Topic 4. Transcription

[Robert L. Maxwell]

>I think this discussion ought to include some discussion with LC Descr.
>Cat. Office.  Its unfortunate to have DCRB & LCRI giving different
>solutions, however commendable each might be, since it simply exacerbates
>the filing problem in multi-language catalogs.

I, too, think this is quite important. Could you contribute here, Jerry? I
believe you told me some time ago that LC did have some thoughts on this
matter ...

>5) Whether or not DCRB (and appendix) reflects Fredson Bower's views, I
>think it needs to be kept in mind that although I think we do want to
>faithfully represent the t.p., a catalog record in MARC or on a card is not
>a segment of a descriptive bibliography. There is a limit imposed by
>context.  It is clear to me that part of this discussion of transcription
>has to do with some variation of opinion as to the degree with which a
>[MARC] catalog record should do what a descriptive bibliography does.

At 12:34 AM 1/22/99 -0800, Stephen Tabor wrote:
>Every rule we make that permits tampering with the form of the title in the
>source (and with this I would include the splitting of digraphs mandated in
>LCRI) compromises the catalogue as an identification tool. If you can't
>compare a copy in hand with someone else's catalogue record and be pretty
>confident of whether you have the same edition (i.e. typesetting) or not,
>the cataloguing has failed in a fundamental way.

I agree with this, but as I said in an earlier message, the t.p.
transcription is not the only way we identify variant copies or editions,
so why should we single out this one item as being something that MUST be
evident from the catalog record, when we don't do other things (we could,
for example, faithfully transcribe every page number because sometimes
there are differences in printing there, etc., etc.). And how many variants
actually are identifiable because in one issue the printer used "u" and in
another the printer used "v"? I suspect the number is pretty low of
variants that would be missed or unidentifiable because of cataloging
conventions for transcribing u/v and i/j. And in any case such variants
would be missed under the current DCRB rule, since presumably if the
printer put a U on the t.p. and then later switched that piece of type to a
V (or reset a later edition with a V), the DCRB cataloger would transcribe
them both the same unless the printer changed his entire practice
throughout the entire book.

The tension between full bibliographic description (which would if I'm not
mistaken include transcribing upper and lower case as is, etc.) and
cataloging not being a "segment of descriptive bibliography" is an issue we
need to grapple with. As Richard pointed out, we have long since left
descriptive bibliography behind us for good or for ill in cataloging; if
so, what *are* we actually doing?

Bob
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Robert L. Maxwell
Special Collections and Ancient Languages Cataloger
6428 Harold B. Lee Library
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 378-5568
robert_maxwell at byu.edu
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