[DCRM-L] Title-related glossary terms

[Stephen Skuce]

I have some thoughts on:
Chief title / Title page / Added title page / Title proper

1. Chief title: One thing to acknowledge up front is that DCRM needs a 
definition for chief title even more than DCRB did: in the 2002 revision of 
AACR2, rule "1.1B1. Title proper" was expanded to include the following new 
text:
         "Do not transcribe words that serve as an introduction and are not 
intended to be part of the title. Give the title including these words in a 
note (see 1.7B4).
                 [Examples]:
                 Sleeping Beauty
                 NOTE: Title appears on item as: Disney presents Sleeping 
Beauty

                 NASA quest
                 NOTE: Title appears on item as: Welcome to NASA quest"

We need a definition of chief title if only to give us a way to clarify the 
difference between the chief title and what WE call the title proper, 
insofar as transcription of the title proper for rare books will often 
require the cataloger explicitly to ignore this new portion of AACR2 rule 
1B1. We need to differentiate between a chief title and a title proper, 
while AACR2, if it considered the matter, would likely consider them 
equivalent.

What our definition of chief title should be: Deborah is right in her email 
of 11 January 2005: we should omit the clause "as found on the title page." 
The definition does not need it, and erasing it is step one in eliminating 
the circularity among chief title, title proper, and title page.

The proposed revised definition:
Chief title. The distinguishing word or sequence of words that names a 
publication. This definition excludes alternative titles, parallel titles, 
other title information, and subsidiary title information preceding the 
chief title on the title page, such exclusion resulting usually in a short 
title. See also Title proper.

2. Title page: I now believe strongly that DCRM(B) does not need to define 
title page at all (Manon suggested this in early December). The definition 
in DCRB was tortured and redundant to boot, and it contained absolutely no 
information specific, or important, to rare materials. In reaction, the 
DCRM glossary group went the other way, trimming the definition for title 
page until it was considerably shorter than that in AACR2.  I now realize 
that we shouldn't have bothered, and that the AACR2 definition of title 
page is entirely sufficient for our purposes. Rare materials either have or 
do not have title pages, just like regular materials. The content or layout 
of a title page in certain rare books may look very different from a title 
page in a modern mainstream publication, but that doesn't change the 
definition of "title page." No cataloger needs a new, or expanded, or 
contracted definition of title page in order to use DCRM(B) effectively.

3. The elimination of "title page" obviates the need for a definition of 
"added title page," which should also be deleted.

4. Title proper: One reason we need a definition for title proper is 
related to the chief title justification above: the title proper for a rare 
book will often include information that the 2002 revision of AACR2 
explicitly instructs the cataloger to omit.  But the current DCRM(B) 
definition of title proper (barely different from the DCRB definition) has 
problems: It repeats information given in the text, it references the title 
page (the circularity problem), and it is lengthy.
         The DCRM(B) text proper instructs the cataloger to omit "pious 
invocations, devices, announcements, epigrams, mottoes, prices, etc." and 
various other unlinked information, though it does not list as many 
omissions as the glossary definition does.  Do we need the lengthy list in 
sentence 2 of the glossary definition? Need we explicitly state that 
grammatically separable edition statements and series statements are not 
part of the title proper? If so, the definition is nearly acceptable as it 
stands. If not, we can shorten it dramatically.
         The current definition's final 2 sentences concern publications 
with/without collective titles. It repeats some of what is found in the 
text proper, but in a positive way, rather than the negative way the text 
proper approaches the issue ("1.F Publications without a collective 
title"). I think that in tightening up the current definition, we may still 
want to retain this information.
         So, the only information I'm strongly eager to eliminate from the 
definition for title proper is that referring to the title page, and maybe 
some of the repetition of elements to be omitted from the title 
proper.  Otherwise, I think the current definition is fairly strong.

I hope we can follow this up with thoughts on other problematic terms.
Stephen

| Stephen Skuce  |  Rare Books Cataloging Librarian
| MIT Libraries  |  Building 14E-210B  |  617.253.0654 |  skuce at mit.edu 
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