[DCRM-L] "Dummy..." at start of notes in old ESTC records?

[Erin Blake]

Thanks, John. Good to have confirmation that there was a reason, and that
it is no longer applicable.

Here's hoping that I remember to search DCRM-L archives the next time a
researcher asks.

Best,

Erin.

-----------------------
Erin Blake, Ph.D.  |  Senior Cataloger  |  Folger Shakespeare Library  |
201 E. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC, 20003  |  eblake at folger.edu  |
office tel. +1 202-675-0323  |  www.folger.edu


On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 9:40 PM JOHN LANCASTER <jjlancaster at me.com> wrote:

> Information from Christine Straitt at ESTC:
>
> In the late 1990s, she was told that they were inserted for tracking
> purposes by the BL.  There were similar ones from EEBO, encountered while
> she was working on the Huntington Wing team from 10/1997 through 5/1999.
> They were mostly in unedited UMI records.  The team was supposed to verify
> those items on the films belonging to the Huntington, edit those records
> comparing the filmed copy to the copy in hand, and then remove the “Dummy
> …” note, but to ignore the note in any other records.
>
> They don’t now seem to serve any purpose. The notes don’t survive in the
> current ESTC data base; only in local OPACs, apparently in records
> downloaded from ESTC/RLIN long ago.
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> John
>
>
> On Nov 27, 2018, at 5:37 PM, Erin Blake <erin.blake.folger at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> The label "Dummy" follows immediately after the 500$a in many older ESTC
> records (including a bunch of legacy records in our OPAC, imported from
> RLIN in the olden days), and the next word always begins with a capital
> letter, so it's evidently a label of some sort.
>
> Does anyone know why "Dummy" was used this way?
>
> If you do a Google search on the phrase "Dummy reproduction of the
> original in" you can find a slew of them (including in EEBO-TCP
> bibliographic descriptions, but not EEBO, so the records have been cleaned
> up).
>
> Background: a researcher asked what "Dummy" means in a library context,
> and I was about to explain shelf dummies (place-holders on the shelf for a
> book semi-permanently shelved somewhere else) and dummies in the sense of
> model books (salesmen's dummies, publisher's dummies, etc.). Then I looked
> at the context, and that's clearly not what's going on here.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Erin.
>
>
> ----------------
> Erin Blake, Ph.D.  |  Senior Cataloger  |  Folger Shakespeare Library  |
> 201 E. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC, 20003  |  eblake at folger.edu  |
> office tel. +1 202-675-0323  |  www.folger.edu
>
>
>
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