Here's an (admittedly very small) problem which I've been discussing
with some colleagues the other day.
RDA 1.7.5 tells us: "Replace symbols and other characters, etc., that
cannot be reproduced by the facilities available with a description of
the symbol enclosed in square brackets."
An example given is:
"Robust H [proportional to] stabilization of stochastic hybrid systems
with Wiener process"
This is a new rule for German catalogers (according to our rules we
simply replace a symbol which cannot be reproduced by a space). Now we
were wondering about the language for the description of the symbol. It
seems this would have to be in the language of the resource, as it says
in 1.4: "When adding data within an element listed above, record the
added data in the language and script of the other data in the element
unless the instructions for a specific element indicate otherwise."
We are not instructed to use the language of the agency in 1.7.5 (unlike
e.g. in the optional omission at 2.1.4.5 for statements of
responsibility naming more than one person, etc., which explicitly
states: "Indicate the omission by summarizing what has been omitted in
the language and script preferred by the agency preparing the
description.").
Therefore, when cataloguing e.g. a book in Polish, we'd have to make the
description of the symbol in Polish as well. Was that really
intentional? I find it hard to believe that RDA expects catalogers to be
able to describe complicated symbols in any number of foreign languages.
The LC-PCC PS for 1.7.5 has taken care of the problem by stating:
"Substitute in the language of the context the word, phrase, etc., that
is the obvious spoken/written equivalent (if unknown in the language of
the context, use English)". Well, this is certainly a sensible way of
doing it, but it still seems to go against RDA.
So, shouldn't there at least be an option to describe such a symbol in
the language of the agency?
Heidrun
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Prof. Heidrun Wiesenmueller M.A.
Stuttgart Media University
Faculty of Information and Communication
Wolframstr. 32, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany
www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi
