RDA only says to record the birth or death date. It does not specify how you mark the data as referring to birth or death. If you will look at 9.3.2 (date of birth) you will see that RDA simply says to record the date, e.g. "1974". It is the same for other dates associated with a person. RDA doesn't say how you should tell the user of the data that the date is, for example, a birth date. That is left to the cataloging agency to decide.
In MARC, since we don't have a separate field or subfield for "birth date" and "death date" the data needs to be marked in some other way. Possibilities include using the word "born" or "b." before the birth date and "died" or "d." before the death date. Another possible way to mark the data is to append a dash to the end of the year if the number represents a death date and append a dash to the beginning of the year if the number represents a death date. LC has chosen, for the test, to use dashes to designate the number as a birth date or a death date. If the dash comes after the number, it is a birth date. If it comes before the number, it is a death date. It is the same whether we have only the birth date, only the death date, or both. This is LC's local cataloging agency decision, but I think it would be good idea for others to follow it. The decision seems quite sensible to me and will be much better for indexing than interposition of a word in front of the number, and less capricious than the former NACO practice of establishing a name with a dash after the date if we thought the person was still alive at the time, and instead using "b." if we thought the person was dead-with the arbitrary result that a person was established with a "b." or a dash solely depending on when his/her name was established. I realize a dash before a death date without a birth date looks strange, but I suspect we'll get used to it. Bob Robert L. Maxwell Head, Special Collections and Formats Catalog Dept. 6728 Harold B. Lee Library Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84602 (801)422-5568 From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Thompson, Rebecca L Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 9:54 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [RDA-L] RDA Questions My colleague and I have a couple of questions: First, we are confused by the print versions pertaining to RDA on the ALA website. The RDA: Resource Description and Access and RDA: Element Set View have the exact same description, except the latter has the statement "RDA: Element Set View is an innovative way of sorting the RDA instructions by element, such as Title, Place of Publication etc." We were under the impression this is what RDA was to begin with. Is this a printed out version of what is under the tools tab in the RDA Toolkit? Could anyone explain the differences between the two? Our second question relates to the use of the terms "born" and "died" (b. or d. in AACR2) in name headings. In 9.19.1.3, the examples (copied below) show the use of these terms. However, at the ALA RDA101 pre-conference in June and the ALCTS Introduction to RDA webinar last Wednesday, the examples always showed use of a dash (examples below) and we were told to not use the terms born and died. Since both of these trainings were officially sanctioned, I am wondering what is correct. Has there been a change and the toolkit has been updated yet? Or was there a change and it just hasn't filtered down the trainers yet? Thank you for your time and help. Examples from 9.19.1.3 Smith, John, 1978- Smith, John, 1718-1791 Smith, John, born 1787 Smith, John, died 1773 Examples from pre-conference and webinar Smith, John, 1978- Smith, John, 1718-1791 Smith, John, 1787- Smith, John, -1773 ________________________________________________ Becky Thompson Assistant Professor of Library Science Missouri State University 901 South National Meyer Library 108F Springfield, MO 65897 417.836-5745 417.836.4764 (fax) [email protected] I looked at all the caged animals in the shelter.. the cast-offs to human society. I saw in their eyes love and hope, fear and dread, sadness and betrayal; and I was angry. God, I said, this is terrible! Why don't you do something??? There was silence for a moment and then the voice whispered softly, I have done something; I created You!? ~Author Unknown ý Towards a Sustainable Future - do you really need to print this?
