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

[Deborah J. Leslie]

We can all do something informal. But it needn't (and shouldn't) be an
either/or audience for cataloging. You're cataloging for everyone who
must use those records for whatever reason, including buying material,
managing collections, creating exhibitions, answering reference
questions, and sitting in your reading room.   

-----Original Message-----
From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On
Behalf Of Bryan, Anna
Sent: Friday, 27 August, 2010 06:41
To: 'DCRM Revision Group List'
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] BYU's 1st RDA/DCRMB record

Has anyone asked the users of our records how they find the bracketing
and abbreviations?  Have any studies been done?  Are our scholarly users
of say, my generation (i.e. fifties and later) comfortable with them
because we grew up on catalog cards, where compression was crucial,
while those in their 20s find them cryptic and not useful?

As for the complaint of more keying, I use macros and templates for
repetitive keying.  Setting up a macro for "unnumbered pages" and
"pages" is not very onerous.

But I am curious:  have rare book catalogers actually *asked* patrons of
various generations what works best for them?  I'm not cataloging for
other catalogers.  I'm cataloging for patrons, myself.

Anna Bryan
Sr. Cataloger
Library of Congress

I speak only for myself (obviously). 

-----Original Message-----
From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On
Behalf Of Robert Maxwell
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2010 3:42 PM
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] BYU's 1st RDA/DCRMB record

-----Original Message-----
From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On
Behalf Of John Attig
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2010 1:07 PM
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] BYU's 1st RDA/DCRMB record

John says:  

In this sense, I think I disagree with Bob's statement that there is no
rare book reason to depart from a descriptive convention.  We are
working within a scholarly community of users who do understand certain
descriptive conventions and who would actually find our current Extent
statements easier to interpret than the proposed RDA conventions.  It
seems to me that this is a sufficient justification for us to consider
developing alternative instructions (which will miraculously turn out to
look much like the current DCRM(B) rules!) for recording the extent of
rare materials.

Bob say:

This may be true in the context of a very few catalogs such as the
Folger's. This is not true in the context of most catalogs nowadays.
DCRMB records coexist with general records and we can't assume that only
the scholarly community of users will encounter and use our records.


Robert L. Maxwell
Head, Special Collections and Formats Catalog Dept.
6728 Harold B. Lee Library
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801)422-5568