[DCRM-L] Production method

[Andrews, Susan]

Hi everyone,
  Am I the only one in the rare book cataloguing community who has a problem with the term "holograph"?
I can see the term's use in specialized databases and institutions dealing with manuscripts all day long exclusively, but as a cataloguer who catalogues a few manuscript books a year, and puts my records into a big database of millions of records for mostly published material, I have trouble with this term.

RDA 3.9.1.3 "Recording Production Method"  gives good user-friendly terms for most methods of production, but has a big Exception for manuscripts.
  Anything  "handwritten by the person or persons responsible for the work or works" must use the term "holograph"
  Other handwritten items use the term "manuscript".

Both our staff and our users are usually completely unfamiliar with the term "holograph".

To me it is illogical that a method of production be tied to who is doing the producing.   Why do we need two terms?  Isn't "manuscript" good enough?  Can't the rest of the description and the relationship designators fill the need to convey who did the handwriting?

I must be missing something here, so please enlighten me!

Sue.

*******************************************
Sue Andrews
Principal Cataloguer
University of British Columbia Library
2198 Health Sciences Mall, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z3
Tel. 604-822-4995  Email: susan.andrews at ubc.ca



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserver.lib.byu.edu/pipermail/dcrm-l/attachments/20180404/ad565ada/attachment.html>