[DCRM-L] RDA Follow-up to "Cataloging Defensively" Webinar re edition statements

[Deborah J. Leslie]

We had just such a situation today, with 1903 "ordinary" and "fine
paper" issues of As you like it. I put quotes around "ordinary" because
it is in fact a beautiful volume with t.p. in red, thick, untrimmed
paper, and large margins and font. The "fine paper" issue, however, is
not on paper at all, but on "Imperial Japan vellum" and has hand-colored
illustration and decorations. The two issues are the same size and
setting of type. 

 

Our solution: supply an edition statement to record for the fine copy:
[Imperial Japan vellum issue] with a supporting note, and a reciprocal
note, but without a supplied edition statement, on the other. 

 

This was easy, because we were able to take verbiage from the volume
itself. One of the reasons I have been reluctant to embrace supplied
edition statements is not just that it's polluting the function of the
250, but because of the difficulty of coming up with clear, succinct,
and accurate edition statements without help from the resource or from
bibliographers. A solution for rare English books might be to supply the
STC, Wing, or ESTC number in brackets as an edition statement, in
addition to its use in field 510.  I'm having a harder time thinking
about supplying edition statements for non-English books. 

 

Can we, as a community, keep our minds and options open as we
contemplate how to accommodate RDA? That is, I hope we can keep the
possibility of supplying edition statements, square-bracketed, in
English, on the table.  

 

From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On
Behalf Of Noble, Richard
Sent: Monday, 15 November, 2010 16:47
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] RDA Follow-up to "Cataloging Defensively" Webinar
re edition statements

 

The difficulty with the supplied edition statement is that it has to be
given in the language of the item--essentially in the form of such an
edition statement as the original might have contained. I may be
exaggerating the difficulty of doing so; but in many cases any sort of
conventional designation wouldn't really make sense. On the other hand,
I'm willing to be counselled otherwise--that any sort of statement one
can come up with will at least suffice to prevent a merge, and then you
can explain more fully in the note.

 

The whole question arose for me in the context of concealed editions,
which in many cases can't be prioritized, so that you need to name the
edition in an unfamiliar tongue, not just number it; and there are
languages in which the cognates of "edition" and equivalents of
"issue"have very slippery meanings--often only designating an invariant
impression that would not require a separate record. Am I looking for
the equivalent of serial "complexity" notes? A "bibliographical
relationship complexity" note that nevertheless is tagged in such a way
as to permit automatic merge-blocking. The real problem is the burying
of a fundamental manifestation distinction in the data structure
("concealed editions" means "concealed in the catalog") in practice;
combined with the difficulty of imitating an edition statement that
doesn't exist.


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



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