[DCRM-L] RBMS PS Review Q2: Transcription

[Mascaro, Michelle]

The second round of discussion for RBMS PS review will focus on transcription (RDA 1.7). Due to the importance that transcription plays in rare materials cataloging, the RBMS PSs for 1.7 provide extensive guidance that is not in RDA.

As it was in DCRM, the default transcription approach in the RBMS PS is to normalize punctuation and capitalization based on textual use.  The majority of instructions for normalizing punctuation, transcribing early letters forms, etc. from DCRM have been carried over into the RBMS PS.

A few notable exceptions (some due to changes in scholarship since DCRM was first written) are

*         RBMS PS specify retaining internal marks of punctuation appearing within roman numerals.

*         New provision (under RDA 1.7.4) to, as an optional addition, add diacritical marks with the pattern of usage in the text, when converting uppercase to lowercase.

*         The transcription 'vv' is now treated like any other approximated character.  Both 'vv' and 'rv' are transcribed as 'w', if 'w' is the intended character.

*         Ellipses in the source are omitted in the transcription or transcribed as is. They are no longer replaced by "--".  If an ellipsis is transcribed, a clarifying note stating the ellipsis on the piece is required.



The RBMS PS also includes a provision to apply nonnormalized transcription, and transcribe punctuation and capitalization as it appears on the source, when considered important.  Within the nonnormalized transcription guidelines, exceptions are made to follow the regular RBMS PS transcription guidelines for square brackets, virgules, and punctuation representing line endings, for various reasons. Catalogers that elect to apply nonnormalized transcription are asked to consistently apply all relevant guidelines throughout the description.  This means that if a cataloger wishes to transcribe punctuation as it appears on the source they would also have to transcribe capitalization as is as well.



Thoughts and comments on the proposed default approach to transcription in the RBMS PS and the inclusion of nonnormalized transcription options, are solicited.  I am particularly interested in thoughts about the requirement to transcribe both capitalization and punctuation as it appears from the source under nonnormalized transcription.



Attached is the draft RBMS PS for 1.7.  As a reminder, the PS were written to be read in tandem with the RDA proper instruction they correspond to, and consequentially some individual PSs may not make sense without referring to the original RDA instruction.



I will also be posting a followup question regarding the transcription of inaccuracies next week, hopefully after we have had some discussion on the basics.



Best,

Michelle Mascaro
Head, Special Collections Metadata
University of California, San Diego
(858) 534-6759
mmascaro at ucsd.edu

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