This is mostly an astraction because I'm positive it's not used anywhere in our metadata but the mods/name/etal element https://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/userguide/name.html#etal is still semantically meaningful even when it has no attribute or text content (I really hope this is the only element for which this is true...) and thus should be preserved by the removeEmptyElements function. It is used to signify additional ommitted names e.g. <name><namePart>First Author</namePart></name><name><etal></name> is like saying "First Author, et al."
This is mostly an astraction because I'm positive it's not used anywhere in our metadata but the mods/name/etal element https://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/userguide/name.html#etal is still semantically meaningful even when it has no attribute or text content (I really hope this is the only element for which this is true...) and thus should be preserved by the
removeEmptyElementsfunction. It is used to signify additional ommitted names e.g.<name><namePart>First Author</namePart></name><name><etal></name>is like saying "First Author, et al."