[DCRB-L] Re: General principles draft, 20021116 (fwd)

[John Attig]

I'm going to pull out one paragraph of Larry's response for comment.  It 
hit me immediately, and is also a significant issue that the DCRB revision 
must face.

By way of preface, one of the issues that we have to deal with is 
granularity of description:  what do we call the various aggregates of 
individual copies that we need to deal with, and how do we decide which 
aggregates to describe.  At this time, we are caught between two different 
terminological shemas.  On the one hand, we have the traditional 
bibliographic terms: edition, issue, impression, state.  On the other hand, 
we have the more formal data model contained in the Functional Requirements 
for Bibliographic Records. Unfortunately, it is not exactly clear how these 
two conceptual schemas overlay each other.  That's the point that Larry is 
addressing below and on which I believe the DCRB revision process needs to 
come to some conclusions.

At 10:46 AM 12/6/2002, Laurence Creider wrote:
>While John is correct to say that a different manifestation means a
>different expression when there are changes, the FRBR report does say that
>a different manifestation may mean a different expression, but not always.
>Octavo, quarto, duodecimo, and London and Dublin 18th century editions of
>the Spectator are different manifestations but not different expressions.
>On the other hand, the Spectator and the essays from the Spectator are
>different expressions, as are groups of the essays by the individual
>authors.  The FRBR report does say that the manifestation and item
>entities can be used to describe subgroups, but the writers do not expand
>on this.  We need some terminology for the classes between manifestation
>and items, such as states and issues.  Sometimes we need to or feel the
>need to make bibliographic records to represent individual states and
>issues, sometimes even (as in the case of the Folger's First Folios or
>some incunables), we need to create separate records for individual items.
>These obviously fit into the category of serving the user function of
>identification, but perhaps we need to propose that the categories of
>manifestation and item need fuller amplication in the FRBR model.  Of
>course, these issues may also fit in with Group 6's mission.

I agree with Larry's first point.  A manifestation that contains changes in 
content (as opposed to simple changes in form) would be a new expression, 
but a manifestation which was an unchanged reprint of a previous 
manifestation would not.

I'm not sure, however, that I agree with his application of this principle 
to differences in bibliographic format.  Unless my knowledge of descriptive 
bibliography is seriously deficient, I believe that octavo, quarto and 
duodecimo manifestations BY DEFINITION must involve distinct settings of 
type.  To my mind, this means that it is almost impossible that the 
resetting does not involve changes of content -- those changes may be of 
varying significance, but there are differences.

In terms of cataloging rules for hand-printed books, we need to decide 
whether "change of content" in the FRBR use of the term means only 
significant and/or intentional changes, or whether -- in the special case 
of hand-printed books -- any resetting of type is by definition a new 
expression.  I don't think it would be difficult to make a case for the 
latter; it is certainly the basis of the definition of "edition" in the 
current DCRB (based on a definition by Tanselle).  Personally, I find this 
to be more in keeping with traditional bibliographic treatment of 
hand-printed books.  On the other hand, it would be possible to justify the 
former interpretation on the grounds of similarity to how we handle 
machine-printed books.

Group Six, I understand, will be looking at questions of edition, issue and 
impression -- and basically when to make a new record.  Although we don't 
have to map our decisions to FRBR terminology, it might be helpful to use 
FRBR terms to describe what we are doing.  We definitely have to be clear 
about when to make a new record; as Larry notes, there may not be a single 
answer -- I'm thinking of a default position, with guidelines to help the 
cataloger decide when a more detailed treatment (describing variant states 
of an edition, for example) might be appropriate.

There is a lot more to say about this, but I'll stop here.

Further comments welcome.

         John Attig
         Cataloging Services
         Penn State University Libraries

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