[DCRM-L] Editorial conventions WAS RE: RBMS PS review Q4: Extent of text

[Jennifer K NELSON]

I'm going to chime in and agree with Deborah about there being a rare
materials reason for "sic". In the manuscript and hand press era there is
ample opportunity for error in terms of turned letters, scribal mistakes,
to name only two examples. I believe it is of great value to researchers to
be able to ascertain from the record that an error appears as such on the
page, and that it did not originate from the cataloger.

On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 9:15 AM, Deborah J. Leslie <DJLeslie at folger.edu>
wrote:

> I know, Bob. I was hoping that by pointing this out to someone, the RSC
> would suddenly come to their collective senses. <sigh> I still hold out
> hope that the whole 'unnumbered' nonsense for the extent will be
> jettisoned.
>
>
>
> -       There is *no* rare materials reason to insist on 'i.e.' instead
> of 'that is'
>
> -       There *is* a rare materials reason for 'sic'. For reasons that
> have been elaborated elsewhere, we need a way to indicate original spelling
> in transcribed fields within the field itself. In most cases, an
> interpolated '[that is]' with the correction is fine, but for the times
> when it isn't, we need a 'sic' or equivalent, and there is no English
> equivalent.
>
> -       There *is* a rare materials reason for square brackets in
> statements of extent.
>
>
>
>
>
> Deborah J. Leslie | Folger Shakespeare Library | djleslie at folger.edu |
>
>
>
> *From:* DCRM-L [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] *On Behalf Of *Robert
> Maxwell
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 17 April, 2018 19:38
> *To:* DCRM Users' Group
> *Subject:* Re: [DCRM-L] Editorial conventions WAS RE: RBMS PS review Q4:
> Extent of text
>
>
>
> I agree with you, Deborah, but the RDA ship has sailed, so issue isn’t why
> i.e. and brackets and sic should be fine and that people actually do
> understand the conventions. The issue—at least if we’re going to continue
> to operate under the basic principle we all agreed on when we first started
> revising DCRB—is whether there is a good rare materials reason to depart
> from the current general rules (RDA) on any of these points.
>
>
>
> Bob
>
>
>
> Robert L. Maxwell
> Ancient Languages and Special Collections Librarian
> 6728 Harold B. Lee Library
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> (801)422-5568
>
>
>
> *From:* DCRM-L <dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu> *On Behalf Of *Deborah J.
> Leslie
> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 17, 2018 5:28 PM
> *To:* DCRM Users' Group <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu>
> *Subject:* [DCRM-L] Editorial conventions WAS RE: RBMS PS review Q4:
> Extent of text
>
>
>
> Coming late to this discussion …
>
>
>
> It is a complete mystery to me why RDA decided to depart so radically from
> standard editorial conventions. The argument that "users don't understand
> …" has no legs when the use of square brackets, [sic], i.e., e.g., and
> ellipses are standard editorial conventions in wide and constant use. Open
> just about any recent style manual to confirm.
>
>
>
> Examples of quoted text in the Washington Post of the last few days (exact
> copy-and-paste)—no comments, please, on the incendiary nature of some of
> the quotes:
>
>
>
> “Somehow, I read and misconstrued both the Rockefeller and Rothchild [sic]
> theories,”
>
> “Rothschilds contro[l] the climate
>
> “[I]t isn’t clear the Trump administration
>
> the percentage of women receiving timely prenatal care (i.e., 70.8 percent)
>
> disproportionate number of red states (e.g., Montana, North Dakota,
> Indiana)
>
> and the searing lesson … of the Iraq War
>
>
>
> Deborah J. Leslie | Folger Shakespeare Library | djleslie at folger.edu |
>
>
>
> *From:* DCRM-L [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu
> <dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu>] *On Behalf Of *Kathie Coblentz
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 03 April, 2018 12:48
> *To:* dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu
> *Subject:* Re: [DCRM-L] RBMS PS review Q4: Extent of text
>
>
>
> 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
> <https://maps.google.com/?q=476+5th+Avenue,+Room+313,+New+York,+NY+10018&entry=gmail&source=g>
>
> 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>
>
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Jennifer K. Nelson
Reference Librarian
The Robbins Collection
UC Berkeley School of Law
Berkeley CA 94720
jnelson at law.berkeley.edu
(510) 643-9709
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/the-robbins-collection/
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