[DCRM-L] : 7B9 Signatures in non-roman alphabets

[Rettberg, Dan]

Very interesting, Joe, and it may work. I can't help being a little
concerned for those libraries that do not have systems with the capability
of reproducing non-Roman alphabet characters. That's most of us, of course.
Although I could record Hebrew characters in signatures in both our
electronic catalog (VIRTUA), and on RLIN, I don't, out of deference to the
majority of libraries which do not have these capabilities. We use our
Hebrew character capabilities only for title and publisher/printer
information, and then only in tandem with transliterated fields. I also
would wonder about how to handle two of the Hebrew alphabet characters that
have not been assigned any equivalent in the Roman alphabet, according to
the ALA-LC Romanization tables. These cnaracters are breathings, rahther
than stops, and are noted only with superscript diacritical marks. This
would likely result in a totally unreadable signature count for many
libraries whose systems also have difficulty with diacritics from other
systems. It appears that the ALA romanized Russian alphabet also has a
couple of such characters. How would you handle hard and soft signs, or are
they normally not used in Russian printers' alphabets? 
 
I agree that it might be helpful to distinguish in some way between upper
and lower case characters in signatures, assuming that a default would be
given, since, as I have already mentioned, Hebrew does not distinguish
between upper and lower case.
 
Dan Rettberg
Rare Book and Manuscript Bibliographer
Klau Library
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Cincinnati, Ohio
 
drettberg at huc.edu <mailto:drettberg at huc.edu> 
 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Ross [mailto:Joseph.T.Ross.40 at nd.edu]
Sent: Monday, January 17, 2005 12:19 PM
To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu; 'dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu'; thollis at library.berkeley.edu;
auc1 at psulias.psu.edu; ranelsen at library.ucsd.edu; russell.363 at osu.edu;
ElizRob at alum.emory.edu; jfletchr at library.ucla.edu; jane.gillis at yale.edu;
roperj at wfu.edu; joeas at goshen.edu; jxa16 at psulias.psu.edu;
juliet at ucrac1.ucr.edu; lcreider at lib.nmsu.edu; manon.theroux at yale.edu;
nschneider at nypl.org; rbrandt at library.berkeley.edu; robert_maxwell at byu.edu;
slsf at udel.edu; Stephen Skuce; Deborah J. Leslie
Subject: RE: [DCRM-L] : 7B9 Signatures in non-roman alphabets


Dan,

I would like to clarify my recommendations for revision of the Delta version
of DCRB(M).  I am not recommending using "Latin capitals for what would
appear to be the closest corresponding character within the alphabet
employed for signatures" as you wrote in your note below.  I am recommending
using a transliteration of the letters in a non-Roman alphabet by using the
ALA/LC transliteration tables when and only when one cannot record the
letter in the original script.  Catalog users should be familiar with the LC
transliteration tables, which are also being used for the titles and authors
in the catalog record.  I want also to be able to distinguish upper and
lower case in the alphabet under consideration, where these alphabets allow
such a distinction.  Signature notes will be meaningful only to
bibliographers and individuals interested in early printing.  I think most
of these people are fairly well educated and will know that "g" is not the
seventh letter of the Greek, Hebrew or Cyrillic alphabet, and will look up a
chart of the alphabet if he/she does not know the alphabet.

I don't have an objection to using the names for the Greek and Hebrew
letters, but I would prefer consistency, i.e., use the names for the Russian
alphabet as well.  I think it is more work to record the names than to
record the transliteration of the letters.  It also makes for a very long
note when one has a lengthy series of signatures.  When one is recording the
pre-1917 Russian alphabet, I don't know if one can expect that catalog users
will be familiar enough with the names of letters that are no longer used in
the Russian alphabet.  If one used the transliteration, the catalog user
could simply look up the transliteration table to find the letter that is
being transliterated.  

My main objection, however,  with the delta version of  DCRB(M) is the
recommendation for signatures in Russian, viz. record the signature as an
Arabic numeral corresponding to the number of gatherings.  Early Russian
books frequently do use the letters of the  Old  Church Slavic alphabet for
numbers.  If one sees a signature note in Arabic numerals, the natural
assumption is that the signatures are given in Old Church Slavic alphabetic
numeration, not the pre-1917 alphabet or the Old Church Slavic alphabet.
One really has no way of knowing what letters are indicated in the signature
if one just records the number of gatherings.  One also loses the
distinction between upper and lower case alphabets and the number of series
of the alphabets.  Too much is lost in this way of recording these
signatures.  After looking at the complexity of the signatures in early
Russian imprints, I am more convinced of this than ever.  We need to convey
to people who have an interest in early imprints how the signatures are
given as precisely as possible.  I think we should transliterate the letters
in all non-Roman alphabet signatures when we cannot give the letters in the
original script.  When the signatures are given by letters representing
numbers, then use Arabic numerals in brackets and indicate this in the
qualification after the word Signatures, i.e., Signatures (in Old Church
Slavonic alphabetic numeration) or Signatures (in Hebrew alphabetic
numeration). 

I hope this clarifies my position, and I hope the committee will take these
concerns into account in their discussions of this rule.

Joe Ross
Rare Books Cataloger
University of Notre Dame

 At 03:01 PM 1/12/2005, Rettberg, Dan wrote:


Joseph--
 
Thanks for coming at this problem from a different angle. I cannot comment
on Russian, since I don't know the language, and have only occassionly dealt
with it in alternative titles on Hebrew and Aramaic Rabbinic texts. When
necessary, I have enlisted my knowledge of the Greek alphabet combined with
the assistance of LC transliteration tables. I do believe, however that the
Delta draft makes too much of the use of Greek and Latin characters for both
letters and numbers. Trying to be too specific here only makes life
difficult for the cataloger. As I commented in my earlier response, the one
good thing about the approach seems to be in the fact that it is worded in
such a way as to allow the cataloger to determine for him/herself when it is
more advisable to use Arabic numerals and when the transliterated forms of
the names of the characters. If I understand your suggestion below, however,
you would like to use Latin capitals for what would appear to be the closest
corresponding character within the alphabet employed for signatures. I think
this could only confuse things even more, even as you suggest that a non
Greek or Hebrew reader might not realize that "G" stands for the third
letter of the Greek or Hebrew alphabets, and not the seventh letter, as in
the Roman alphabet. The more I think about it, I'ld like to stay with my
current practice, which is to transliterate the names of Greek and Hebrew
characters used for signatures, and to place them within brackets.
Presumably, "limping along" with the assistance of the Greek alphabet and
the LC transliteration tables, I would do the same with Russian characters
used as signatures, if I encountered them.
 
Dan Rettberg
Rare Book and Manuscript Bibliographer
Klau Library
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Rellgion
Cincinnati, Ohio
 
drettberg at huc.edu <mailto:drettberg at huc.edu> 


-----Original Message-----


From: Joseph Ross [ mailto:Joseph.T.Ross.40 at nd.edu
<mailto:Joseph.T.Ross.40 at nd.edu> ]


Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 5:34 PM


To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu; DCRM-l at lib.byu.edu; thollis at library.berkeley.edu;
auc1 at psulias.psu.edu; ranelsen at library.ucsd.edu; russell.363 at osu.edu;
ElizRob at alum.emory.edu; jfletchr at library.ucla.edu; jane.gillis at yale.edu;
roperj at wfu.edu; joeas at goshen.edu; jxa16 at psulias.psu.edu;
juliet at ucrac1.ucr.edu; lcreider at lib.nmsu.edu; manon.theroux at yale.edu;
nschneider at nypl.org; rbrandt at library.berkeley.edu; robert_maxwell at byu.edu;
slsf at udel.edu; Stephen Skuce; Deborah J. Leslie


Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Discussion questions posted: 7B9 Signatures in
non-roman alphabets



Deborah and list members,



The question concerning non-roman alphabet signatures has not generated much
discussion here, and I regret that I cannot participate in the discussion at
the Midwinter meeting of BSC, but I wanted to offer a few more remarks to my
earlier comments.



If one were to follow the draft suggestion for signatures in the Russian
alphabet,  viz., using numerals to represent the gatherings, how can one
differentiate between upper and lower case? I do not know if it is common in
Russian early-imprints to differentiate between upper and lower case in
signatures or not and because the letters are so similar in upper and lower
case, it is probably not the case that upper and lower case cyrillic letters
are used in signatures the way they are in printing in the Latin alphabet.
I hope someone more knowledgeable in this area could comment, but certainly
we need to allow for such a differentiation in other alphabets "without
conventional names for the letters" for which, it is being recommended,
signatures would be recorded as numerals.



As I have mentioned in my e-mailed comments last week, I think the best way
of rendering these signaturesis  in the original script and for my own uses
in our local database, I do that.  Since we catalog on OCLC, the Greek,
Hebrew and Russian alphabets are not available for insertion in the
bibliographic records, and there I am reliant on transliteration.  My
suggested revision would be: 



1) Give the letters in the original alphabet (as Bowers recommends)



2) Alternatively, where this is not possible, transliterate the letters
according to LC romanization.



In the draft text, I would also like to recommend that where the non-roman
letters are used as numerals that this would be indicated by a qualification
after the word signatures, viz.  Signatures (in Hebrew alphabetic
numeration)  or Signatures (in Old Church Slavonic alphabetic numeration)
and the signatures could then be recorded as the draft suggests by arabic
numeration: 1-11 (superscript 4) or whatever.



Just one final note: having read the question on signatures as it is
formulated for discussion in your attachment, I myself cannot understand how
a statement: Signatures (in Greek) : A-G (superscript 6) could be understood
as anything other than three gatherings of 6 leaves.  If the signatures are
in Greek (would it be better to say Greek alphabet), how could G be the
seventh letter?  Someone not familiar with the alphabets may need to get a
chart of  the alphabet, but I think one could more easily figure out what
the signatures are by transliterating the letters than by using numeric
notations.



  And personally, I do not see the need to write out the names of the
letters for Greek, Hebrew or Arabic even though these have been given
special treatment by using the names of the letters rather than the
transliteration of the letter or its numeric place in the alphabet.



Again, I hope others will comment on this, and I would like to learn the
result of any discussion at the midwinter meeting.



Thanks for your attention,



Joseph  Ross


Rare Books Cataloger


University of Notre Dame




At 04:34 PM 1/7/2005, Deborah J. Leslie wrote:



Discussion questions for the Bibliographic Standards Committee meeting in
Boston next week are now linked from the DCRM(B) draft main page, in a
Microsoft Word version and an HTML version.  A record of the discussion will
be contained in the minutes for this meeting; I'll make an announcement when
it's posted, a month or two after the meeting. DCRM-L subscribers not
attending the BSC meeting are encouraged to engage in an online discussion
of the questions or other concerns.



  

http://www.folger.edu/bsc/dcrb/dcrmtext.html
<http://www.folger.edu/bsc/dcrb/dcrmtext.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 <mailto:djleslie at folger.edu> 


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