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

[Noble, Richard]

I agree 100% with Deborah. In the final analysis, the 250 is an important
carrier of information regarding identification and distinction of
manifestations. Its content and its very presence justify the creation of a
separate record, which cannot be done reliably at the 5XX level when the
preceding levels are identical, or perhaps only even nearly identical, given
OCLC's wide tolerances in the matching protocols for statements of extent--a
case where descriptive ambiguity leads to conflation.* At base, the greater
precision of transcription and physical description in the dcrm's is to
support the identification of entities and provide evidence to account for
their relationships. What we're talking about is the very basic problem of
making evidence evident, and incorporating it into the database in such a
way that the relationships are properly embodied in the structure of the
records.

*Yes, I know that absence of an edition statement does not in itself justify
creation of a new OCLC record, all other things being equal. But "all other
things" may amount to very little indeed.

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 Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 5:49 PM, Deborah J. Leslie <DJLeslie at folger.edu>wrote:

>  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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