[DCRM-L] RBMS PS review Q4: Extent of text

[Kathie Coblentz]

I completely agree with Bob Maxwell on "i.e.," and I have no problems using
"that is" instead. (It never ceases to surprise me how many educated people
use "i.e." when they mean "e.g.," and vice versa. Or "the other way
around," I suppose I should say.)

However, "sic" is awfully hard to replace with an English word or concise
phrase. Of course RDA gospel calls for omitting it altogether in
transcribing "an element as it appears on the source," and I can go along
with that, as long as there is a note (and/or other title entry)
"correcting the inaccuracy," though in the case of rare materials, I would
not limit that to "if considered important for identification or access."

But in quoted material from other sources, there is no other good way to
call attention to typos, factual errors or other unexpected variations in
the data.

This doesn't really apply to the discussion of Extent of text, since I
can't imagine using "sic" there for any reason, but it might be worth
reflecting on for the rest of the catalog record.

Oh, and for what it's worth: for rare materials, I'm completely on board
with using the square brackets convention instead of "unnumbered," for the
sake of everyone's sanity. I wish RDA would drop "unnumbered" altogether.
Anyone who cares about the distinction between pages with page numbers on
them and pages with no page numbers on them, understands the bracketing
convention. As for the rest, how many noncatalogers even know what
"unnumbered pages" means?

--------------------------------------------------------
*Kathie Coblentz | The New York Public Library*
*Rare Materials Cataloger*

Special Collections/Special Formats Processing

*Stephen A. Schwarzman Building*476 5th Avenue, Room 313, New York, NY 10018
kathiecoblentz at nypl.org

My opinions, not NYPL's




>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Robert Maxwell <robert_maxwell at byu.edu>
> To: "DCRM Users' Group" <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu>
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2018 16:05:50 +0000
> Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] RBMS PS review Q4: Extent of text
>
> I can just about accept the argument that there is a rare reason for
> departing from RDA extent instructions in the matter of bracketing vs.
> “unnumbered”—rare book extent statements are much more likely than other
> types of extent statements to need to record unnumbered sequences.
>
>
>
> However, I do not accept the argument that rare extent statements should
> continue to use “i.e.” and “sic” when the rest of RDA practice does not. In
> the first place, if 0.4.3.7 justified this it would have justified it for
> RDA as a whole—the rare materials community is not the only one that
> “commonly used” these forms, *all* communities commonly used these forms
> before RDA came along and this was not thought to be a good reason to
> refuse to go along with the new instruction. So that argument simply won’t
> wash, for me at least. There is no compelling rare materials reason in
> those cases why the rare rules should depart from the general RDA rules.
>
>
>
> Bob
>
>
>
> Robert L. Maxwell
> Ancient Languages and Special Collections Librarian
> 6728 Harold B. Lee Library
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> (801)422-5568 <(801)%20422-5568>
>
>
>
>
>
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