What was going on when I was born?

In the face of a declining demand for liquor, Joseph E. Seagram & Sons Inc., the American subsidiary of the Canadian-based Seagram Company Ltd., yesterday announced a major reorganization plan. The company, which is a unit of the world's largest producer and marketer of distilled spirits and wines, will abandon its old sales techniques for a new approach that will group brands according to market strategies. ''We believe we can operate more profitably in this increasingly competitive market through an internally complementary rather than competitive marketing approach,'' said Edgar Bronfman Jr., president of the House of Seagram, the company's United States spirits marketing and manufacturing unit. A change at Seagram was anticipated when the 29-year-old Mr. Bronfman became president last July of the giant distilling company.

DURING the day, they work on large architecture projects that range from the design of a sprawling 6,000-square-foot Sutton Place apartment and the conversion of a former hospital into condominiums to the design and planning of a cluster of buildings for a small college campus. At night, four of the architects who work at Paul Segal Associates return to their own homes - a tiny studio in Greenwich Village, a 19th-century house in Brooklyn, an apartment on the Upper West Side and an up-to-the-minute post-modernist loft in Lower Manhattan. Compared with their professional projects, their own living spaces may be modest in scale and budget. But in the design of their homes the four architects (they are among 14 employees of the firm) share a professional interest in long-term design solutions, a respect for the past and a sense of freewheeling experimentation. They also tend to worry about more storage space and don't think of their homes as being finished. All seem to have green thumbs, a fondness for columns and a knack for such simple design solutions as beds supported by architects' files.

''THE first thing we did was delist our phone number, even before we moved in,'' says Thomas Plocek about his new house, designed by the Princeton, N.J., architect Michael Graves. The Ploceks were receiving too many calls from people asking to visit a house that was famous almost as soon as it came off Mr. Graves's drawing boards. ''We didn't anticipate the visitors because we weren't aware it would be the avant-garde architectural statement it apparently is,'' says Mr. Plocek, a manufacturer of raw materials for synthetic fragrances. ''We were building it for ourselves, but as the situation developed, it was of interest to people beyond just us. I don't think we've ever turned anyone away.'' Soon after they moved in, for example, the graduating class of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Architecture visited the large, impressively sited post-modern structure.

A majority of New York City's residents believe that Mayor Koch deserves to be re-elected to a third term, according to a New York Times poll. At the same time, many residents say the city is doing a poor job of delivering some major services, although few hold the Mayor directly accountable. When those surveyed in the poll were asked separately for their opinions of a number of public officials, the Mayor was rated favorably by two-thirds of the respondents - well above the rating received by any of his leading potential challengers. The Mayor's standing was unusually high for any elected official who has been in such a visible administrative government position for seven years, and he ranked about as well as he did in a Times poll soon after he was returned to office in a landslide victory in 1981. Other Officials Rated Among the other officials, two of Mr. Koch's potential challengers - City Council President Carol Bellamy and Herman Badillo, a former Bronx Borough President, Congressman and Deputy Mayor - were viewed favorably by 38 percent and 34 percent, respectively, of the 1,329 New York City residents whom The Times polled by telephone from Jan. 5 to 10. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

A dispatch from Paris on Dec. 31 about Unesco misattributed a report that Libya had offered to give the agency $1 million. The information came not from Unesco's director general, Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, but from sources attending a conference of Islamic foreign ministers in Sana, Yemen.

''Sadly, and unintentionally, New York State has become an extreme example of what not to do in the management of public higher education.'' - Commission on the Future of the State University of New York. (A1:5.)

THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 1985 International Israel's Parliament resolved a deeply divisive issue. By a vote of 62 to 51, the legislators rejected a motion by four Orthodox religious parties to redefine who is a Jew. The motion would have recognized no conversions to Judaism except those performed by Orthodox rabbis. (Page A1, Columns 2-3.) Kingston, Jamaica, was idled for a second day as protesters blocked roads with debris and burning tires. They also caused disruptions in many other parts of the Caribbean island country over a sharp increase in the price of fuel. The police said that four demonstrators had been killed and 11 injured. (A10:1-2.)

Approval of a crucial permit for Westway is expected to be recommended next week by an officer of the Army Corps of Engineers, according to officials familiar with the project. The recommendation, expected to be made by Col. Fletcher H. Griffis, the district engineer for the corps in New York, would culminate nearly three years of studies, hearings and administrative reviews. These were undertaken after a Federal judge revoked a permit for Westway previously granted by the corps. The judge ruled that state and Federal officials had failed to consider adequately the impact of the highway and development project on the Hudson River's striped bass.

Defense Secretary Casper W. Weinberger said today that President Reagan's proposed space defense against nuclear missiles, if deployed, would have to be backed up by antiaircraft radar installations and planes to protect North America against bombers. In an interview, Mr. Weinberger said that such a continental air defense system, largely abandoned 10 years ago as obsolete in an area of quick-flying offensive missiles, should be restored to assure that protection against nuclear attack was ''thoroughly reliable.'' No Estimate of Cost The Defense Secretary declined to speculate about the ultimate cost of reconstructing a system to defend against relatively slow-flying bombers and cruise missiles that might be able to slip under an antimissile shield.

A dispatch from Tucson yesterday, about reactions to an indictment of 16 people in connection with the smuggling of illegal aliens, misidentified a New York legal group. The group, which said it was preparing a suit seeking to enjoin the Government from further arrests, is the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The 10 million cards of the New York Public Library's card catalogue at Fifth Avenue and 42d Street will be open to the public for the last time today. And tomorrow, for the first time in the library's 74-year history, the public catalogue room and main reading room will be closed. The closing will mark a kind of rites of passage as the library makes the transition from an old- fashioned institution with dog-eared, 3-by-5-inch index cards in 9,000 oaken drawers to a computerized bibliographic system. ''It's the most important thing that has happened functionally since the library opened in 1911,'' said Rodney Phillips, chief of the library's general research division.''This will touch everyone who comes to the library for information.''

THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 1985 Companies ITT plans to sell $1.7 billion of assets in a continuing drive to reduce debt and finance its push into high technology. The restructuring, which began in 1979, has already resulted in the disposal of about 65 businesses with assets worth $1.2 billion. A full list of the assets to be sold was not given, but they will include oil, technology and insurance ventures. The company has assets of $14.1 billion, based on their book value last Sept. 30. (D1.) American Airlines' parent picked Robert L. Crandall, president and chief operating officer, to become chairman and chief executive, succeeding Albert V. Casey, who will retire. Mr. Crandall played a key role in changing the image of the carrier into that of a favorite of business travelers. (D1.)