[DCRM-L] 046 - Incorrect or BCE dates

Wed Sep 9 09:17:09 MDT 2009

All her many other excellences aside, my congratulations to Deborah for
posting what I believe is the first footnoted message I have ever seen on
DCRB-L - or anywhere else, for that matter!

Eric Holzenberg

Director

The Grolier Club

47 East 60th Street

New York, NY  10022

phone: 212/838-6690 ext. 1

fax: 212/838-2445

e-mail:  <mailto:ejh at grolierclub.org> ejh at grolierclub.org

website:  <http://www.grolierclub.org/> www.grolierclub.org

From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On
Behalf Of Deborah J. Leslie
Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2009 11:11 AM
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] 046 - Incorrect or BCE dates

I'm grateful to John* for resurrecting this issue. I remember at the time
being disappointed in the result, because the MARBI proposal that John Attig
and I wrote requested a new date type, 'x', with the incorrect and the
correct dates recorded in the fixed fields. The problem, of course, was that
if there was an incorrect date involving multiple dates, the fixed fields
could not be used. In retrospect, using field 046 (which had been already
defined as field for additional date coding) was a good choice. At the time,
however, the utility and local system I was using didn't index 046, so it
seemed like a defeat and so never publicized the change or recommended its
use.

I plan to implement use of 046 at the Folger; I don't know yet if our
Voyager can or does index it, but it's time to take my own medicine: don't
make cataloging decisions based on limitations of current systems. What is
needed is not keyword indexing of the 046, but date indexing. I echo John in
hearing how other people's local systems treat dates in 046. 

__________________________ 
Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S. 
RBMS Chair 2009-2010 | 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 <http://www.folger.edu/>  

*For those who don't know, John Lancaster was on the original RBMS
[Bibliographical] Standards Committee and instrumental as the committee
first wrote Genre Terms and developed from there. He is retired from Amherst
College and is doing some volunteer rare book cataloging, and so is
immersing himself in DCRM(B). We are lucky to have him on board.

From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On
Behalf Of John Lancaster
Sent: Wednesday, 09 September, 2009 08:56
To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
Subject: [DCRM-L] 046 - Incorrect or BCE dates

I've only recently become aware, as a result of conversations with Glenn
Patton of OCLC and Deborah Leslie of the Folger,  of the availability of the
046 field for the recording (and in OCLC at least, indexing) of incorrect
dates of publication (e.g. the date on the piece is printed as 1599, but the
work was actually published in 1610) and B.C.E. dates (as well as other
dates of perhaps less interest to this community).

Although the field has clearly been around for some time, I and others I
have been in touch with have been either unaware of it, or only dimly aware,
and in any case not using it.  Deborah has suggested that a note about it
might be of general interest.

OCLC's implementation is set out in Bibliographic Formats and Standards:

http://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/0xx/046.shtm

The full MARC 21 description can be seen here:
http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd046.html or, if you prefer the
concise form, here: http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/concise/bd046.html

The original MARBI approval goes back more than 10 years:
http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/1998/98-07.html  The most recent discussions
of expansion were in 2002, with links backward:

http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2002/2002-03.html

I'd be curious to know whether the field is indexed in local systems, and if
it's in general use.  I know I'll be using it from now on.

Thanks.

--

John Lancaster (jlancaster at amherst.edu)

P.O. Box 775

Williamsburg, MA 01096-0775

413-268-7679

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