<html>
<body>
<font size=3>Kate,<br><br>
In the case of your book, there is a sense in which the editions are not
concealed at all. It's a classic grey area, and context sensitive:
dependent, that is, on the level of detail that constitutes a standard
description in one's data set (bibliography, catalogue, database). The
pagination, in your case, gives the game away at a relatively high level
in the record--in our terms, the 1XX-3XX level--despite the lack of
explicit edition statements.<br><br>
An explicit note is <i>always</i> in order, to confirm the natural
inference that there's something different here, and to specify what sort
of difference it is. Edition, in this case, because re-set throughout;
not issue, e.g. with an appendix added to copies of a single edition.
(Either case demands separate records, as I see it.) If you can
anticipate that six months from now you may have forgotten what exactly
the significance of the variant pagination is, then tell yourself, and
everybody else. We have got to get away, at least in our version of the
game, from the rhetoric of the telegram and the tweet. I cannot tell you
how many times I have been fiercely resentful of the costiveness of
explanation provided in the record for a difficult book, written on the
assumption that our professionalism is on display in the use of sentence
fragments and pat phrases and simply not saying too much. If you have the
book in front of you, and know something about it that helps us
understand just what it <i>is</i>, then do say so. Someday someone
somewhere will whisper, "Thanks."<br><br>
Anyway, few users are interested in the cataloger's justification for
creating a separate record; the separate record is simply a device for
telling the user something, which should be done as clearly as possible.
But even your fellow catalogers, who may well want to understand, or may
understand implicitly, why there's a separate record, will benefit from
knowing what to look for in the book.<br><br>
Anyway: no two editions are concealed, if described at a level of detail
that reveals ("discovers", in the archaic sense of that word)
their differences. The problem comes in when one's descriptive standard
is too coarse to reveal the differences (i.e. leaves them covered)
without a note adducing and interpreting the evidence of more
fine-grained analysis. We have ways of bringing evidence to the fore in a
basically hierarchical way: the sequence of areas in ISBD, as reflected
in MARC, is designed to differentiate works, expressions, and
manifestations by way of 1XX creator names, 2XX work/expression names
(title) and manifestation designators (edition, roughly), and 3XX
physical characteristics that may differ from one manifestation to the
next. Where these areas fail to do the job, there's a problem, in our
context.<br><br>
What we haven't got is an upper-level manifestation area: essentially a
synthetic edition statement/identifier: e.g. "A64.b The Confidential
Clerk (1954) First American Edition". We have a taxonomy, but no
field in which to express it other than notes, which are a sort of
"Psst ..." that too often doesn't get heard. Besides, as
catalogers (rather than bibliographers) we haven't necessarily got the
comprehensive knowledge of manifestations on which to base such
classification, so we try to set up the conditions for inference at the
browse level. (Perhaps an extension of the 240 from expression to
manifestation level is what I yearn for. I mourn the loss of the 503,
since a separate tag allows a system to display that particular field. In
that sense, what gravels me is a loss of thickness in mark-up.)<br><br>
I'm inclined to create a new record for my book, as you and Deborah have
suggested; and further inclined, rules be damned, to add the 250 that
will serve to justify the existence of the record as soon as you see
it--as close as I can get to the ideal of telling the story.<br><br>
</font><tt>RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY :
BROWN UNIVERSITY<br>
PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-3384 :
RICHARD_NOBLE@BROWN.EDU <br><br>
</tt><font size=3>PS: I will probably be killed for it, but OCLC 1012062
shows what I've recently learned about one of the more important items of
early Lincolniana. The business about impositions and plate relationships
is all the result of a day's examination of a dozen variant copies. Those
019s apparently represent what once were separate records for a number of
the imprint variants. Here, conflation and explanation probably works
better than all those records did, though I will create a separate record
for the one variant that names another publisher first, since I believe
even AACR2 would have me do that.<br><br>
<br>
At 5/19/2010 02:22 PM, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Richard,<br><br>
I would still be inclined to create a new record for your book, include
the note Deborah suggested, and risk the de-duping efforts of OCLC in the
hopes that they have heard us and won't merge 040 dcrmb, etc. records.
Since it's a new edition in rare book considerations it could be helpful
to have that recognized explicitly through the presence of a separate
record.<br><br>
I'm dealing with concealed editions now with a couple of records I'm in
the process of enhancing (and, I'm sorry, I have locked them for 24 hours
since I'm going back to them occasionally but will replace them soon).
The title: <i>Conformite des ceremonies chinoises avec l'idolatrie
grecque et romaine</i> / Noel Alexandre (1700). In this case two separate
records already existed:<br><br>
OCLC 6206673 [record lists 202 p.]<br>
OCLC 223139676 [record lists 211 p.]<br><br>
We have a copy of each and can confirm that there was a complete
re-setting of type, resulting in one edition being 4 leaves longer than
the other. Another noticeable difference is that the 202 p. edition has
the date "1700" on the title page, while the 211 p. edition has
"MDCC." Otherwise, the content appears to be the same and there
is no statement indicating that one is a new edition.<br>
<br>
In this case, I'm inclined <b>not</b> to add a note pointing out the
differences since the difference in pagination was enough cause for the
creation of separate records originally. But I think I would still create
a separate record in your case and describe the differences in a
note..<br><br>
Reactions? Concealed editions do come up so I appreciate the
discussion.<br><br>
-Kate </font></blockquote></body>
</html>