Steven Arakawa said:
>Some 300 fields will end with the authorized abbreviation "in." So, if the=
>re is a series, in MARC one would record "... in.." <2 full stops> but if=
> no abbreviation, the record would end with "... in." <1 full stop>, no?
So the rules say. But SLC will practice jury nullification and have a
*single* period in *all* cases, in the absence of another mark of
final punctuation.
>But then, following North American practice, the publication area is
>not followed by a subsequent area in the imaginary "paragraph," then
>if the last element of 260 is a date, it shouldn't end with a period?
That's one of ISBD's inconsistencies as I understand it. ISBD (M) 1974
says "The collation area is preceded by a full stop ..."
We should *not* be trying to guess what is going to be displayed after
what; that will vary widely among OPACs, and even between various
displays within one OPAC.
SLC will have *one* final period after *all* elements (in the absence
of another mark of final punctuation). We assume rule makers will
catch up with us eventually. It's such a no brainer, obviously makes
records more consistent for patrons, and has no effect on machine
manipulation.
Why do we waste time on stuff like this? If the rest of you can
ignore ISBD Latin abbreviation inclusions, you can ignore the fiction
that the period at the end of an element introduces the next one. It
concludes the element it is in!! The "introduction" bit came before
machine coding, and is *way* out of date.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
