[DCRM-L] Printers' widows

Mon Sep 9 03:28:30 MDT 2013

Dear Kathie and Ted,

I know it has been some time since this topic was discussed but I thought you might be interested in hearing Richard Moore’s (Authority Control Team Manager at the British Library) take on this as the record was edited by the British Library. As he was away, he only just got back to me. You can find his comments below. 

Kind regards,
Iris

--------------------------------
Iris O'Brien
Early Printed Collections Cataloguing and Processing Manager
The British Library
St Pancras
96 Euston Road
London
NW1 2DB
Tel.: +44 (0)20 7412 7731 
E-mail: iris.o'brien at bl.uk

_____________________________________________
From: Moore, Richard 
Sent: 09 September 2013 08:42
To: O'Brien, Iris
Subject: RE: [DCRM-L] Printers' widows

Iris

Thanks for this. 

The order of subfields in “400 |a Bordelet, Marc, |d 1697-1754, |c widow of” does seem to have been transposed when we amended the record on 9th August this year. Aleph doesn’t re-order subfields automatically. We will fix this.

The 670 beginning “Par acte du 19 mai 1760” should be structured with the source in |a and the information found in |b; it’s also usual to render the information found into English. We will fix this too.

Of course you are correct to say that if an AACR2 heading has a valid RDA construction, it would not be changed when re-coded to RDA, just because new information is available.     

Our person is identified in the resource cited when the record was created as “la veuve Bordelet”, so at first sight she might fall under 3. in the LC-PCC-PS: If the widow of a printer is identified only by a surname and term such as “widow,” which would lead us to 9.2.2.9.3, and the form “Bordelet, |c Veuve”.

However, I think that “identified” can only mean what Kathie Coblentz wants it to mean. In that case, la veuve Bordelet is not identified only by a surname and term such as “widow,” but rather is identified only as the widow of the printer , so she falls under 2., and “Veuve Bordelet” is correct, following the LC-PCC-PS and 9.2.2.24.

The British Library creates and uses LC/NAF authorities, and is as bound by the LC-PCC-PS as any other NACO participant. 

Please feel free to copy or forward these comments if you think them useful.

Regards
Richard

_________________________
Richard Moore 
Authority Control Team Manager 
The British Library

Tel.: +44 (0)1937 546806                                
E-mail: richard.moore at bl.uk                            

_____________________________________________
From: O'Brien, Iris 
Sent: 29 August 2013 09:54
To: Moore, Richard
Subject: FW: [DCRM-L] Printers' widows

Dear Richard,

You might be interested in this discussion that is currently taking place on the DCRM-L e-mail list about an authority record for a printer’s widow. 

I thought that once you had an established heading and it was RDA compatible you wouldn’t change this completely just because you had some new information. 

Although the 400 “widow of “heading does seem odd. Could it be that the system automatically changed the sequence of sub-fields to put them in alphabetical order?

Kind regards,
Iris

-----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: 28 August 2013 18:55
To: DCRM Users' Group
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Printers' widows

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.
--------------------------------------------------------
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

---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Ted P Gemberling <tgemberl at uab.edu>
> To: DCRM Users' Group <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu>
> Cc:
> Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 17:43:22 +0000
> Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Printers' widows
>
> Kathie,
>
> I think you might be overanalyzing this. I think the LC-PCC PS is basically giving us permission to follow three different practices depending on how much information we have.
>
> 1.)    If we know the real name of the widow, we enter by that name.
>
> 2.)    If we know her husband’s full name but not hers, we set it up as a “phrase in direct order” (in other words, in the order we find it on the title page), with a reference with his name in inverted order, followed by “widow of.”
>
> 3.)    If we don’t know his full name, we set it up with the phrase in inverted order as, say, “Cuthbert, Widow,” with a reference in direct order as “Widow Cuthbert”
>
> I’ll admit I was a little surprised by #3, because I expected the use of direct order there, as in #2, also. Apparently they’re following RDA 9.2.2.9.3, “Persons Known by a Surname Only,”
>
> using inverted order. When you have that little information about someone, I suppose the surname is the most distinctive thing about them.  But since in both cases you’re including a 400 for the other form in the authority record, you are not really losing any information by choosing direct order or inverted order as the established form. A user will be able to retrieve the name by either “widow” or Cuthbert. That shows the importance of authority records.
>
> At any rate, I think it’s clear that the three scenarios are distinguished by how much information we have about the person. In #1, we have the widow’s full name; in #3, we only have her husband’s surname.
>
> I think you can read between the lines and assume that if we knew from reference sources what her husband’s given name was, we would use #2 even if that name wasn’t given on the title page.
>
> The more information we have, from any source, the more likely we are to use #1.
>
> Ted Gemberling
>
> UAB Lister Hill Library

From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Kathie Coblentz
Sent: 27 August 2013 16:06
To: dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
Subject: [DCRM-L] Printers' widows

I am having trouble with the LC-PCC PS for RDA 9.19.1.1, the section on "Printer's widows." (First question: shouldn't this be "Printers' widows"? Unless one printer has more than one widow who used his name?)

Basically, we find two forms in imprints. A widow might be called "The widow of [deceased printer's full name]," or she might be called "The widow so-and-so" [deceased printer's surname]. In either case, we may or may not know the widow's full name (that is, her forename(s) and possibly her maiden name), and in the second case, we may or may not know the deceased printer's full name.

 The PS apparently attempts to cover every situation. But given the way it is written, I am hard put to understand what I should do in some cases.

As the PS is written, there are three possibilities:

 "1. If a woman is referred to as a 'printer's widow' in the resource being cataloged and/or in reference sources and her personal name is known ..."

"2. If the widow of a printer is identified only as the widow of the printer ..."

"3. If the widow of a printer is identified only by a surname and term such as 'widow,' ..."

I'm confused by the use of "is referred to as" in Case 1, where Cases 2 and 3 have "is identified only as." The quotation marks around "printer's widow" in Case 1 also baffle me, because the example is in Latin, and the lady isn't even called the Latin equivalent of "printer's widow"; she is called the Latin equivalent of "the widow of Christoffel Ruremund."

I believe the author of the PS must have meant "is identified only" in Case 2 to be shorthand for "is referred to in the resource being cataloged and cannot not be further identified through reference sources," because otherwise, I don't see the difference between Case 1 and Case 2. In the examples for both, we have a term for "widow" and the full name of a printer. In Case 1, we know the lady's forename; in Case 2, we evidently do not.

But is this also true of Case 3, for which the example is "Printed by the Widow Cuthbert"? Would we also apply this if we knew the late husband's full name from reference sources, or perhaps if the lady is known to use it on other resources? ("Widow Cuthbert" and "widow of John Cuthbert"?) And if we know through reference sources that the widow Cuthbert's given name is Mary, is it still Case 3 that applies, or do we go back to Case 1?

 And what do we do if one and the same lady is the widow of two printers, and has been active in the trade successively under both their names? (This is not a hypothetical question.)

Thanks for your insights.

(I submitted this question originally last Friday, but it was not posted; I think I've corrected the problem with my e-mail that may have been responsible.)
--------------------------------------------------------
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

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