As a one-time rare books cataloguer, I clearly have a specialised interest, but I definitely think example B is easier, certainly less cumbersome. Perhaps it is a case of familiarity but trying to be as objective as possible, my immediate reaction to example A is "what a lot of stuff to read"! Surely, once it is explained to them, non-specialists should have no difficulty in picking up the conventional use of brackets in this context?
Toni Bunch
Antonia J Bunch OBE MA FCLIP FSA Scot FRSA
Dove Cottage, Garvald Grange, Haddington, East Lothian, EH41 4LL
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----- Original Message -----
From: Karen Attar
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 12:04 PM
Subject: description of pagination for early printed books
** WITH APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTIN **
Dear all,
A query has arisen about which is clearer to understand:
(Example A) 12 unnumbered pages, 72 pages, 10 unnumbered pages, 48 pages, 6 unnumbered pages, 228 pages, 16 unnumbered pages
Or:
(Example B) [12], 72, [10], 48, [6], 228, [16] p.
Example B accords with current description in library catalogues; example A is a proposed new cataloguing rule. The opinions of those cataloguing early printed books is probably well exemplified in the email below (and was expressed by the UK Bibliographic Standards Committee of the CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections Group), but so far only the views of people cataloguing books for libraries have been expressed.
Please could you say what you think is clearer? We are particularly interested to hear from non-cataloguers (i.e. "library patrons") and from anybody who can pass on opinions from non-librarians, with a view to contributing helpfully to the discussion.
Dr Karen Attar
Secretary, UK BSC of the CILIP RBSCG
Rare Books Librarian
Senate House Library, University of London
Senate House
Malet St
London
WC1E 7HU
Tel. 020 7862 8472
The University of London is an exempt charity in England and Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (reg. no. SC041194)
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Deborah J. Leslie
Sent: 26 August 2010 21:59
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] BYU's 1st RDA/DCRMB record
The statement of extent in DCRM(B) contains two kinds of information:
what the resource says about itself (the pagination or foliation), and
what is true about the resource (the accounting of every leaf in a
book). I can see making the argument that the accounting for
unpaginated/unfoliated leaves that are not inferred to be part of a
sequence is in fact supplied by the cataloger and comes from outside the
resource.
And I must say, how can this statement:
"2 unnumbered pages, iv pages, 1 unnumbered page, iv-xvii pages, 3
unnumbered pages, 348, that is, 332 pages, 6 unnumbered pages, 24 pages,
2 unnumbered pages."
*possibly* be easier to understand than the current practice by
*anybody*, even if they don't quite know what the brackets mean in
statements of extent?
_________________________
Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S.
RBMS past chair 2010-2011 | Head of Cataloging, Folger Shakespeare
Library
201 East Capitol St., S.E. | Washington, D.C. 20003 | 202.675-0369
[log in to unmask] | http://www.folger.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of John Attig
Sent: Thursday, 26 August, 2010 15:07
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] BYU's 1st RDA/DCRMB record
On 8/25/2010 7:07 PM, Robert Maxwell wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Deborah J. Leslie
> Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2010 6:12 PM
> To: DCRM Revision Group List
> Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] BYU's 1st RDA/DCRMB record
>
> 3. The RDA 300 is going to pose nightmarish problems for volumes of
even
> the least complexity. Would there be a rare book reason to depart from
> RDA and continue the use of square brackets for unnumbered
pages/leaves?
>
> As I opined in my previous post, nightmarish or not, in my opinion
there is no rare book reason to depart from a descriptive *convention*.
There would be a rare reason to depart from RDA in the matter of exactly
what pages/leaves we do count.
>
> I would be interested in hearing from John Attig on this matter as
well-why did RDA decide to change the convention for recording
unnumbered and misleading pages?
Why did RDA make this change?
There are two answers to this, both of which pointed in the same
direction.
(a) Use of brackets (or any other convention that might be used to
signal interpolations) in RDA is strictly based on the sources of
information defined for the element. The source of information for
Extent is "evidence presented by the resource itself (or on any
accompanying material or container)" and may even be taken from "any
source" if desired. You only use brackets if you are taking information
from a source other than the source defined; in this case, all the
information to be included in the Extent statement comes comes from the
resource itself, and there is therefore no justification for ever using
brackets.
This simple RDA rule for the use of brackets conflicts with the
conventions that catalogers are familiar with. The Extent statement is
not the only such case. Catalogers of cartographic materials were
shocked to learn that they could no longer follow the conventions by
which they distinguished Scale statements that were given on the
resource from those that the cataloger calculated based on verbal or
graphic scales. RDA is trying to simplify presentation of information
in a bibliographic description and to minimize the use of possibly
non-intuitive conventions such as abbreviations, symbols, and
punctuation marks.
I would note that, when the suggestion was first made to ban brackets
from the Extent statement and to use "unnumbered" instead, I realized
that this would not scale to a very complicated extent statement. I
seem to recall looking through the Examples to Accompany DCRB looking
for something I could use as a "reductio ad absurdum" example; I'm not
sure that I found anything sufficiently ghastly, but whatever was
included in the ALA response, it was apparently not convincing.
(b) The other principle that led us to this change was that of user
convenience. We were convinced that our users did not share our
understanding of many of the conventions that we used in our
descriptions, such as the significance of brackets, and the use of
abbreviations. These convictions are reflected throughout RDA's various
instructions relating to transcribing and recording information.
User convenience is not a particularly simple concept, but it is clear
that the users the JSC had in mind were NOT scholars who are familiar
with the rules and conventions of descriptive bibliography. We can
argue about whether the RDA instructions benefit even general users, but
I think it would be more fruitful to recognize that bibliographic
descriptions of rare materials are intended for a more specialized user
community made up of scholars and students who need detailed information
about rare materials and who have learned a set of conventions for
recording and interpreting this detailed information.
In this sense, I think I disagree with Bob's statement that there is no
rare book reason to depart from a descriptive convention. We are
working within a scholarly community of users who do understand certain
descriptive conventions and who would actually find our current Extent
statements easier to interpret than the proposed RDA conventions. It
seems to me that this is a sufficient justification for us to consider
developing alternative instructions (which will miraculously turn out to
look much like the current DCRM(B) rules!) for recording the extent of
rare materials.
This is one of several issues that I am hoping to put into a discussion
paper on issues and strategies for adjusting DCRM to be based on RDA.
My intention is to have this available for discussion at the BSC meeting
at Midwinter.
John
