[DCRB-L] DCRB: General principles

[Brian Hillyard]

Deborah's references to things such as silent omission of title page
dedication and privilege statements and to the general principles that
we will need to refer to when coming to decisions about such things
prompts me to raise a point that I would like to see included in any
pre-conference general principles document.  I apologise now if I have
missed earlier discussion of this point and am wasting everybody's time
with this long posting.

I think there are various problems with omissions.  One kind of argument
against omissions is that working out where to put in dots can take up
more time than not putting them in; that putting in dots requires a
higher level of comprehension of the title page (obviously I'm thinking
particularly of foreign language title pages); and that the results can
be just plain ugly.  But another line of argument flows from one of the
generic user tasks set out by IFLA Functional Requirements for
Bibliographic Records, p.8, "using the data retrieved to identify an
entity (e.g. to confirm that the document described in a record
corresponds to the document sought by the user, or to distinguish
between two texts or records that have the same title".  How much should
the user need to know about our descriptive cataloguing standard to be
able to carry out this task successfully when examining records created
in accordance with that standard?  In these days when users cross-search
catalogues it is even less likely than before that they will develop a
grasp - by experience rather than by reading a description of an
institution's cataloguing standard - of the standard behind a catalogue
record.  Even a user who works exclusively with a single OPAC may not
develop this knowledge because very few institutions (so I would guess)
have a uniform standard for all their existing records (one of the
points that may generate discussion next March is that because we have
no time to revisit existing records some changes to the rules will add
to the lack of uniformity).

A rule like 1A2 "Omit, without using the mark of omission, information
found on the title page that constitutes neither title information nor a
statement of responsibility. 
 Use the note area to record or describe
this kind of information if it is considered important" is not good for
the user.  Why should the user be expected to know that the standard
prescribes that some words can be omitted without marks of omission but
others not?  And why should the user be so much in the hands of the
cataloguer's knowledge and judgment when that isn't really necessary?

A variation of this argument can also be used in the Roman/arabic date
debate.  Whereas in the physical description area a cataloguer can
exercise options and, for example, the cataloguer user can quite simply
SEE that a catalogue record is providing pagination of all three volumes
and benefit from that extra information, in the imprint area, if a
cataloguer is implementing the 4D2 option and transcribes a date as 1769
because it IS "1769" (arabic) in the book, how is the user to know that
he is being given this more precise information?  If the user is looking
at a copy of the book with the same title page but the date as MDCCLXIX,
the cataloguer with his "1769" is providing the user with information
that would enable the user to identify that he has a variant (meeting
FRBR requirements) - but this only works if the user knows the
conventions the cataloguer is employing.  And since Roman and arabic
dates were both in use in imprints, the user cannot achieve an
understanding of this convention simply by looking at hundreds of
catalogue records.

So I think that the general principles need to include something about
how much the user needs to know about cataloguing conventions, and, as
you will gather from my drift, I would suggest "as little as possible". 
An agreed view on this would take us a long way towards an agreed view
on some of the problem areas Deborah lists.

The difficulty is to keep our feet on the ground and be careful about
how far we pursue ideas such as coding a record so that its OPAC display
includes a brief guide to all cataloguing conventions used in that
record that aren't self-explanatory.  Title page transcription in a
catalogue record will always fall short of what can be achieved by
linking the record to an image of the title page - a possibility which
is, I think, one factor that makes the context of this forthcoming
revision of DCRB different from the context of the previous revision.

These are personal and not institutional views.

Brian Hillyard
-- 
Dr Brian Hillyard
Head of Rare Books
National Library of Scotland
EDINBURGH EH1 1EW
e-mail: b.hillyard at nls.uk
Fax: 0131 466 2807 *** Tel: 0131 226 4531
Library website: http://www.nls.uk