[DCRM-L] Reconsidering digraphs

[North, Michael (NIH/NLM)]

I agree with Robert Maxwell that these are form rather than content.
Especially as we look at incunables, there are dozens of ligatures we might
want to include, turning the whole thing into a big mess.  I would like all
of these digraphs to be spelled out as separate letters; and the more
universally and uniformly this is done, the easier searching will be across
our catalogs.  For instance, how will most American users search for an "æ"
in an OPAC- especially when they're at home using a catalog remotely? What
if the ligature is used on one t.p. by one printer, then not used somewhere
else for another edition of the same work?  There are uniform titles, but I
would hate to throw that into the mix every time there is a title with a
potential ligature in it.
 
I would keep the exceptions for Scandinavian languages, which I believe put
their non-Roman vowels at the end of the alphabet in their dictionaries,
following the assumption that those searching for Scandinavian materials can
type these letters into a search bar.  I don't know enough about how the
French are dealing with œ in the online environment- what are the doing at
BnF?
 
Just my two centimes.
 
Michael 
 
Michael J. North, northm at mail.nlm.nih.gov
Head of Rare Books & Early Manuscripts
History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD  20894

(301) 496-9204 * fax (301) 402-0872
 <http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd> http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd

National Institutes of Health
Department of Health and Human Services 


-----Original Message-----
From: Deborah J. Leslie [mailto:DJLeslie at FOLGER.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 9:33 AM
To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
Subject: [DCRM-L] Reconsidering digraphs



Dear cataloging colleagues,

 

This weekend four of the five DCRM(B) editors are meeting at the Folger for
intense editing sessions. I’m happy to report that so far we’re making good
progress, but find there is an issue we want to re-open, and request
guidance from the larger community. It has to do with the separation of ae
and oe digraphs, or “ligatures” as the rules call them. Please keep in mind
that we are not speaking of decorative ligatures, such as ct’s and st’s as a
single type-body. We are only speaking of two letters written as one. 

 

As far as we can discover, AACR2 gives no guidance on digraphs. (One of us
thought she had found an AACR2 instruction to separate all ligatures, but
now cannot find it and wonders if she imagined it.) LCRI 1.0E says to
separate ligatures into their component letters, but makes exceptions for
modern French and Scandinavian, in which oe and ae are to be transcribed as
a single character. DCRB adds Anglo-Saxon and ancient Scandinavian languages
to the exception list. 

 

The current draft of DCRM(B) has simplified the instruction: separate all
ligatures into their component letters, no exceptions. But we feel we need
to reconsider that instruction given our desire to make the transcription
more precise in terms of content. AE and oe digraphs have always been part
of the MARC character set. We realize we are having a hard time justifying
the separation of digraphs in transcription. 

 

An instruction to transcribe all digraphs as digraphs, in any language at
all, goes against the grain of experience for many of us. The ESTC, on the
other hand, has been transcribing digraphs as such all along. We need to
winnow out the aesthetic arguments and focus on what we are trying to
accomplish with transcription. (All other things being equal, aesthetic
arguments count, but only if all other things really are equal). 

 

At its most basic level, the DCRM transcription principle is to transcribe
the content, but not the form, of printed text. Thus, we retain archaic and
incorrect spellings, but normalize capitalization and line endings -- the
former being content, the latter form. The digraph question comes down to
this: do digraphs represent content (does their joining together actually
create a new letter) or do they represent form (just a conventional way of
writing these combinations of letters)? We as a group are leaning more
toward the consideration of digraphs as  content. What do you think? 

 

_________________________________
Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S.
Head of Cataloging
Folger Shakespeare Library
 <mailto:djleslie at folger.edu> djleslie at folger.edu
http://www.folger.edu

 

 

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