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

Sat Apr 10 21:47:09 MDT 2021

On the wish list would be not only a signal for alphabetization but also for keyword searches to realize that in a particular case "u" or "v" should produce "correct" results whichever letter the user types.

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 9:43 PM
To: DCRM Users' Group <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu>
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Transcription question: why is our small "s" always an "s" but our small "i" is sometimes a "j"?

Before any wild rumors start to spread, I'm not in favor of transcribing a long-s as anything other than an ordinary "s" -- even in systems that can display it correctly, I don't think it would alphabetize correctly. I was thinking the other way around: an "i" should be transcribed as an "i" no matter where it appears in the word.

HOWEVER, thinking about it some more (thanks, Bob!) has led me to see where my wish to transcribe a final "i" as an "i" (even when it's shaped like a "j") falls apart. We transcribe lowercase "u" and "v" the way they appear in the word, following the early modern logic of which shape goes where. The fact that we now consider those shapes to be two separate letters, a vowel and a consonant, is irrelevant. Sadly, it means early modern spellings don't alphabetize correctly (because "u" and "v" should be in the same position).

Ooooh! Maybe a future cataloging system will allow us to flag records where "u" and "v" should sort in the same position alphabetically, like the way the second indicator in the 245 sets how many characters to skip in order to ignore initial articles in alphabetization...... You could still search for a specific shape, to make sure you're getting the edition you're looking for, of course. (Yes, I know I'm dreaming.... but wouldn't that be cool?)

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

On Sat, Apr 10, 2021 at 11:07 PM Robert Maxwell <robert_maxwell at byu.edu<mailto:robert_maxwell at byu.edu>> wrote:
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<mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu>> on behalf of Erin Blake <erin.blake.folger at gmail.com<mailto:erin.blake.folger at gmail.com>>
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2021 4:33 PM
To: DCRM Users' Group <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu<mailto: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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