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I have some thoughts on:<br>
Chief title / Title page / Added title page / Title proper
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1. Chief title: One thing to acknowledge up front is that DCRM needs a
definition for chief title even more than DCRB did: in the 2002 revision
of AACR2, rule "1.1B1. Title proper" was expanded to include
the following new text: <br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>"Do
not transcribe words that serve as an introduction and are not intended
to be part of the title. Give the title including these words in a note
(see 1.7B4).<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>[Examples]:<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>Sleeping
Beauty<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>NOTE:
Title appears on item as: Disney presents Sleeping Beauty<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>NASA
quest<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>NOTE:
Title appears on item as: Welcome to NASA quest"<br><br>
We need a definition of chief title if only to give us a way to clarify
the difference between the chief title and what WE call the title proper,
insofar as transcription of the title proper for rare books will often
require the cataloger explicitly to ignore this new portion of AACR2 rule
1B1. We need to differentiate between a chief title and a title proper,
while AACR2, if it considered the matter, would likely consider them
equivalent.<br><br>
What our definition of chief title should be: Deborah is right in her
email of 11 January 2005: we should omit the clause "as found on the
title page." The definition does not need it, and erasing it is step
one in eliminating the circularity among chief title, title proper, and
title page.<br><br>
The proposed revised definition:<br>
<b>Chief title.</b> The distinguishing word or sequence of words that
names a publication. 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>2. Title page: I now believe strongly that DCRM(B) does not need to
define title page at all (Manon suggested this in early December). The
definition in DCRB was tortured and redundant to boot, and it contained
absolutely no information specific, or important, to rare materials. In
reaction, the DCRM glossary group went the other way, trimming the
definition for title page until it was considerably shorter than that in
AACR2. I now realize that we shouldn't have bothered, and that the
AACR2 definition of title page is entirely sufficient for our purposes.
Rare materials either have or do not have title pages, just like regular
materials. The content or layout of a title page in certain rare books
may look very different from a title page in a modern mainstream
publication, but that doesn't change the definition of "title
page." No cataloger needs a new, or expanded, or contracted
definition of title page in order to use DCRM(B) effectively. <br><br>
3. The elimination of "title page" obviates the need for a
definition of "added title page," which should also be
deleted.<br><br>
4. Title proper: One reason we need a definition for title proper is
related to the chief title justification above: the title proper for a
rare book will often include information that the 2002 revision of AACR2
explicitly instructs the cataloger to omit. But the current DCRM(B)
definition of title proper (barely different from the DCRB definition)
has problems: It repeats information given in the text, it references the
title page (the circularity problem), and it is lengthy.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The
DCRM(B) text proper instructs the cataloger to omit "pious
invocations, devices, announcements, epigrams, mottoes, prices,
etc." and various other unlinked information, though it does not
list as many omissions as the glossary definition does. Do we need
the lengthy list in sentence 2 of the glossary definition? Need we
explicitly state that grammatically separable edition statements and
series statements are not part of the title proper? If so, the definition
is nearly acceptable as it stands. If not, we can shorten it
dramatically.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The
current definition's final 2 sentences concern publications with/without
collective titles. It repeats some of what is found in the text proper,
but in a positive way, rather than the negative way the text proper
approaches the issue ("1.F Publications without a collective
title"). I think that in tightening up the current definition, we
may still want to retain this information. <br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>So, the
only information I'm strongly eager to eliminate from the definition for
title proper is that referring to the title page, and maybe some of the
repetition of elements to be omitted from the title proper.
Otherwise, I think the current definition is fairly strong.<br><br>
I hope we can follow this up with thoughts on other problematic
terms.<br>
Stephen<br>
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| Stephen Skuce | Rare Books Cataloging
Librarian<x-tab> </x-tab><br>
| MIT Libraries | Building 14E-210B |
617.253.0654 | skuce@mit.edu</body>
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