[DCRM-L] Printers' widows

[Ted P Gemberling]

Kathie, 
I suppose the problem is that the British Library isn't really bound by the LC-PCC PS. I looked at RDA itself, and 9.2.2.24 (Phrase Containing the Name of Another Person) appears to mandate setting it up as no2009079894 does it, Veuve Bordelet. There is no mention of what you would do if you have more information from reference sources. 

I suppose one argument someone could make against the priority of the person's real name is that people looking for old books would be more likely to know the person by the phrases on the title pages than by her real name, unless they happened to have read the reference sources. That's how the rule seems to treat the matter. 

If, in addition to being her husband's successor as a printer or bookseller, she also published her own works under her own name, it seems that would be an argument for a "separate bibliographic identity" that called for a separate authority record. Veuve Bordelet and Marie-Jeanne Bordelet might be separate identities. I don't know if I like that, but it's just something worth considering. 

At the very least, though, the 400 Bordelet, Marc, ǂc widow of ǂd 1697?-1754, can't be right. As Marc's dates, they belong after his name rather than after "widow of." 

Ted Gemberling

----Original Message-----
From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Ted P Gemberling
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 5:58 PM
To: DCRM Users' Group
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Printers' widows

Kathie, 
I think you're right. The LC-PCC PS seems clearly to mandate what you are saying. 
As for the 400 with the husband's dates, wouldn't the correct order of subfields be this if we were to retain it?

Bordelet, Marc, ǂd 1697?-1754, ǂc widow of

I don't know if that's legal or not, but certainly it can't be in the form it currently is on the record. I notice the cataloger left a comma after the dates, as if he/she were expecting a subfield c to follow. 

Maybe we should report these problems to the PCC list at some point.  
Ted Gemberling

-----Original Message-----
From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Kathie Coblentz
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 4:17 PM
To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Printers' widows

Thanks to Ted for the helpful reply, and thanks to Robert Maxwell for explaining that the "printers' widows" clause came originally from the LCRI (in 2002), and was written by the BSC. (It has been re-written for the LC-PCC PS, with a considerable loss of clarity.)

The concrete example that led to my overanalysis of the PS is this:

lccn # no2009079894, Veuve Bordelet, -1773.

This NAR was originally created under AACR 2 in this form (in 2009), and has recently been updated  by the British Library.

When the record was originally created, no information was provided about Mme. Bordelet's personal name, though it was readily available in the only source cited, the CERL online thesaurus, which was last changed in 2004 and gives her maiden name (Marie-Jeanne Largentier) as well as full details of her two marriages to printers.

The record was updated earlier this year in the Great Wave of Change to convert the death date from d. 1773 to "-1773," but was otherwise untouched from its creation until August 9, 2013. On that date the BL added a 670 citing the wonderful title of a 1760 legal document that gives us her maiden name and the full names of her two husbands, as well as the names of her daughter by her first marriage and her son-in-law (she was apparently in bankruptcy and the document relates to the identification of her debts).

Armed with that information, the BL cataloger added 400s from her maiden name and her two married names. One existing 400 was changed (surely erroneously): "Bordelet, Marc,1697?-1754, widow of" has become "Bordelet, Marc, widow of  1697?-1754" (the husband's dates have no place here).

But it seems that both under AACR 2/LCRI and RDA/LC-PCC PSS, the preferred form of her name should be her personal name, and specifically the latest form of her personal name, the name she bore in her second marriage: Bordelet, Marie-Jeanne. (See RDA 9.2.2.7 for the "change of name" guidelines.)

Am I thinking clearly here? Thanks for your input.
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Kathie Coblentz, Rare Materials Cataloger Collections Strategy/Special Formats Processing The New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, Room 313 New York, NY  10018 kathiecoblentz at nypl.org My opinions, not NYPL's