Topic 6: Glossary: Plate

[Richard Noble]

The exceptional treatment of non-integral title leaves as if they were
integral runs directly counter to the descriptive purpose of DCRB. As I
have noted in an exchange on exlibris, it is necessary to explain in a note
that such a leaf has been deliberately misrepresented--for the sake of
precisely the well-informed users for whom a DCRB record has any meaning;
or to break the rule, and explain in a note that the plates include a title
leaf--this for the sake of other cataloguers. I prefer the latter course,
and follow it. If that's an impeachable offence, so be it.

I've heard through the grapevine that early drafts of BDRB treated all
plates alike, but that there were objections from LC, I don't know
why--perhaps because non-rb cataloguers would not recognize them as plates,
and that a BDRB statement of extent would not be mechanically reducible to
an AACR2 statement by simply deleting what would be omitted under AACR2. It
may also have to do with the usually unambiguous position of a title leaf.

A plate is a leaf that was not machined with the letterpress of the text,
and is not conjugate with any of the letterpress printed leaves.
Letterpress tables or scores are *not* plates, if they can be properly
included as inserted leaves in a collational formula. (I'm not quite
certain how to deal with letterpress leaves larger or smaller than those of
regular gatherings, however--I'm working on that one. But you'll always
have to explain the weird stuff in a note anyway.)

Anyway, I think the only acceptable practice is for the 300 $a to be
essentially a reduction, not a distortion, of the pagination statement that
would appear in a full collational formula according to a correct analysis
of the physical composition of the book, and I welcome the impulse to
change this rule. Thanks, Sandra.

At 05:22 PM 1/7/99 -0700, you wrote:
>>Plate.  [N.B.: major revision.]  A primarily illustrative leaf that is
not an
>>integral part of a gathering.  [DELETING: "excepting an illustrated title
>>page
"]  Tables,  %scores, and added title pages%  printed on leaves that
are
>>not an integral part of a gathering are also treated as plates.
>
>I have nothing against this (and I'm glad to see the addition of score),
>but I think the addition of added title pages into the definition of plates
>warrants discussion, since it is explicitly excluded in the current
>definition. Sandra, could you explain your thinking here? What do the rest
>of you think?
>
>Bob


RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOK CATALOGUER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN UNIVERSITY
PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-2093 : RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU