Quoting Weinheimer Jim <j.weinhei...@aur.edu>:
I think Jonathan is absolutely right. Cataloger time is valuable, and at least I *very much* hope cataloger time will become increasingly valuable in the future (since the opposite is a terrifying possibility!). It has always been the case that creating bibliographic records/metadata involves a tradeoff of including some information at the expense of other information. For example, the rule as it states now is that a cataloger needs only to add the first of a number of authors, and "use cataloger's judgment" concerning adding any others. Why should there be such flexibility on rule as important as this one (and which I personally believe is unwarranted), but then worry so much over whether the illustrations are colored (or coloured)? And Jonathan is completely correct about the problems with the 856 field, which I see miscoded much of the time anyway.
Well, I'm not (generally) one to worry much about colour or no colour. But if you're cataloguing an illustrated study of the Book of Kells, it matters.
<snip>If you look at the ONIX Best Practices http://www.bisg.org/docs/Best_Practices_Document.pdf look at p. 85 for "30. Illustration details & description" and see their guidelines. Frighteningly detailed, e.g. "500 illustrations, 210 in full color" but we see it can also be: halftones, line drawings, figures, charts, etc.
So?
So, how are we supposed to handle this? If we get an ONIX record with "500 illustrations, 210 in full color, 35 figures, 26 line drawings, 8 charts", do we devote the labor to edit it down to AACR2/RDA thereby eliminating some very nice information? But if we just accept it, what do we do then with the materials we catalog originally? "illustrations (some coloured)" looks pretty lame in comparison and can certainly lead to confusion.
Leave it as it is, IF we're in the realm of using what's in the data that comes to us, unless the cataloguer is convinced there's confusion afoot.
Finally, we should ask: how important is this issue compared to the many others facing the cataloging world today, and how much time should we spend on this issue when, as Jonathan points out, one thing people really want to know is that there is a free copy of Byron's poems online for download in Google Books, the Internet Archive, plus lots of other places, and here are some links. While you're at it, you may be interested in these other links to related resources that deal with Byron's poetry in different ways.
A great deal of the detail provided in cataloguing has been irrelevant to the majority of users -- but vital to the people who manage the collections and make decisions about selection and discard, and significant to a fraction of end-users. If we're about to make a judgment that we can no longer afford to cater for that more demanding minority, let's be consistent. I see the Bibco Standard Record as leading us all in that direction. If 90% accuracy and 60% coverage of eligible detail are enough, why bother with more than bare bones description, controlled access for only the associated names that can be expected to appear in a reference/bibliography citation, authority control only by exception (do the work only when there's a conflict or references are required)? Then RDA was 75% waste of time and effort.
My own opinion is: people are confused in general by library catalogs and their records, while the "illustrations" section is one of the least important areas of confusion.
When the content and organization of the data presented in catalogues was less variable than it has been since system experts captured catalogues from cataloguers, there was less confusion. Mac Elrod's hated representation of defendant in a legal case under the generic label "author" comes to mind.
My point is that what we provide in cataloguing should be accurate as far as it goes, and it should go as far as is reasonably foreseeable to be useful. Not all of what we've done has been useful. Nor has all of it been the most productive use of cataloguers' time, mine included. How many times have I tediously typed "504 Includes bibliographical references", when all that's really needed is to tick a box or click a button and have the not-very-intelligent computer create the required words? How many times have I stopped to find and count plates not forming part of the main pagination (and when I needed to verify the completeness of an older volume against a record discovered that the downloaded record had that element of collation wrong!)?
Every now and again I remind myself that for half my career, the British Library/British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books, in book form, with little of the detail we're talking about and no separate authority file, was an immensely valuable source of bibliographical information. More isn't automatically better; but the information we assemble should be accurate as far as it goes -- if not, better to omit it and stick to the bare essentials.
Faster, better, cheaper -- we can't have all three, but I suspect we won't even get two. Not less with more, but less with less.
Hal Cain Melbourne, Australia hec...@dml.vic.edu.au ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
