Quoting Karen Coyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Interesting, you've got 3 stories about our title capitalization practice and none are the story that 1 got, which was that some infinitesimal amount of time and effort were saved by not having to press the shift key so much. Since this practice now makes us non-standard with the rest of the English speaking universe (CCO encourages title case, for example), i was disappointed to see that RDA continued it. I do spend some time copying and pasting titles, and then "fixing" the capitalization (though i admit, sometimes i don't bother in notes, especially since title case is more readable in that context), and it seems to me that's a much bigger waste of cataloger time than pressing hte shift key! Greta de Groat Stanford University Libraries
As a simple example, I've been going around asking people this question: Why do libraries not use title case for titles? I've never gotten the same answer twice. This is something that we've done for decades (I haven't found the first time that rule was given -- somewhere between Cutter and AACRI). Presumably we do this to make something better, but what is that thing? Here are some of the answers I have gotten: - It's the same as all of the citation rules (no, it's not; some use title case for journal titles, but sentence case for article and book titles). - It's easier than following the title page title (? easier? You have to figure out which are the proper names, and in multiple languages) - It makes for more uniform display in the catalog (this one makes sense, but to me isn't a deal breaker) So here's something very basic and very simple, and all I want to do is connect to a reason that "facilitates access to materials." Once we figure out that reason we can also begin to think about "is it worth the effort?" kc -- ----------------------------------- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234 ------------------------------------
