Topic 4. Transcription

[Stephen Tabor]

At 05:09 PM 1/21/99 -0700, Bob Maxwell wrote:
>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?

Our current usages are on a continuum with earlier cataloguing practices,
and at the other end are hand-written lists of one-line titles which the
cataloguer made up ad hoc (e.g. "Vergilius in 4to"). When library users
(not to mention librarians) found it necessary or useful to differentiate
finer detail (date, edition, issue, &c.), cataloguers began to include this
information. As bibliographers demonstrated the uses of more exact physical
description, it was natural for some of this to creep into cataloguing.
Describing an item in its own terms as far as possible tends to make for
exact identifications. Every time we raise the ante on cataloguing detail,
we increase the chance that someone will recognize an item in hand as
significantly different from what the record is describing. But our
increasing focus on the artifact keeps us introducing practices that are
foreign to the cataloguing of modern books, which is still taken as the
underlying paradigm for what we do. We still have an obligation to keep
things readable and manageable; one should still be able to skim a record
as well as plumb it for detail. For this reason none of us seriously
advocates preserving all the capitalization in the 245; for the comfort of
the user, we fiddle the transcription. Thus we back into the horns of the
i/j u/v dilemma. The rationale for the DCRB guideline in section 0H (which
I have never found confusing or time-consuming to follow) is to avoid
fantastic spellings that the printer would not have countenanced. This is
actually another concession to legibility, albeit mainly for the benefit of
users familiar with the compositorial conventions.

This is partly a long way of saying that I am happy with DCRB 0H as it
stands, and hence with Elizabeth's option 2 (though there is an ambiguity
in the phrase "as printed").

Incidentally, I could probably cite examples of early English revolutionary
pamphlets in which the i/j usage is a clue to whether you have the original
or a contemporary reprint.


Steve


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Stephen Tabor
Catalogue/Reference Librarian

Clark Library, UCLA              2520 Cimarron, Los Angeles, CA 90018
(323) 731-8529            (323) 731-8617 (fax)              stabor at ucla.edu
    http://www2.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/clarklib/

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