[DCRM-L] BYU's 1st RDA/DCRMB record

[Noble, Richard]

Well, yes, I've been addressing the whole range of conventions by which
we're able to compress our notation to something readable at a glance and
easy to compare with other descriptions.  I simply cited "p." rhetorically,
as the ultimate point of absurdity to which these rules would reduce us. Nor
do I think that RDA does the "general" public any favors, in this particular
area: nobody talks this way.

I am, of course, very much in agreement with Karen Attar, that this
discussion actually concerns many more people than those in the tight little
world within which RDA cooked this up. Especially as a member of the BSA
Publications Committee, I am appalled at so gross a departure from
conventions that we share with many constituencies. I think it may be time
to take this discussion to exlibris-l and perhaps sharp-l. I would be happy
to draft a succinct and, I promise, dispassionate posting to exlibris-l,
specifically concerning the statement of extent, with reference also to
possible effects on signature and collation notes.

RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN UNIVERSITY
PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-3384 : RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU


On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Deborah J. Leslie <DJLeslie at folger.edu>wrote:

>  I tend to agree with Richard that the statement of extent horror in RDA
> goes well beyond not liking it. It is nearly unintelligible. Perhaps the
> rare book reason might be that we are committed to a more thorough statement
> of the physical artifact as the artifact expresses itself.
>
>
>
> Much more than spelling out "p.", it's the lack of square brackets that
> makes the statement nearly impossible to parse.
>
>
>
> *From:* dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] *On
> Behalf Of *Noble, Richard
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 25 August, 2010 23:57
>
> *To:* DCRM Revision Group List
> *Subject:* Re: [DCRM-L] BYU's 1st RDA/DCRMB record
>
>
>
> Re: "2 unnumbered pages, iv pages, 1 unnumbered page, iv-xvii pages, 3
> unnumbered pages, 348, that is, 332 pages, 6 unnumbered pages, 24 pages, 2
> unnumbered pages."
>
>
>
> It goes a bit beyond "I don't like it", though I'm glad for the moral
> support. It's really that people who don't care in the first place will be
> confirmed in their intention to pay no attention whatever to such a mess of
> verbiage; whereas the people who do care about these sometimes vital details
> and want us to communicate them clearly and succinctly will, in their
> justified frustration, think of us as perfect fools. Who on earth that deals
> with books at all is incapable of understanding "p."? For the love of Mike,
> these conventions are a triumph of sorts: simple and elegant tools that took
> us a long time to develop.
>
>
>
> I've engaged 25 groups of people at Rare Book School, so far, in the art of
> describing complex bibliographical phenomena as clearly and simply as
> possible, and in this respect RDA is obtuse and altogether retrograde. It's
> not simplification--it's patronizing. "The poor dears won't understand
> unless we spell it all out". Or is this the best way to make us stop
> accounting for this information? It *does* look bad; well then, don't do
> it at all.
>
>
>
> It may have been true that "one of the principles underlying DCRM [is that]
> the rare rules won’t depart from the general rules unless there is a rare
> materials reason to do so". We need to revisit just what that principle
> really means. Our proper work is dealing with the difficult cases, and we
> can't do our work properly with such clumsy tools. In the absence of that
> work, dealing with such materials as we do, FRBR will be a perfect sham.
>
>
>
> Sorry for the rant. I hadn't realized that despair comes in such small
> packages.
>
>
>
> RICHARD NOBLE : RARE BOOKS CATALOGER : JOHN HAY LIBRARY : BROWN UNIVERSITY
> PROVIDENCE, RI 02912 : 401-863-1187/FAX 863-3384 : RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU
>
>  On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 6:55 PM, Robert Maxwell <robert_maxwell at byu.edu>
> wrote:
>
> Some thoughts on Richard’s thoughts J
>
>
>
> 2 unnumbered pages, iv pages, 1 unnumbered page, iv-xvii pages, 3
> unnumbered pages, 348, that is, 332 pages, 6 unnumbered pages, 24 pages, 2
> unnumbered pages.
>
>
>
> I agree that this RDA result is awful and I don’t like it. However, again,
> there isn’t any rare materials reason why the general rule shouldn’t be
> applied to rare materials, and remember that that is one of the principals
> underlying DCRM (the rare rules won’t depart from the general rules unless
> there is a rare materials reason to do so). “I don’t like it” doesn’t cut it
> as a reason for differing. We will no doubt under our rare rules continue to
> insist that every leaf be counted, which will differ from RDA for rare
> materials reasons, but there is no rare reason that we can insist on
> different *conventions* for counting (e.g. “unnumbered” instead of
> bracketing) the pages we *do* choose to count.
>
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