[DCRM-L] Cataloging of single leaves

[Laurence S. Creider]

I like the approach of treating single leaves as items in their own right
and not as imperfect copies of the volume from which they come.  I think
there is a fundamental difference between a leaf, particularly an
unaccompanied sample leaf, and a volume which has gatherings A-F but is
missing G-M.

One might argue that a single leaf is no longer an item of a manifestation
of a particular expression, even if there is a part-whole relationship
between leaf and the complete item.  Users are generally not looking to a
single leaf to provide the intellectual content of a WEMI.  The single
printed leaf is usually more important for what it demonstrates of its
production (typeface, paper, watermark, number of lines, etc.) rather than
the intellectual content.   Of course, this is not necessarily the case
for manuscript fragments, where the fragment may important for
establishing a text.  In the final analysis, I believe it is
user-unfriendly to catalog the entire source work/volume and then say,
"Sorry, we only have one page."  The situation is like having one issue of
a serial with a long run and cataloging the whole serial.

I think that we should come up with some guidelines for treating these
beasties, and the Lenore has given us a good start.  One could describe
the item with a supplied title, either Fragment of ... or Detached leaf
from ...., with the imprint information from the source volume, and
physical description of the leaf itself.

We would need to make a basic decision about whether we should create a
generic record for leaves from a particular
manifestation and opt for the plural in all cases, assuming that others
may add local information to the record or whether to describe each leaf
as a unique item, as a manuscript.  Connected with this decision would be
one about whether to record the physical description of a particular leaf
or a description of 1 leaf (or however many are involved) in general
terms, leaving things like rubrication to a local note.

I particularly like Lenore's provision of a uniform title for the source
work or expression, although I would suggest adding a subfield k
Selections at the end of the title, following AACR2/r 25.6B3.  One cannot
use "Fragments" in the uniform title, since that term seems to be limited
to works in a single form (25.10A).

Using a solution that works with a particular opac and particularly one
that involves such varying displays as the Marc Holding Format is asking
for maintenance headaches when a new system is adopted, let alone when we
move from MARC to other communication and/or display formats.

If anyone is still with me on this, I suggest that the chair of the BSC
appoint a TF to come up with recommendations for cataloging single leaves.
 A number of people with experience have already contributed and TFs need
not be limited to committee members.  A further suggestion is that a
survey of current practice and discussion of major issues would make for a
great journal article for someone who needs to publish something.

Larry

Laurence S. Creider
Special Collections Librarian
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM  88003
Work: 575-646-7227
Fax: 575-646-7477
lcreider at lib.nmsu.edu

On Tue, April 6, 2010 12:32 pm, Noble, Richard wrote:
> Well, it's really an incomplete item, not an incomplete manifestation
(which is a class, the items being the individuals of the class). I've
never liked this situation either, and there's no excuse for a such
rules-based disservice to our patrons. A lamb chop is not a lamb.
>
>
>
> Might one approach the problem by declaring, at the outset, that a
fragmentary copy is not merely imperfect, but a different thing
> altogether, which should be described as such? We don't treat the leaf
in a leaf-book as a copy (I hope), and what we're talking about is
leaf-books without a book--ignoble fragments. (Treating a fragment as an
imperfect copy has an analogue in the wrong-headed LC policy of
> cataloging reformatted manifestations by way of describing the original
and adding a note-fine, or at least workable for a single institution,
perhaps, but a perfect misery in a union database like the WorldCat.)
>
>
>
> Is this something that Bib Standards might want to consider? I've a
sense that it may not have been a burning issue in the past, because
many libraries would have dealt with fragments in-house only; but add
your leaf as a holding to the OCLC master record for the book and it
becomes everybody's problem. In any case, I don't think FRBR, as it
stands, comes to our rescue, though the scattered fragments of
> individual books do constitute a roughly definable class, a sort of
post-production manifestation of which any one fragment is an instance.
>
>