[DCRM-L] RDA-acceptable: Indicating misprints

[Deborah J. Leslie]

Very quickly, I'll try to give the basic reasons. I think there are summaries elsewhere, but I can't lay my hand on them just now.


1.       Misprints happen a great deal more frequently in early printed materials than in later ones. Their greater frequency is enough to make this a rare materials issue.

2.      Although corrections may be put into notes, default displays in many libraries' opacs are not geared toward the users of rare materials; such notes may not even appear on the same screen as the misprint. It is important for users of rare materials to easily identify whether a typo was present on the resource or introduced by the cataloger.

3.      Although added title access can be made for misprints in the title proper, that doesn't apply to misprints in the imprint.

4.      Misprints in imprints are particularly pernicious, because place and date of publication are frequently used for identification.

5.      Separating corrections from the errors is okay if your context is a bibliographic record tied together in its MARC format, more or less. But elements from our bib records are even now being harvested and used in other contexts, such as to name a print in an image database. A whole page of notes isn't going to help the users of that database.

6.      Finally, given the early and ongoing emphasis about RDA being appropriate for all sorts of constituencies, not just for library bibliographic records, and about the re-use and re-purposing of data, and of the conceptual structure of breaking down things into their elements, I think the JSC made a grave philosophical error to not allow correction of misprints to appear in the element in which the misprint occurs. I hope they reconsider, to at least make it an option. But in the meantime, the users of our catalogs are poorly served by this disconnection.


Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S. | Head of Cataloging, Folger Shakespeare Library | 201 East Capitol St., S.E. | Washington, D.C. 20003
djleslie at folger.edu<mailto:djleslie at folger.edu> | 202.675-0369 | http://www.folger.edu<http://www.folger.edu/>



From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Allison Jai O'Dell
Sent: Monday, 06 August 2012 16:27
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] RDA-acceptable: Indicating misprints

Actually, even in my given example, there's no reason why an alternate title field shouldn't serve our purposes.


-A
On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 4:22 PM, Allison Jai O'Dell <ajodell at gmail.com<mailto:ajodell at gmail.com>> wrote:
One example jumps to mind -- if a particular issue has a misprint, but other issues of the same edition are corrected or somehow different.  In this instance, a researcher might be searching under a different phrase for the title/edition.  (And this sort of a thing is more common in the rare materials world.)

However, I agree with you that adding a correction for the sake of indicating that one is transcribing the title accurately is counter to RDA rules and logic, and is in some ways counter to the spirit of DCRM that favors exact transcriptions.

Personally, I would prefer corrections to be given either at the end of the transcribed title, or in an additional title field, so as to maintain the transcribed title as a phrase.



- Allison


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