Hi everyone, We are having a disagreement here among staff with differing approaches to cataloguing a large collection of Japanese prints in our collections management system. Many of the prints are part of a series, and in many cases we own the entire series of prints.
One school of thought is that the series title ought to be part of the print title, and that no hierarchical records (e.g. a group record for the series as a whole, with child records for each print that is part of the series) are needed since a user could recall the records by either the print title or the series title in the main title field. Others gravitate towards segregating the print title and the series title (and number), and creating group-level records for the series, with child records for the prints. Those of us who favor this understand that when the data is displayed (on the web or on a label or other publication), data from the Series and Number in Series fields have to be concatenated with data from the Title field so it looks like the title of the object is "print so and so, No. 3 from the series such and such". It was suggested that we take an informal survey to find out how other institutions approach this or similar situations, to see if there is in fact some consensus. We are especially interested in hearing from insitutions that catalogue Japanese prints in particular, since it is this group of objects that seems to have stirred up the most controversy. CCO seems to favor separate fields for Title and Series (or designating one title as "collective title" which is similar), and also seems to favor Whole/Part relationships for this situation. It does say that when a repository does not have the entire series, it may not want to create the record for the whole series, which might be misleading. In our case, more often than not, the series are complete. A third way would be to create an Alternate Title of type "Display" that includes the entire string of print title, number in series, and series title, as preferred by one group, while also entering the data in the separate fields and in hierarchical relationships, as favored by the other group. (Though this seems like a labor intensive way to try to satisfy everyone.) Anyone care to jump in? [full disclosure: I am in the whole/part camp, but if you are not doing it that way, bring it on!] Will Real Technology Initiatives Carnegie Museum of Art Pittsburgh PA --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: rlancefi...@mail.wesleyan.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-12800...@listserver.americaneagle.com
