[DCRM-L] Oops on digraphs

[Robert Maxwell]

Going through the latest RDA draft I notice digraphs (as in Encyclopaedia Britannica) are used in the examples. I asked about it in my comments to the draft, don't know if I'll get a response.

Bob
________________________________________
From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Noble [Richard_Noble at brown.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 8:35 AM
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Oops on digraphs

Since the default AACR/LCRI/ISBD(A)* standard for transcription is "facilities available", and since the "MARC 8 character set" is still the industry standard for facilities that you ought to have, I tried to follow that up myself. I gather that this phrase now should be understood to point us to ISO Z39.47-1993(R2003). Or maybe not--it's rather elusive for a non-techie.

Anyway, has there been any follow-up with LC regarding whatever changes in their treatment of ligatures/digraphs might have led to the deletion of the sentence? (Perhaps no changes, so that the sentence was deleted as superfluous?) I note that "ligatures" is still in the LCRI index, pointing to 1.0E, but I haven't located any use of it other than that one, now gone. There is indeed nothing specific to "ligatures" in AAACR2.

I wonder if this isn't simply a slough of uncertainty on the road from ASCIIville to Unicotopia...

RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN UNIVERSITY
PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-2093 : RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU

*Which reads, anent ligatures: "The spelling of words taken from the publication is preserved, but ligatures and other contemporary forms of letters and diacritics may be transcribed in their current forms when the contemporary form is not available to the cataloguing agency." (ISBD(A) 0.6)

At 12/20/2007    12:14 PM, Deborah Leslie wrote:


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.)

The above excerpt is from a message I wrote to DCRM-L on 22 Feb. 2005, the first of a thread entitled ?Reconsidering digraphs.? I of course am the ?she? referred to and persist in my old tricks.

Richard Noble is right: we are now left with no AACR2 or LCRI guidance on what to do with digraphs.  For DCRM(B), we will use the rules there that correspond with the old LCRI. But for modern books? I want to tell my cataloger-in-training to separate an AE digraph in a Latin word, but on what grounds?