<font size="4"><font face="garamond,serif">Well, yes, I've been addressing the whole range of conventions by which we're able to compress our notation to something readable at a glance and easy to compare with other descriptions. I simply cited "p." rhetorically, as the ultimate point of absurdity to which these rules would reduce us. Nor do I think that RDA does the "general" public any favors, in this particular area: nobody talks this way.</font></font><div>
<font class="Apple-style-span" face="garamond, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="garamond, serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I am, of course, very much in agreement with Karen Attar, that this discussion actually concerns many more people than those in the tight little world within which RDA cooked this up. Especially as a member of the BSA Publications Committee, I am appalled at so gross a departure from conventions that we share with many constituencies. I think it may be time to take this discussion to exlibris-l and perhaps sharp-l. I would be happy to draft a succinct and, I promise, dispassionate posting to exlibris-l, specifically concerning the statement of extent, with reference also to possible effects on signature and collation notes.<br>
</span></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 Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Deborah J. Leslie <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:DJLeslie@folger.edu">DJLeslie@folger.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"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";color:#1F497D">I tend to agree with Richard that the statement of extent horror
in RDA goes well beyond not liking it. It is nearly unintelligible. Perhaps the
rare book reason might be that we are committed to a more thorough statement of
the physical artifact as the artifact expresses itself. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";color:#1F497D"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";color:#1F497D">Much more than spelling out "p.", it's the lack of square
brackets that makes the statement nearly impossible to parse. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Palatino Linotype","serif";color:#1F497D"> </span></p>
<div style="border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in">
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt">
<a href="mailto:dcrm-l-bounces@lib.byu.edu" target="_blank">dcrm-l-bounces@lib.byu.edu</a> [mailto:<a href="mailto:dcrm-l-bounces@lib.byu.edu" target="_blank">dcrm-l-bounces@lib.byu.edu</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Noble,
Richard<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, 25 August, 2010 23:57</span></p><div class="im"><br>
<b>To:</b> DCRM Revision Group List<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [DCRM-L] BYU's 1st RDA/DCRMB record</div><p></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;color:#1F497D">Re: "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."</span></span><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Garamond","serif""></span></p>
</div><div><div></div><div class="h5">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Garamond","serif""> </span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Garamond","serif"">It
goes a bit beyond "I don't like it", though I'm glad for the moral
support. It's really that people who don't care in the first place will be
confirmed in their intention to pay no attention whatever to such a mess of
verbiage; whereas the people who do care about these sometimes vital details
and want us to communicate them clearly and succinctly will, in their justified
frustration, think of us as perfect fools. Who on earth that deals with
books at all is incapable of understanding "p."? For the love of
Mike, these conventions are a triumph of sorts: simple and elegant tools that
took us a long time to develop.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Garamond","serif"">I've
engaged 25 groups of people at Rare Book School, so far, in the art of
describing complex bibliographical phenomena as clearly and simply as possible,
and in this respect RDA is obtuse and altogether retrograde. It's not
simplification--it's patronizing. "The poor dears won't understand unless
we spell it all out". Or is this the best way to make us stop accounting
for this information? It <i>does</i> look bad; well then, don't do it at all.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Garamond","serif"">It
may have been true that "one of the principles underlying DCRM [is that]
the rare rules won’t depart from the general rules unless there is a rare
materials reason to do so". We need to revisit just what that principle
really means. Our proper work is dealing with the difficult cases,
and we can't do our work properly with such clumsy tools. In the absence
of that work, dealing with such materials as we do, FRBR will be a perfect
sham.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Garamond","serif"">Sorry
for the rant. I hadn't realized that despair comes in such small packages.</span></p>
</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">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>
</span><br>
<br>
</p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 6:55 PM, Robert Maxwell <<a href="mailto:robert_maxwell@byu.edu" target="_blank">robert_maxwell@byu.edu</a>> wrote:</p>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D">Some thoughts on Richard’s
thoughts </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Wingdings;color:#1F497D">J</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></span></p>
<div>
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D">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.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D">I agree that this RDA result is awful
and I don’t like it. However, again, there isn’t any rare materials
reason why the general rule shouldn’t be applied to rare materials, and
remember that that is one of the principals underlying DCRM (the rare rules
won’t depart from the general rules unless there is a rare materials
reason to do so). “I don’t like it” doesn’t cut it as a
reason for differing. We will no doubt under our rare rules continue to insist
that every leaf be counted, which will differ from RDA for rare materials
reasons, but there is no rare reason that we can insist on different <i>conventions</i>
for counting (e.g. “unnumbered” instead of bracketing) the pages we
<i>do</i> choose to count.</span></p>
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