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At Boston's meeting of the Bibliographic Standards Committee, I offered
to look into and report on the history of the term "chief
title". Those uninterested in such an arcane topic may delete
this message!<br><br>
<b>"Chief title.</b> The distinguishing word or sequence of words
that names a publication, as given on the title page (or substitute).
This definition excludes alternative titles, parallel titles, other title
information, and subsidiary title information preceding the chief title
on the title page, such exclusion resulting usually in a short title.
<i>See also</i> <b>Title proper."<br><br>
</b>The above definition of "chief title" found in the DCRM(B)
delta draft is one that follows verbatim the definition given in the
glossary of LC's 1981 <i>Bibliographic Description of Rare Books.
</i>The cross reference "See also Title proper." was the only
addition made in the BDRB revision process that led to <i>Descriptive
Cataloging of Rare Books </i>(1991).<br><br>
BDRB is the first place I have located that makes this distinction
between "Title proper" and "Chief title" (essentially
being the title proper minus alternative title). LC's Ben Tucker
and his staff developed BDRB "in-house" and Tucker did tend to
be concerned about lengthy title transcriptions. Lest we forget (or
never knew) it was the 1978 appearance of AACR2 that first brought the
ISBD term "title proper" to the desktops of North American
catalogers. Not long before BDRB, catalogers would have routinely
worked with a concept not unlike our "Chief title." The
1967 <i>Anglo-American Cataloging Rules </i>("blue book" or
AACR1) offered a secondary definition of title ("in the narrow
sense"): "the name of a work, exclusive of any
alternative title, subtitle, or other associated descriptive matter on
the title page."<br><br>
ISBD(A) texts since at least 1978 (pre-BDRB) follow other ISBDs in using
the <i>wording</i> "chief title" in their definition of
"Title proper" ("Title proper: The chief title of a
publication, i.e. the title of a publication in the form in which it
appears on the title-page of the title-page substitute. The title
proper includes any alternative title but excludes parallel titles and
other title information. &.") I find the decision by
Tucker and his staff to crib that wording and turn it into a distinct
concept really rather clever. It avoided the necessity of inventing
yet another adjective to qualify "title." Especially back when
the memory of AACR1 was still strong, one could even <i>almost </i>think
that all along ISBDs had envisioned title proper to be chief title +
alternative title! <br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
Joe A. Springer, Curator<br>
Mennonite Historical Library<br>
Goshen College 1700 S. Main St.<br>
Goshen, IN 46526 (joeas@goshen.edu)<br>
574-535-7421 FAX 574-535-7438<br>
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