Can't we use the 246 to provide access and information from those alternate title sources, front or back cover, half title page? Nothing is permanent in the life of a book, but the title page is probably the most reliable of them all.
kathie Kathleen Goldfarb Technical Services Librarian College of the Mainland Texas City, TX 77539 409 933 8202 P Please consider whether it is necessary to print this email. From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of James Weinheimer Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2012 9:44 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Title page vs. cover title On 28/10/2012 09:46, Heidrun Wiesenmüller wrote: <snip> Be assured that I also want to keep the title page as the chief source of information for printed materials. There are, I believe, a number of good reasons for doing this, and you mention some of them. Another is that questions of design play a much bigger part on the front cover than on the title page - so the version on the t.p. can perhaps be seen as the one more appropriate for the aims of a catalogue. But I think James Weinheimer has a point when he says that our patrons may have different feelings about what is the most prominent part of a resource. </snip> I want to emphasize that what I am saying is that today, there is no reason to have a single 245 a and b (or whatever those fields may morph into). If we were setting up a database from scratch, the idea of titles not being repeatable would probably be considered strange. I submit that the reasons that the 245 a and b are *not* repeatable have nothing to do with the inherent structure of information resources, but because of historical circumstance. Making them repeatable would make a tremendous difference on how the cataloger approaches the resource, no matter what format it happens to be. I have worked in non-ISBD cataloging settings where there is not a formal idea of "prominent" and the mindset of the cataloger is different--not inferior or superior, but different. In just a few seconds, the database manager could make the 245 repeatable. The question should be: "Why not?" There are reasons, and I personally would like to believe that the t.p. is the "best" title, but are these reasons really enough to constrain the database? Especially in the networked world we are entering, there will be different interpretations of what is the "best" title. Our formats and procedures should be able to deal with these differences. I hope these are the sorts of questions that the deciders of the "new bibliographic framework" are asking among themselves. Otherwise, I fear it will just be more or the same. -- 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
