[DCRM-L] FW: From Dan R., RE: DCRB revision

Thu Jan 6 13:44:14 MST 2005

Just a slight correction on my material below. Attic Greek does distinguish
between upper and lower case. Hebrew, however, does not.

Dan Rettberg
drettberg at huc.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Deborah J. Leslie [mailto:DJLeslie at folger.edu]
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 12:16 PM
To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
Subject: [DCRM-L] FW: From Dan R., RE: DCRB revision

Forwarded from Dan Rettberg.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Rettberg, Dan [mailto:drettberg at huc.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 4:30 PM
To: Deborah J. Leslie
Subject: FW: From Dan R., RE: DCRB revision 

Dear Leslie-- 

I checked your text for non-Roman signatures for the proposed revision of 
DCRB. Just a couple of comments. 

1. I like the way you have included the language as a part of the 
description, i.e. (in Hebrew). My practice has been to make a separate note,

"Gatherings signed in Hebrew characters". 

2. I would use "alef", rather than "alif", for the first letter of the 
Hebrew alphabet. So far as I'm aware, "alif", with a long "i" and the accent

on the second syllable, is a linguistic term, probably derived from Arabic. 
The standard English spelling for the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet is

"alef", with the "e" pronounced as a short vowel, and the accent on the 
first syllable. 

3. I find it interesting that you appear to leave it to the discretion of 
the cataloger as to whether to use transliterated forms of the Hebrew 
character names, or Arabic numerals based on, I assume, the actual evidence 
in the piece. By the way, I don't think I mentioned in my last e-mail on 
this subject that classical Greek uses the characters of the alphabet 
numerically as well. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, although the 
so-called Arabic numerals were first used in India as early as the third 
century B.C.E., they did not come to the West until the tenth century. 

4. Keeping in mind that classical Hebrew and Greek do not distinguish 
between upper and lower case, I would give a default form for those electing

to use the transliterated forms of letter names, i.e. as to whether to 
capitalize the first letter of the name or not. 

I hope these comments are helpful. 

Dan 
drettberg at huc.edu 

7B9. Signatures 

.. If the volume is signed with nonroman characters, include an indication 
of the script used in parentheses before the colon. Ascertain whether the 
signing follows a numeric or alphabetic sequence. For a numeric sequence, 
represent the characters using arabic numerals. Indicate the presence of 
inferred numbers within the sequence using square brackets. 

Signatures (in Hebrew): 1-114 
(Editorial comment: Indicates a numeric sequence beginning with [alif] and 
ending with [yod alif]) 

Signatures (in Hebrew): [1]2 2-102 
(Editorial comment: Indicates a numeric sequence with the first gathering 
unsigned and the remaining gatherings signed [beth]-[yod]) 

For an alphabetic sequence, if the language has conventional names for the 
letters, as in Greek or Hebrew, substitute roman-alphabet words in square 
brackets. Capitalize the first letter of each word if the characters in the 
signatures are uppercase letters; do not capitalize if the characters are 
lowercase letters. Do not use double brackets to supply inferred gatherings;

instead, condense the sequence and provide an explanation at the end of the 
note. 

Signatures (in Greek): pi1 [alpha]-[gamma]2 [Alpha]-2[Lambda]2 

Signatures (in Greek): [alpha]-[delta]4; the [gamma] gathering is inferred 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Deborah J. Leslie [ mailto:DJLeslie at FOLGER.edu
<mailto:DJLeslie at FOLGER.edu> ] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 12:21 PM 
To: Multiple recipients of list 
Subject: 

Meetings of the Bibliographic Standards Committee are open; guests are 
encouraged to attend and participate. 

http://www.folger.edu/bsc/2005.1agenda.html
<http://www.folger.edu/bsc/2005.1agenda.html>  

________________________________ 

Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S. 
Head of Cataloging 
Folger Shakespeare Library 
201 East Capitol St., SE 
Washington, DC 20003 
202.675-0369 
djleslie at folger.edu 

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