<font size="4"><font face="garamond,serif">Very preliminary thoughts below. My knowledge of RDA is very limited--this has not been the summer for me to spend hours poring over it, though I know it's coming like Hell <i>and</i> high water--but what the heck. - Richard</font></font><div>
<font size="4"><font face="garamond,serif"><br clear="all"></font></font><font face="'courier new', monospace">RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN UNIVERSITY<br>PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-3384 : <a href="mailto:RICHARD_NOBLE@BROWN.EDU" target="_blank">RICHARD_NOBLE@BROWN.EDU</a> </font><br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 8:01 PM, Robert Maxwell <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:robert_maxwell@byu.edu">robert_maxwell@byu.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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<p class="MsoNormal">What should we do about expansion of abbreviations,
contractions, ligatures, etc.? RDA philosophy is “copy exactly what you
see,” but as we know that is a bit simplistic for early title pages. Some
possibilities I see:</p>
<p><span>1.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>Continue to expand abbreviations,
etc., exactly as we do now in DCRM(B), including the bracketing conventions
(this is what I did in this record)</p>
<p><span>2.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>Expand abbreviations, etc.,
without bracketing.</p></div></div></blockquote><div>In 245, the transcription field, absolutely not. Limited representation is one thing, false representation quite another.</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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<p><span>3.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>Do not expand abbreviations—but
what about ligatures, symbols, etc.?</p></div></div></blockquote><div>"Copy exactly what you see" is much closer to our transcription philosophy than AACR2 and even DCRM(B). Of course it's nonsense, since you're not in any sense "copying" what you see: presumably you're still adding punctuation <i>ad lib</i> as a substitute for grammatically significant line endings--and certainly not indicating line endings as such or as in quasi-facsimile transcription; not following original initial capitalization, let alone all caps; etc. etc. It's simply a matter of <i>representing</i> what you see, generally, but not always, with equivalent symbols, according to a set of conventions. If you think of it as a species of encoding, then there are degrees of thin and thick to be considered, and the possibility of options along that scale.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The question that arises with respect to expansions is, basically: are you representing characters or words? For actual abbreviations, i.e. words shortened by omission of letters, exact transcription in the 245 seems to me in the right "rare book" spirit. Likewise, the use of fairly basic supplementary marks (tildes, macrons, etc.) might well be followed, reckoning that Unicode and XML are the way of the future, and that anything for which a codepoint is defined is to be regarded as standard (alternate representations that accommodate system limitations to be either strictly local, or to be provided in master records according to some one standard for simplification. This also leaves open questions about defining character standards, especially as regards equivalence/compatibility of combining and precomposed characters.) The characters that Erin Blake referred to in her response as "brevigraphs" (I really like that word), which presumably include all those squiggles that we find in Cappelli, are more daunting. Then there's i/j and u/v ...</div>
<div><br></div><div>At the most basic level, I'd be happy to see a more exact transcription in the 245, with a range of suggested alternatives for 246s, to clarify and inform, as well as for indexing. But it's not that simple. Do we continue to rely on something like the transcription conventions found in the late LCRIs? How do we avoid ambiguities in matching new records against old--i.e. filling the database with "distinctions without a difference"? Do we suggest that images ought to be the primary means of <i>identifying</i> (i.e. providing a basic matching point), which has been the function of the 245?</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This issue is an issue that has to do with rare materials,
and therefore would warrant under our principles a different approach from RDA
if we feel it appropriate.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Other RDA changes that do not have anything to do with rare
materials (and therefore we would follow the general rules rather than have a
special rule in DCRM) that you will note on this record:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p><span>1.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>In RDA we don’t draw
attention to errors; so in the AACR2 version the first bit is transcribed “Liber
de potestatae [sic] syderu[m]” because it’s ungrammatical; in RDA
there’s no “sic”: “Liber de potestatae syderu[m]”</p></div></div></blockquote><div>As the ranks of well-informed catalogers get thinner and thinner it may be best to let this go. That "[sic]" means you have to know that it's ungrammatical--as for that matter do the expansions. Clearly this is one of the aspects of RDA that appeals to the adminisphere: you need to know the alphabet, but not a heck of a lot else... Anyway, having interpolated a "sic" you need to provide a form of the title for the book to file on properly. I wish there were a field for "primary filing version of the title proper", leaving aside everything having more to do graphic representation.</div>
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<p><span>2.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>Physical description (300 field)
is treated differently.</p></div></div></blockquote><div>The example here is way too simple. What do we do with "[2], iv, [1], iv-xvii, [3], 348 [i.e. 332], [6], 24, [2] p."? Interpolate five repetitions of "unnumbered pages" into that sequence, and you begin to bury the information that you're trying to convey--and that's simple, compared to some things we encounter. This is where I sense that RDA may be wedded to a foolish consistency: "NO brackets! NO abbreviations!" Are they nuts? Are we supposed to abandon every convention of bibliographical description that anyone actually interested in bibliographical description would know perfectly well? Aren't they the people we do this for?</div>
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<p><span>3.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>Addition of content, media, and
carrier types</p></div></div></blockquote><div>Noting wrong with explicit metadata. Inference is death.</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple">
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<p><span>4.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>In RDA abbreviation is almost
forbidden, so in the signatures note I used “[paragraph mark]” in
the RDA record instead of “[par.]”. I don’t think there’s
any unique rare reason why we should use an abbreviation here. Related to this,
though it doesn’t have bearing on this particular book: in RDA the format
symbols are the same as in DCRM, except “folio” is spelled out, not
abbreviated, e.g. … 32 cm (folio), not … 32 cm (fol.) Again, no
rare reason why we need to abbreviate this word.</p></div></div></blockquote><div>There is a for abbreviating: legibility and clarity. Read it aloud to yourself, and imagine that the description actually calls for several such lengthy phrases. Is this a point where we declare that we are no longer limited to the typewriter's capacity for presenting symbols?</div>
<div><br></div><div>As to the formats, I should think that "folio", "quarto", "octavo" do it for spelled out forms. After that it's perfectly correct to write "12mo", "16mo", "18mo", etc., since that's what we usually say. (We can sacrifice "duodecimo", since "twelve-mo" is frequently heard, and shorter. It's just that we don't say "two-mo", "four-mo", etc., even though we could...)</div>
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<p><span>5.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>Note the form of the name in 100.
The AACR2 form has “cent.”; the RDA form has “century” </p></div></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple">
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<p><span>6.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>Note the form of the name in 700.
The AACR2 form has “fl.”; the RDA form has “active”.</p></div></div></blockquote><div>Bravo. "Florebat" or "floruit" are not needed, and "active" directly translates the phrase used in many other languages.</div>
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<p><span>7.<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span><span dir="LTR"></span>The use of relator terms won’t
be unusual to us, except perhaps using one in 1XX fields. Also none of them are
abbreviated in RDA (“editor,” not “ed.”)</p></div></div></blockquote><div>I welcome this with open arms. I wish relators were in universal use and properly indexed; but the main weakness had been their exclusion from 100 fields, and especially the use of nothing to represent something ("author").</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’ve added RDA elements to the authority records for the
two persons involved, but unfortunately I can’t produce them in any way
that anyone else can look at them until October 1, when we can begin RDA work
in NACO. For the moment they’re stored in BYU’s online save file.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Comments are welcome; and especially discussion on DCRM-L on
the issue of what to do with abbreviations, ligatures, symbols, etc., in
transcribed areas under RDA.</p></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I suspect that what's needed for this purpose is a survey of systems people. What can current systems handle, and what do the prospects look like for the immediate and farther future? What limits are imposed by OCLC?</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thanks,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bob</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div><div>Thanks, Bob, indeed!</div><div><br></div><div>- Richard</div>