individual could make this annotated digital work valuable to a library, or perhaps even if the individual has some sort of outstanding ability. 

    Authorship probably will continue to be the primary finding point for materials in libraries and on the Internet.Authorship also has other uses in libraries.For example, even in a library or archival collection that is not cataloged, books and materials may be arranged alphabetically by author’s name.This is especially true for collections of fiction, poetry, and the like.Of course, it works more successfully for smaller libraries than for larger ones, and there is even a classification scheme or sorts based on author’s last name such as through use of the Cutter Tables.
 

Whatever the model that is ultimately developed for expanded bibliographic control of digital works, it will be somewhat more complicated than in the analog environment.The relationship between the author and the work may also be different as large numbers of collaborators could be involved; and it may be much more difficult to determine when a work is complete or finished.Further, in the past there was considerable emphasis on what may be called the physical package, i.e., whether the work was in microform, on videotape, etc., but in the future it is likely that more attention should be paid to the intellectual content itself.[160]The current system of cataloging bundles together the idea of authorship and the nature of the contribution of that author. The first question that must be asked for digital works is who is the person responsible for the intellectual content and then is it necessary to tell users what the nature of that relationship might be.[161]In other words, is it important to indicate whether the individual credited with authorship is the author, editor, performer, etc.In earlier times, catalogers used to provide “relators” such as “joint author,” “editor,” and the like, but all have been dropped today except in music cataloging.For the digital world, relators may need to be reinstated.

    Authorship is a concept of considerable importance to society, for copyright law purposes and for libraries and their users.Libraries are examining at their practices and trying to ensure that digital works continue to be available and can be retrieved through excellent bibliographic control and indexing.Authorship remains the key.