[DCRM-L] Recipes in RBGENR

[Deborah J. Leslie]

Thanks, Nina and Bob. This has put me in a pickle because I've been so
vocal about not mixing up subject and form/genre terms, although I
realize that a cookbook may be said to be about "cookery," and medical
formularies may be said to be about medicine. Because of the nature of
manuscripts and the needs of their users (that is, very few are known
item searches for their texts), we are using genre terms quite heavily.
A satisfactory solution to this predicament would give us form terms to
use. 

I wonder if that cluster of terms might be reconsidered in Genre Terms
when the team gets around to doing thorough evaluations? A major change
would be tricky, of course. A search on "cookbooks" as a genre/form term
in OCLC reveals about 250 book records, while "medical formularies"
brings up a mere 17. 

-----Original Message-----
From: nina at supermodern.com [mailto:nina at supermodern.com] 
Sent: Friday, 02 May, 2008 12:39
To: Deborah J. Leslie
Cc: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
Subject: RE: [DCRM-L] Recipes in RBGENR

I was out of town the past couple of days. Please excuse the delay in
replying.

Looking at the variety of responses so far, I'd have to agree with Bob
Maxwell, but I would suggest the paired approach if necessary:

650 _0 Medicine--Formulae, receipts, prescriptions

650 _0 Cookery, English [or France, etc., or simply "Cookery"]--Early
works to 1800

The LCSH scope note for Recipes reads, "Here are entered general recipe
books..." so it can't be used for individual recipes found within a
manuscript.

I think that is what I would do.

Nina

-----Original Message-----
From: DJLeslie at FOLGER.edu [mailto:DJLeslie at FOLGER.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 11:35 AM
To: nina at supermodern.com
Subject: [DCRM-L] Recipes in RBGENR 



Cookbooks / Medical formularies (rbgenr) vs. Recipes (aat)

The whole "receipt" issue in early modern materials is problematic, and
rbgenr has resolved it by not allowing use of either "receipts" or
"recipes," but in dividing between the cookery and medicinal receipts
(even though they don't often fall neatly into those categories.) 

So, okay, problematic, but workable; our manuscripts containing recipes
nearly always contain both kinds, so we end up applying paired genre
terms of "Cookbooks" and "Medical formularies." But now we need a genre
term for individual recipes that are contained within a manuscript
miscellany. Neither "cookbooks" nor "medical formularies" will do; both
indicate a book or collection of recipes rather than individual
instances of recipes within a different kind of book.

AAT has "Recipes," and we do use AAT for terms we need not contained in
the rbms controlled vocabularies, but I hesitate to do it in this case.
The two thesauri have different entirely approaches to the receipt
problem, and to pick and choose here seems to invite chaos. 

What would you do? 
__________________________ 
Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S. 
Head of Cataloging 
Folger Shakespeare Library 
201 East Capitol St., S.E. 
Washington, D.C. 20003 
202.675-0369 
djleslie at folger.edu | http://www.folger.edu