[DCRM-L] FW: Russian Signatures

[Deborah J. Leslie]

Posted on behalf of Todd Fell, Yale rare book cataloger

 

________________________

Deborah J. Leslie

Folger Library

djleslie at folger.edu

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Fell [mailto:todd.fell at yale.edu] 
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2004 3:33 PM
To: Deborah J. Leslie
Subject: Russian Signatures

 

Deborah,

As a very delayed follow-up to our discussion on providing non-Roman (in
my case, Cyrillic) signature statements, I have read over the (I think)
most recent revision of DCRB on the Bib Standards page (DCRM(B) gamma
20040607 (PDF doc, changes tracked from DCRB) posted 2004-06-08). The
section on signatures, 7B9, states for non-Roman scripts:

"If the volume is signed with a nonroman alphabet, ascertain whether the
signing follows a numeric or alphabetic sequence. If a numeric sequence,
then represent the characters using arabic numerals. If an alphabetic
sequence, then substitute roman-alphabet words in square brackets.
Capitalize the first letter of the word if the characters in the
signatures are upper-case letters; don't capitalize if the characters
are lower-case letters. Make a note on the script used."

My question concerns specifically Cyrillic signatures. I am currently
cataloging two transfers to Beinecke. Both are pre-1800 Russian
imprints. I would like to record signature statements for such material,
but am a bit confused by the suggested rules for DCRB (rev.). The
suggestion to substitute "roman-alphabet words in square brackets"
wouldn't apply to Cyrillic signature statements following the
pre-revolutionary alphabet. If one were to use brackets, then much
confusion would arise if or when one infers signatures. Wouldn't it be
more clear if the signature statement was transliterated as one would do
when transcribing the title, etc.? Prefacing the signature statement as
advised in DCRB (rev.) (for example: 500::Signatures (in Cyrillic
script): ...) would make it clear it is in Cyrillic.

Perhaps this all germane, as Unicode may one day allow us to use actual
Cyrillic letters. But in the meantime, what do you suggest?

Thanks.

Todd

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