[DCRM-L] hand coloring and new descriptions

[Allison Jai O'Dell]

Does everyone think <bf:relatedInstance
<http://bibframe.org/vocab/relatedInstance.html>> would allow those
institutions who want to create a new description for a certain issue or
variation to do so, and adequately relate this description to the whole
edition?

Perhaps MARC is influencing our desire to even make a decision here.  It
sounds like we're all in agreement that some
situations/institutions/resources/use cases would want a new description,
and some wouldn't.  ...Can we allow for both?


Allison

On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Noble, Richard <richard_noble at brown.edu>
wrote:

> [Gmail "send" button damnably close to font choice--click and groan.
> Trying again]
>
> ​​
>
> I agree absolutely with John Lancaster *in principle*, and I think the
> principle is applicable to a focused bibliographical database--ESTC, for
> instance. Our 990-pound gorilla of a utility, the WorldCat, is another
> context altogether, and the one in which most of us have no choice but to
> do our work.
>
>
>
> Distinctions of issue at the level of colored/uncolored, alternate
> dedications, partial re-settings, variations in inserted matter that may or
> may not have mattered to the producers, c19 variant binding issues--none of
> these can be maintained without well-informed cataloger judgment, which is
> rarely available and infrequently applied, above all and most frequently in
> copy cataloging, which has a definite bias towards one set of the choices
> among "fast/cheap/good". At the *item* level--the basic scholarly
> research level--all is simply chaos: God only knows what lies behind a
> holdings symbol attached to a record, no matter how specific that record
> may be, when the cataloger is constrained to employ the crudest possible
> matching protocols.
>
>
>
> I personally strive to maintain, at least, the distinction between
> "concealed" editions, where MARC at least gives us the 250 field at the
> basic matching level (don't know about Bibframe--not their highest
> priority, I'd bet). Beyond that, however, there's practically no way to
> evade the dreaded merge. Besides, when I discover a concealed edition for
> what had been treated as a single manifestation and has attracted a fair
> number of holdings (quite possibly in a record which is itself a merger of
> multiple, often very sketchy records that may conflate some rather
> obviously variant editions), I have *no idea* which of those holdings
> represent one edition or the other. (On the other hand, some records
> represent a false distinction of issue where there is only variation in
> state of one or a few components of the edition--we've all seen it all
> after the first 10,000 or so books. See for example OCLC #37043635.)
>
>
> I cannot, in this situation, legitimately refashion an existing record
> absent the ability to assess each copy and reassign the holdings. In such
> cases I mercilessly enhance the record, and add a note on the order of
> "This record represents two editions, printed from entirely different
> settings of type" (the wording is redundant, but few people know what heck
> an "edition" is, so I lend the others a clue), and provide a few diagnostic
> details and, if I can, a bit of history by way of explanation. A researcher
> is then alerted to the fact that individual copies need to be censused.
> (See for example OCLC #13455452).
>
> The colored/uncolored issues fit very well into this category, which
> requires being realistic about what the facilities allow you to do
> effectively. Those who care can then make a local note to indicate which
> issue is in hand (I do wish that the WorldCat would allow for annotated
> holdings, which function very well indeed in ESTC). *But*--this is a
> losing battle, if my own experience is representative. At best, I'm still
> considered useful for the ability to do this, or at least tolerated--I'm
> a "legacy", a term less and less frequently used in libraries in its good
> sense. Bibliography itself is such a legacy.
>
> If we're talking about records at the institutional level, I agree that
> the stated DCRM(B) principle is correct; but at the level of rules designed
> to govern common practice in large shared databases, I think we need to
> accommodate reality and leave stones on the path behind us, not crumbs, on
> our way into the woods.
>
> RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY
> BROWN UNIVERSITY  ::  PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912  ::  401-863-1187
> <Richard_Noble at Br <RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU>own.edu>
>
>
>> On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 7:37 PM, JOHN LANCASTER <jjlancaster at me.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> From DCRM(B) (which was based on a substantial amount of scholarly
>>> discussion, not least Tanselle’s seminal paper, “The bibliographical
>>> concepts of issue and state” (PBSA 69 (1975), 17-66, and the responses to
>>> it over the years):
>>>
>>>  Issue
>>>
>>> A group of published copies which constitutes a consciously planned
>>> publishing unit, distinguishable from other groups of published copies by
>>> one or more differences designed expressly to identify the group as a
>>> discrete unit.
>>>
>>> It seems pretty clear that versions of a printing designed to sell for
>>> different prices, with different physical characteristics, constitute
>>> different issues, whether those differences are in the illustrations, the
>>> quality or size of paper, or the quality of binding, to name a few common
>>> ones.  Both bookseller and purchaser would be quite clear which group of
>>> copies they were dealing with in any given transaction, and would not
>>> likely consider them the same.
>>>
>>> Appendix E states:
>>>
>>> As a default approach, the rules contained in DCRM(B) assume that a
>>> separate bibliographic record will be created for each bibliographic
>>> variant that represents what is referred to as an "edition" in AACR2
>>> and an "issue" in bibliographic scholarship.
>>>
>>> The fact that it may be difficult to determine for a specific copy
>>> whether that copy was issued colored or not, does not invalidate the
>>> fundamental distinction between the types of copies as issued.
>>>
>>> As to confusing researchers, I guess it depends on the researcher - if
>>> one is interested in the physical characteristics, publication conditions,
>>> and the like, it would be more confusing to have all the copies of both
>>> versions lumped together as holdings on a single record, and to have to
>>> sort them out by querying individual libraries (even if only by consulting
>>> each of their on-line catalogues).
>>>
>>> John Lancaster
>>>
>>>
>>>
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