[DCRM-L] Collated & Perfect

[Karen.Attar at london.ac.uk]

Dear all,

Do all the library management systems accommodate notes which are
visible on the staff interface only?  If this would satisfy legal
requirements, a staff-only field seems a good place to put such a note:
it looks somewhat cryptic for library users and does not tell them much
(assuming that they completeness is the default when no imperfection is
recorded).

I know nothing about OCLC; certainly such fields (a) are possible on
Innopac and (b) do not get uploaded to COPAC (the modest British OCLC
equivalent).

Dr Karen Attar
Rare Books Librarian
Senate House Library
University of London 
Senate House
Malet Street
London
WC1E 7HU 
Tel. 020 7862 8477


-----Original Message-----
From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On
Behalf Of Deborah J. Leslie
Sent: 14 July 2007 22:02
Cc: DCRM-L
Subject: [DCRM-L] Collated & Perfect

At ALA annual this year, RBMS  co-sponsored a program with MAGERT on
library map security. One of the speakers was Smiley's prosecuting
attorney, who stated that a catalog record that didn't mention
imperfections wouldn't stand up in court as evidence that it had no
imperfections at the time it was cataloged; a defense attorney would
merely need to find a few examples of cataloging that failed to mention
existing imperfections at the time of cataloging. 

It occurred to me that for cataloging rare materials, it might be worth
considering incorporating the old "collated & perfect" (sometimes
abbreviated "c.&p.") note that booksellers and collectors used to pencil
into books or include in descriptions. I'm imagining something like
this, where a note on the state of the volume's completeness would come
at the front of all copy-specific notes:

590 Folger copy: C.&p. DJL 20070714. Bound in <...> 

Thoughts? 

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