Jim,
actually, when writing my last mail I was asking myself whether I should
include a sentence on the question of which is the most prominent
position. Because it's true that the front cover for an "ordinary
person" (not hindered by a librarian's education) may be as important or
even more important as the title page. I have made this observation
myself when teaching cataloguing: When I hand a book to a student in the
first lesson and ask him or her where we should look in order to make
our description, some of them point to the front cover. So I agree that
it would be very useful to do some research in that matter. And perhaps
we really need to adjust our view of what is most prominent.
But I'd still argue that not all title versions have the same
"authoritative-ness" (is there such a word in English?), and that
non-librarians perceive this as well. I still think the spine title, or
a shortened title version on the half title page are good examples for
titles of lesser importance. Another might be "colloquial" title
variants. E.g. in Germany there is a directory of German libraries and
members of the Society of German Librarians. Many people call it the
"green bible", because at some time it used to come with a green cover.
Perhaps this title is used more often than the "real" title on the title
page (which is something like "Yearbook of German libraries"). But still
I believe people would find it weird to see this title prominently in a
catalogue display.
Heidrun
James Weinheimer Weinheimer wrote:
This is a provocative discussion. I agree with what you say, but I
would like to make the following observation
On 26/10/2012 22:30, Heidrun Wiesenmüller wrote:
<snip>
James Weinheimer wrote:
It occurs to me that we have the concept of *the* title of an item
but as we see here, there are problems with choosing a single title
and there always have been. Why do we have to pick one as being
*the* title? We always have but perhaps matters could be
reconsidered. New systems allow novel possibilities. Let's imagine
something rather blasphemous and almost impossible to conceive of in
a card environment: that 245a and b could be repeatable. As a
result, all 246s (and 740s?) would be equal titles to what is in the
245 now. This would mean that when there is more than one title,
there is not *the* title of an item but different titles of equal
worth. And each 245 could have its own note explaining where it
comes from, as they do now, perhaps in a subfield i, as in the 246.
For retrieval, it certainly doesn't (or shouldn't) matter which title
you use. But I'm not so sure about display. Would we really do our
readers a favour if we presented all titles as having equal worth
(perhaps in an alphabetical or random order)? I think most users
would agree that a title on the title page is more authoritative than
e.g. one on the spine. If those responsible for the resource wouldn't
have wanted us to associate it primarily with this version of the
title, they wouldn't have put it in the most prominent position.
</snip>
Not disputing this, but I do wonder if our idea that the title page is
the most "prominent" is based more on historical circumstance and not
what the public thinks is most important. I am sure that all on this
list know the history of the title page, the half-title page, etc.
that the title page originally served the purpose of the splashy cover
that we have today, in the days when books were sold unbound, and had
those magnificent title pages. Originally, the title page was to help
sell the book. (Here is a nice one from a very famous chess book:
http://www.sg1871loeberitz.de/fotoreports/fotoreports11/selenus_gr/titelblatt.jpg)
The title page does not serve that purpose today; publishers put the
same emphasis and care on p.1 of cover, or the jacket, because they
know the cover is what is most important to the public and then they
do relatively little with title pages. When I was first learning to
catalog, I was surprised to find that catalogers said that the title
page title, which you could find only after leafing through a few
pages into the book, was the most important one and actually called it
"prominent"(!). In my eyes, it was anything but. Before I cataloged, I
never really looked at the title page of the book.
I honestly do not remember when I was a student and made a citation
for a bibliography in a paper, if I copied the title off of the cover
or took it off of the title page. I suspect I took it from the cover
because it would have been to difficult to hold the book open while I
wrote or typed.
Later when I first started considering the catalog idea of
"prominent", I remember thinking that perhaps the most prominent part
of a book for the public is the spine, since that is the first thing
they see and is the real access point into the book. When a book is
too skinny to have a spine title, it is a *lot* harder to find on the
shelf.
Of course, if the original jacket or cover has been discarded and
people are stuck looking at library binding, then it blows my cover
title theory to pieces.... Nevertheless, I think it would be so useful
to cataloging, especially at this pivotal moment, to do at least some
research on the public to find out how they relate to these
assumptions that have been handed down to catalogers, sometimes from
the earliest days.
--
*James Weinheimer* weinheimer.ji...@gmail.com
*First Thus* http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
*Cooperative Cataloging Rules*
http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
*Cataloging Matters Podcasts*
http://blog.jweinheimer.net/p/cataloging-matters-podcasts.html
--
---------------------
Prof. Heidrun Wiesenmueller M.A.
Stuttgart Media University
Faculty of Information and Communication
Wolframstr. 32, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany
www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi
