Am 25.11.2010 03:00, schrieb J. McRee Elrod:
Steven Arakawa said:
It appears to me that RDA D.1.2.1 is saying that since the separate
paragraphing of the notes is optional, and notes& ISBN by default
are not preceded by a period space dash space in the RDA rule, then
normally the 300 ends with a period if it precedes the series area
but not if it precedes a note ...
This is a misreading of ISBD, which says to end the element with just
a period (not period dash) if no series in the paragraph. We've
omitted the dash for decades, whether there is a series or not. The
mix of with and with final punctuation collations in as invention of
RDA, not a true reflection of ISBD.
A truly rational, latter-day cataloging code should prescribe no
punctuation whatsoever for the end (or beginning) of element contents.
An element is either descriptive (and thus transcribed) or it is an
access point (and thus artificial). With the lamentable exception of
the title element which even RDA hasn't liberated from its double duty.
To add punctuation to a transcribed field violates the principle of
transcription, and the rules for access point have to include
everything that's necessary for the access to work, and nothing more
(like an ISBD trailer, when access points have no business with ISBD
anyway, only perhaps with card formatting).
Punctuation, in other words, in a truly rational catalog code, is
strictly the job of presentation software. RDA has moved into that
direction but maybe should make it much clearer, considering how
deeply rooted the habit of adding ISBD punctuation is in USMARC
catalogers' mindsets. That was artificial from the start, imposed
by programmers of the early days.
All of this is not to say that ISBD should go away but that ISBD
presentation should be no business of the cataloger any more, and
that's precisely what RDA thinks. Except, of course, for the
interior of element text, like the 300. Wherever subelements have
a function of their own, they should be in proper subfields, not
delimited by mere punctuation. RDA maybe doesn't go quite far
enough in this.
B.Eversberg
