Tony has a point. I seem to recall some academic referencing which leaves out the publisher, e.g. London 2006, which is quite useless. I wonder if perhaps the omission was originally a sign of disapproval that publishers were "in trade" (?).
Gordon.
Gordon Smith
The Sally Howell Library
Epsom General Hospital
Dorking Road
Epsom, Surrey, KT18 7EG
Tel. 01372-735688, Fax 01372-735687
NULJ=HOWE, HLN=EP
"What power have you got?
Where did you get it from?
In whose interests do you exercise it?
To whom are you accountable?
And how can we get rid of you?"
----- Mr Tony Benn (Chesterfield)
Commons Hansard 22 Mar 2001,
col. 510 [quoting himself]
>>> "Mcsean, Tony (ELS)" <[log in to unmask]> 05/12/2006 09:23 >>>
I think the lesson is that for the larger publishers, especially in
Europe, publishing is now an entirely international business, both in
the way books are put together and the way they are marketed. In this
"place of publication" is more or less a meaningless concept, hence my
original advice on this subject to just stop worrying about it.
Tony
Tony McSean
Director of Library Relations
Elsevier
32 Jamestown Road
London NW1 7BY
+44 7795 960516
+44 20 7424 4242
________________________________
From: UK medical/ health care library community / information workers
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Syers, Rosalind
Sent: 04 December 2006 17:23
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: publishers aargh (summary)
As most of the comments have been sent to me individually, I thought
that others might like to read the collection:
________________________________
Yes, doesn't it annoy you. I've been thinking it over too.
With BMJ/Blackwell books, I've looked to see whose ISBN it has. But
with some publishers, they are putting the US office as first place of
publication, but if it is a British book I want to keep it as Oxford (or
whatever). I think you can do this, but we may need to discuss our
local rules.
________________________________
I usually crib from LocatorPlus
(http://locatorplus.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First) they
seem to be well up on Marc21 and publishers changes (also give MeSH
headings and NLM class no.
________________________________
I think I'd follow BL - after all, if someone was wanting the book,
what's the likelihood the requestor would mention Blackwell if the
'principal' publisher is BMJ?
But I was frightened by Marc21 as a small thing.......
________________________________
I've always thought that Library of Congress were better than BL for
cataloguing! And I don't want to leave out Place either. It is useful
to judge if it is a British book.
________________________________
I asked Tony McSean if he could explain the Elsevier conundrum - he just
said we should leave out the place of publication. This doesn't sit well
with students using the Harvard referencing systems though.
I suppose that one should be able to assume that books that we buy with
US and UK places of publication are actually published in the UK???
If you look in recent BMJ books they are listed as being published by
Blackwell in Oxford on the back of the title page and both BMJ and
Blackwell are listed (in either order) on the title page, so how
pedantically correct is BL?
________________________________
I've always thought that Library of Congress were better than BL for
cataloguing! And I don't want to leave out Place either. It is useful
to judge if it is a British book.
________________________________
Official answer probably would be to keep an authority file recording
when you saw it change on each one, but they will be changing from / to
& back constantly so it will take a lot of doing.
In a previous job, they had an authority file for corporate authors (who
were sometimes also the publishers) but it hadn't been kept up-to-date,
so it was a HUGE job when it was finally sorted out. This was in Earth
Sciences, so there were a lot of geological surveys which changed name
fairly often - not to mention changing the country names & boundaries ..
What we do here in Harrogate is keep it simple as far as possible - if
it says eg Blackwell somewhere in there, that's what we use & ignore
parent company. And location again, as far as I remember it's OK to pick
one from the list of addresses, eg if it's Amsterdam & London then it
was OK to use London because it's nearest.
________________________________
I normally pick whatever it says on the back of the title page. Failing
that I prefer to use Churchill say, than Elsevier, because ... well,
because I like the old imprints better than Elsevier. I know - not
evidence based or good practice - but I'm not at all a fan of
cataloguing niceties!!
As for place of publication - I think I raised this when we had a
consultation on cataloguing issues a while back - but in some ways it's
a nonsense in this age of simultaneous world wide publication. So I go
for the place where people used to hang out (Edinburgh for Churchill)
or again take the first address off the list on the back of the title
page.
________________________________
I don't know if you've had any replies on this at all, but I completely
agree with you and find it very frustrating particularly when I'm trying
to tell my staff on how to enter details for books on to our Heritage
system. Was wondering myself how people were dealing with this issue and
would be interested in knowing how you are handling it and about any
other suggestions you may have had!
Like you we don't use Marc but have our own policy; basically, this says
take the info from the front of the title page, and if all the details
aren't there on the front, take it from the back of the title page. As
you say, Elsevier is a nightmare being so inconsistent and changing
place around Churchill Livingstone, that I just copy how it appears on
the front of the title page. With Blackwell, where place of publication
is on the back of the title page, but shows Massachusetts first before
Oxford, I just give Oxford as place of publication as it seems to be
more logical! In the case of 2 publishers on front of title page, like
BMJ/Blackwell, I put both in the publisher field (BMJ/Blackwell) and for
place of publication, just put the first location for the first listed
publisher.
I'm not sure if this is any help; it seems to me until the publishers
start using some consistency, there's not a lot we as librarians can do,
which is why I tend to just go with what appears on the front of the
title page even if it means there are obvious inconsistencies between
Elsevier Churchill Livingstone books!
________________________________
It's a long time since I did any serious cataloguing, and my copy of
ACR2 is neither new nor well-thumbed. But looking at section 1.4D seems
to confirm my distant memory that if you're going by the book as it
were, you should catalogue according to what's on the title page of the
volume you're cataloguing... But then I'm someone who doesn't even have
his own books in order on the shelves at home.
Thanks to all and make up your own mind then!
Ros Syers
Education Centre Library
Southend Hospital
Prittlewell Chase
Westcliff-on-Sea
Essex SS0 0RY
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01702 435555 x 2620
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