DCRM(S) pt. 0

[Robert L. Maxwell]

I was going to send my comments on the new serial rules just to Jane and 
Juliet, but then it occurred to me that this would be a good way to kick 
off a new season on DCRB-L and my own comments might generate more (I 
hope!). So I will send a series of messages (each covering one section) 
this morning with my thoughts on the serials rules. In case anyone has 
forgotten the URL, here it is:

http://www.library.yale.edu/conser/documents/dcrs.html

0A. This is a useful summary of why rare serials merit different treatment. 
I suggest that perhaps a little more might be useful. You say that rare 
cataloging rules are important because (a) they permit ready identification 
of copies and (b) they provide a more exact description of the artifact. It 
might be useful to explay *why* we think these two functions of rare rules 
are important and necessary. Who cares? Why should a "regular" serials 
cataloger care about these two things? Anyone on  dcrb-l care to defend our 
position that these things are important and suggest succinct language for 
DCRM(S) to this effect (we could also use such language in DCRM(G))?

0A.1 treatment of annuals. The rule appears to say that if an annual is 
published more than once a year it should be treated monographically? This 
doesn't make intuitive sense to me. Many periodicals are published more 
than once a year. Isn't the fact that an "annual" is published more than 
once a year simply evidence that it's not an annual, but not evidence that 
it's not a serial?

0D. The field chart looks useful, but I would give the actual MARC 21 name 
for the fixed field positions rather than the OCLC (??) codes. E.g., 
instead of "PUB ST" for 008/6, use "Type of date/Publication status".

0E. I realize you are copying this from DCRB, so I guess you need to keep 
track of the moving target, but instead of "period" I would use AACR2 "full 
stop" here (cf. your own 3A1, where you use "full stop").

Bob
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Robert L. Maxwell
Special Collections and Ancient Languages Cataloger
6430 Harold B. Lee Library
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 378-5568
robert_maxwell at byu.edu
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