Deborah Tomaras commented:
>I do not correct British spellings when I see records by UKM etc.
I'm not sure "correct" is the right word here, because from the point
of view of some, you are changing the standard spelling to a dialect
one, apart from the standardization Karen Coyle proposes.
With AACR2, an international effort, the British, Canadian and
Australian view prevailed, and standard international spelling was
used. The inconsistency arises with RDA, which is a more US centric
effort, particularly in its toolkit incarnation.
Far more problematic than the variation in spelling of "colour", are
the long phrases replacing ISBD abbreviations, making records unusable
internationally without expensive editing.
Our French, German, Chinese, and Japanese language of catalogue
clients might accept those phrases in English in a record for English
language items, but certainly not in records for items in their own or
other languages, We see our choice as being between phrases in a
multitude of languages of the text, or staying with ISBD inclusions.
One of the things I like about ISBD punctuation is "/" replacing
having to come with "[by]" in a variety of languages. We are taking a
giant step backward in terms of international standardization of
cataloguing, in which "color" vs. "colour" is far far less than the
tip of an iceberg.
One of the features I most like in our SLC OPAC is that any field can
be searched. I often use that feature to search 300 to see how we
have treated a particular genre. Now we can search "col.". With RDA
I assume we would have to search "col.", "color" and "colour".
!@#$%^.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
