<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:georgia,serif">[Gmail "send" button damnably close to font choice--click and groan. Trying again]</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:georgia,serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:georgia,serif"></div><div class="gmail_default"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:georgia,serif;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif">I agree absolutely with
John Lancaster <i>in principle</i>, and I think the principle is
applicable to a focused bibliographical database--ESTC, for instance. Our
990-pound gorilla of a utility, the WorldCat, is another context altogether,
and the one in which most of us have no choice but to do our work.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:georgia,serif;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:georgia,serif;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif">Distinctions of issue at
the level of colored/uncolored, alternate dedications, partial re-settings,
variations in inserted matter that may or may not have mattered to the
producers, c19 variant binding issues--none of these can be maintained without
well-informed cataloger judgment, which is rarely available and infrequently
applied, above all and most frequently in copy cataloging, which has a definite
bias towards one set of the choices among "fast/cheap/good". At the <i>item</i> level--the
basic scholarly research level--all is simply chaos: God only knows what lies
behind a holdings symbol attached to a record, no matter how specific that
record may be, when the cataloger is constrained to employ the crudest possible
matching protocols.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:georgia,serif;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:georgia,serif;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif">I personally strive to maintain, at
least, the distinction between "concealed" editions, where MARC at
least gives us the 250 field at the basic matching level (don't know about
Bibframe--not their highest priority, I'd bet). Beyond that, however, there's
practically no way to evade the dreaded merge. Besides, when I discover a
concealed edition for what had been treated as a single manifestation and has
attracted a fair number of holdings (quite possibly in a record which is itself
a merger of multiple, often very sketchy records that may conflate some rather
obviously variant editions), I have <i>no idea</i> which of those
holdings represent one edition or the other. (On the other hand, some records
represent a false distinction of issue where there is only variation in state
of one or a few components of the edition--we've all seen it all after the
first 10,000 or so books. See for example OCLC #37043635.)</span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:georgia,serif;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-family:Georgia,serif"> </span></p>
<span style="font-family:Georgia,serif">I
cannot, in this situation, legitimately refashion an existing record absent the
ability to assess each copy and reassign the holdings. In such cases I
mercilessly enhance the record, and add a note on the order of "This
record represents two editions, printed from entirely different settings of
type" (the wording is redundant, but few people know what heck an
"edition" is, so I lend the others a clue), and provide a few
diagnostic details and, if I can, a bit of history by way of explanation. A
researcher is then alerted to the fact that individual copies need to be
censused. (See for example OCLC #</span><font face="georgia, serif">13455452).</font><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="georgia, serif">The colored/uncolored issues fit very well into this category, which requires being realistic about what the facilities allow you to do effectively. Those who care can then make a local note to indicate which issue is in hand (I do wish that the WorldCat would allow for annotated holdings, which function very well indeed in ESTC). <i>But</i>--this is a losing battle, if my own experience is representative. At best, I'm still considered useful for the ability to do this, </font><span style="font-family:georgia,serif">or at least tolerated</span><font face="georgia, serif">--I'm a "legacy", a term less and less frequently used in libraries in its good sense. Bibliography itself is such a legacy.</font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="georgia, serif">If we're talking about records at the institutional level, I agree that the stated DCRM(B) principle is correct; but at the level of rules designed to govern common practice in large shared databases, I think we need to accommodate reality and leave stones on the path behind us, not crumbs, on our way into the woods.</font></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature"><font face="'courier new', monospace">RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY</font><div><font face="'courier new', monospace">BROWN UNIVERSITY :: PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912 :: 401-863-1187</font></div><div><span style="font-family:'courier new',monospace"><</span><a href="mailto:RICHARD_NOBLE@BROWN.EDU" style="font-family:'courier new',monospace" target="_blank">Richard_Noble@Br</a><span style="font-family:'courier new',monospace"><a href="http://own.edu" target="_blank">own.edu</a></span><span style="font-family:'courier new',monospace">></span></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_extra"><span class=""><br></span><div><div class="h5"><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 7:37 PM, JOHN LANCASTER <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jjlancaster@me.com" target="_blank">jjlancaster@me.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><p style="margin-top:12pt;margin-bottom:3pt;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">From DCRM(B) (which was based on a substantial amount of scholarly discussion, not least Tanselle’s seminal paper, “The bibliographical concepts of issue and state” (PBSA 69 (1975), 17-66, and the responses to it over the years):</p><p style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;margin-top:12pt;margin-bottom:3pt;font-weight:bold;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> Issue</p><span><p style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;margin-top:3pt;margin-bottom:3pt;margin-left:9pt;text-indent:0.05pt;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">A group of published copies which constitutes a consciously planned publishing unit, distinguishable from other groups of published copies by one or more differences designed expressly to identify the group as a discrete unit.</p></span><div><div><br></div><div>It seems pretty clear that versions of a printing designed to sell for different prices, with different physical characteristics, constitute different issues, whether those differences are in the illustrations, the quality or size of paper, or the quality of binding, to name a few common ones. Both bookseller and purchaser would be quite clear which group of copies they were dealing with in any given transaction, and would not likely consider them the same.</div><div><br></div><div>Appendix E states:</div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;text-indent:0.0666666701436043px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">As a default approach, the rules contained in DCRM(B) assume that a separate bibliographic record will be created for each bibliographic variant that represents what is referred to as an "</span><a style="color:rgb(0,0,255);font-family:Arial;display:inline;text-decoration:underline;text-indent:0.0666666701436043px">edition</a><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;text-indent:0.0666666701436043px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">" in AACR2 and an "</span><a style="color:rgb(0,0,255);font-family:Arial;display:inline;text-decoration:underline;text-indent:0.0666666701436043px">issue</a><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;text-indent:0.0666666701436043px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">" in bibliographic scholarship.</span></div><div><br></div><div>The fact that it may be difficult to determine for a specific copy whether that copy was issued colored or not, does not invalidate the fundamental distinction between the types of copies as issued.</div><div><br></div><div>As to confusing researchers, I guess it depends on the researcher - if one is interested in the physical characteristics, publication conditions, and the like, it would be more confusing to have all the copies of both versions lumped together as holdings on a single record, and to have to sort them out by querying individual libraries (even if only by consulting each of their on-line catalogues).</div><span><font color="#888888"><div><br></div><div>John Lancaster</div></font></span><div><div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div>