[DCRM-L] Transcription question: why is our small "s" always an "s" but our small "i" is sometimes a "j"?

[Robert Maxwell]

I don't know the answer to this except probably at the time the rules were formulated it was impossible to reproduce the long "s" in MARC (or on your average typewriter in pre-MARC days) and I'm not sure if even now it's possible in OCLC (though you imply it is). But I suspect if we changed the rules to require (or even optionally allow) transcription of long "s" we'd wind up with lots of people who don't know about the rules seeing these records and deciding in other records to transcribe long "s" as "f", so I'm not sure what I think about the idea of changing the transcription practice. Are there lots of (or even any) examples where long "s" vs. small "s" makes a difference to the identification of a particular state or issue?

For my cataloging assignments in Library School we were supposed to TYPE OUT catalog cards (if you can believe it, I am such a dinosaur 🙂) and one of the books did have long "s"es on the title page; I typed "f" but used whiteout to remove part of the bar to turn each into a long "s" (I did​ know the difference even at that youthful age) and the cataloging prof thought it was great (other class members who typed plain "f" lost points; of course those who typed "s" were given full credit) but I doubt if many catalogers typing out catalog cards for real had time to use whiteout in these situations ...

Bob

Robert L. Maxwell
Ancient Languages and Special Collections Cataloger
6728 Harold B. Lee Library
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801)422-5568

"We should set an example for all the world, rather than confine ourselves to the course which has been heretofore pursued"--Eliza R. Snow, 1842.

________________________________
From: DCRM-L <dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu> on behalf of Erin Blake <erin.blake.folger at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2021 4:33 PM
To: DCRM Users' Group <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu>
Subject: [DCRM-L] Transcription question: why is our small "s" always an "s" but our small "i" is sometimes a "j"?

Does anyone know why the DCRM transcription rules about early modern letterforms treat a lowercase "s" different from a lowercase "i"?

An early modern "s" at the front or in the middle of a word has a different shape than an "s" at the end of the word, but it's still an "s" and we transcribe it as an "s" (despite long-s being a unicode character).

An early modern "i" at the front or in the middle of a word has a different shape than an "i" at the end of the word, but we transcribe them differently, using the letter "j" for a terminal "i" (even though it's not a "j", it's a j-shaped "i").

It struck me particularly when looking at the date on one of Hogenberg's "Geschichtsblätter" (https://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/s/3bm5h6), which I've attached here. (It's the date of the event depicted in the engraving, not the imprint, so it's not as weird as it looks).

[image.png]
Thanks,

Erin.



______________________
Erin Blake, Ph.D.  |  Senior Cataloger  |  Folger Shakespeare Library  |  201 E. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC, 20003  |  eblake at folger.edu<mailto:eblake at folger.edu>  |  www.folger.edu<https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/-t5RCjRgpBtArRXC7R7_2?domain=urldefense.com>   |  Pronouns: she/her/hers


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