Ha, ha, ha. If I take my glasses off, I’d give it 10 unless I’m
pressing my nose against the monitor.
I think part of this discussion that relates to RDA (there are other
parts I care about, too, such as using regular expressions to
manipulate case in MARC records) is the relative importance of the
capitalization to the effectiveness of catalogs and thus RDA’s
allowance of all caps in a transcribed area such as the title. I
don’t see RDA’s openness to variations in capitalization as a negative.
I am trying to “correct” the all caps in the record set I have. Pretty
much for all the reasons of readability and just broadly meeting user
expectations.
Matthew
*From:*Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and
Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] *On Behalf Of *Pat Sayre
McCoy
*Sent:* Tuesday, May 17, 2011 3:43 PM
*To:* RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA
*Subject:* Re: [RDA-L] [ACAT] Upper case in records
I’d give it a 6 if I take my glasses off. And many people’s vision
cannot be corrected to any sharper than mine. I don’t think it’s up to
us to decide what can be read and by whom. There are websites that
discuss ADA accessibility and how to be sure your system meets the
criteria. That said, it may be an ILS issue, not a cataloging issue.
But do we have to make things difficult for people? Our library has
made the decision to change the capitalization to standard U.S.
English usage because it’s more familiar to our catalog users and we
have used all caps to mean a title is still on order.
Pat
Patricia Sayre-McCoy
Head of Law Cataloging and Serials
D'Angelo Law Library
1121 E. 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
p-mc...@uchicago.edu
773-702-9620 (office)
773-702-2885 (fax)
*From:*Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and
Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] *On Behalf Of *Beacom,
Matthew
*Sent:* Tuesday, May 17, 2011 2:24 PM
*To:* RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA
*Subject:* Re: [RDA-L] [ACAT] Upper case in records
To read the full text of a 2 or 3 hundred page monograph printed in
all caps would be tiresome. However, a line or two in a bibliographic
record is not much trouble to read or access.
On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being “I can see that some text is in mixed
case and other text is in all caps, but there’s no effect on my
ability to read it or otherwise have access to the information” and 10
being “I can’t read the all cap text at all, so my ability to read it
is zero and as a result I am denied access to this resource” what is
the difference in readability or accessibility in the following display?
I’d give this a 1.
Matthew Beacom
*Author: *
HANKINS, JOHN ERSKINE.
<http://traindb.library.yale.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Author&SEQ=20110517150630&PID=Ty5Sl6Vcndib-jw55hW71MesffEA9h&SA=HANKINS,+JOHN+ERSKINE.>
*Title: *
THE POEMS OF GEORGE TURBERVILE [electronic resource] / EDITED WITH
CRITICAL NOTES AND A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND WORKS.
*Published: *
1929
*Description: *
1 online resource (712 p.)
*Available Online: *
Online thesis
<http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:0003706>
*Dissertation: *
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 1929.
*From:*Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and
Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] *On Behalf Of *Adger Williams
*Sent:* Tuesday, May 17, 2011 1:28 PM
*To:* RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA
*Subject:* Re: [RDA-L] [ACAT] Upper case in records
To all who think case doesn't matter...
Let me explain why I care about all upper case text.
The Latin alphabet has letters that go "above the line" (t, d, l, b,
f, h, k) (also called "ascenders"), letters that go "below the line"
(descenders) (e.g. g, j, p, q), and letters that do neither. With
this mix of letter types, words have a distinctive shape that makes
them easy to recognize quickly while reading. (The literature on the
exact mechanism of reading is large, but image recognition figures in
the process at an early stage according to many.) (The word "many"
has a different shape if you will than the word "more", which makes
them easy to distinguish.)
Those of us with poor vision find all-caps difficult to read
because in all-caps, there are no more differences between ascenders,
descenders, and regular letters. This wipes out differences in word
shape, and makes the process of reading more arduous than necessary.
For me, it's an annoyance. If I turn my head sideways, I can read
whatever I need to with some time and a good magnifying glass. But
there are people who are worse off than me, who would appreciate, I
feel sure, having no extra difficulties put in their way.
In short, it's not just a matter of aesthetics for everyone.
Apologies for the extended explanation, but it keeps coming up as a
matter of taste instead of as a matter of access.
On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 12:46 PM, Beacom, Matthew
<matthew.bea...@yale.edu <mailto:matthew.bea...@yale.edu>> wrote:
Thank you.
I’ve tested both thesentencecase and Microsoft Word. They do the same
thing.
I find the substitutions by these programs unsuccessful. They just
exchange one set of errors in capitalization for another. I’m left
thinking the difficulty with all caps (or all lower case, or title
case, or etc.) is a matter of taste. (These records are not coded as
AACR2 .) None of the case variations affect access, they just look
unattractive. And I find each of them ugly in its own way.
As a cataloger working in a batch process operation, none of these
changes is worth the time or money it would take to achieve (and I
don’t have either time or money.) Should I pass on this opportunity
to put records for 15,000 titles into our catalog? I can’t see it
that way. These records will give our readers a chance to find these
titles. I don’t think our readers would prefer to not find a title to
finding it represented by a record that uses ugly all caps in the
title field.
As I am interested in these editing tools and would prefer not to
present all cap titles in our catalog records, I’ll keep looking into
practical way to make changing case work in batch processing MARC
records. When I find something that works, I’ll let you know.
Thank you.
Matthew Beacom
Here are first 2 examples and each of the 3 transformations
thesentencecase and Microsoft Word can make (I skipped the UPPER CASE
and the tOGGLE cASE transforms.)
Source
=245 14$aTHE POEMS OF GEORGE TURBERVILE $h[electronic resource] /$c
EDITED WITH CRITICAL NOTES AND A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND WORKS.
=245 10$aMICHELET ET L'HISTOIRE ALLEMANDE. (PARTS 1 AND
2)$h[electronic resource]
Sentence case
=245 14$athe poems of george turbervile $h[electronic resource] /$c
edited with critical notes and a study of his life and works.
=245 10$amichelet et l'histoire allemande. (parts 1 and
2)$h[electronic resource]
lower case
=245 14$athe poems of george turbervile $h[electronic resource] /$c
edited with critical notes and a study of his life and works.
=245 10$amichelet et l'histoire allemande. (parts 1 and
2)$h[electronic resource]
Title Case
=245 14$athe Poems Of George Turbervile $h[electronic Resource] /$c
Edited With Critical Notes And A Study Of His Life And Works.
=245 10$amichelet Et L'histoire Allemande. (parts 1 And
2)$h[electronic Resource]
Had I selected the textual portions only, I would have gotten slightly
different results with sentence and title cases. Here they are.
Sentence case
The poems of george turbervile [electronic resource] / edited with
critical notes and a study of his life and works.
Michelet et l'histoire allemande. (parts 1 and 2) [electronic resource]
Title Case
The Poems Of George Turbervile [electronic Resource] / Edited With
Critical Notes And A Study Of His Life And Works.
Michelet Et L'histoire Allemande. (parts 1 And 2) [electronic Resource]
*From:*Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and
Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA
<mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA>] *On Behalf Of *Stephen Early
*Sent:* Tuesday, May 17, 2011 9:40 AM
*To:* RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA <mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA>
*Subject:* Re: [RDA-L] [ACAT] Upper case in records
On AUTOCAT, a recent posting recommended http://thesentencecase.org/ .
I copied and pasted the titles below in its text box and found it
worked as advertised* (I was not so successful testing the Microsoft
Word method described earlier).
Stephen T. Early
Cataloger
Center for Research Libraries
6050 S. Kenwood
Chicago, IL 60637
773-955-4545 <tel:773-955-4545>
sea...@crl.edu <mailto:sea...@crl.edu>
CRL website: www.crl.edu <http://www.crl.edu>
*Two examples showing what http://thesentencecase.org/ is capable of
with no prior editing:
=245 10$ai. The heterogeneity of rabbit anti-bovine serum albumin
antibody. Ii. Kinetic studies of antibody-hapten
interactions$h[electronic resource]
=245 10$asubstituted tropylium ions$h[electronic resource]
*From:*Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and
Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA
<mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA>] *On Behalf Of *Beacom, Matthew
*Sent:* Monday, May 16, 2011 1:19 PM
*To:* RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA <mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA>
*Subject:* Re: [RDA-L] [ACAT] Upper case in records
Can anyone suggest how to effectively edit titles such as these to
remove the upper case and appropriately capitalize words in the
title? A manual title-by-title edit is a non-starter since the above
are the first 10 titles in a set of about 15,000 records (only a few
thousand in the set have this problem.) The records do not include
non-roman scripts.
Thank you.
Matthew Beacom
=245 14$aTHE POEMS OF GEORGE TURBERVILE $h[electronic resource] /$c
EDITED WITH CRITICAL NOTES AND A STUDY OFHIS LIFE AND WORKS.
=245 10$aMICHELET ET L'HISTOIRE ALLEMANDE. (PARTS 1 AND
2)$h[electronic resource]
=245 14$aTHE MOTET IN THIRTEENTH CENTURY FRANCE. (VOLUMES FIRST AND
SECOND)$h[electronic resource]
=245 14$aTHE TRAGIC HERO IN POLITICS $h[electronic resource] :
$bTHEODORE ROOSEVELT, DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, AND FIORELLO LA GUARDIA
(PARTS I AND II).
=245 10$aINTERRELATIONS OF STRESS AND ANXIETY IN DETERMINING
PROBLEM-SOLVING PERFORMANCE$h[electronic resource]
=245 10$aSUBSTITUTED TROPYLIUM IONS$h[electronic resource]
=245 10$a1,3-DIMETHYLBICYCLO(1.1.0)BUTANE$h[electronic resource]
=245 13$aAN EVALUATION OF TILLICH'S INTUITIVE-ONTOLOGICAL APPROACH TO
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN CONTRAST WITH TENNANT'S
EMPIRICAL-COSMOLOGICAL APPROACH$h[electronic resource]
=245 10$aI. THE HETEROGENEITY OF RABBIT ANTI-BOVINE SERUM ALBUMIN
ANTIBODY. II. KINETIC STUDIES OF ANTIBODY-HAPTEN
INTERACTIONS$h[electronic resource]
--
Adger Williams
Colgate University Library
315-228-7310
awilli...@colgate.edu <mailto:awilli...@colgate.edu>
