RDA-L readers,
Jenifer Marquardt asked "Why is the corrected version of any 245 with an error put in the MARC field 246 rather than in the 240?" Field 240, Uniform Title, is always associated with a 1XX field. If no 1XX field is present, the data is tagged 130. Thus, field 240 is always an appendage to an *author* field, a name heading plus uniform title (in AACR2-speak), that is, a name-title entry (in more common parlance among catalogers). See http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd240.html "Uniform title for an item when the bibliographic description is entered under a main entry field that contains a personal (field 100), corporate (110), or meeting (111) name." Field 246, on the other hand, is a Varying Form of Title field: "Varying forms of the title appearing on different parts of an item or a portion of the title proper, or an alternative form of the title when the form differs substantially from the title statement in field 245 and if they contribute to the further identification of the item." http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd246.html In terms of literary warrant: The corrected form of title often lacks it, in the sense that the title as transcribed, error and all, is the only existing warrant. The cataloger is exercising judgment in providing a correction. That is different from "establishing" the corrected title as a uniform title. You really should have justification in a documentable source in order to do that. RDA does not give instruction on using [sic] (in contrast to AACR2 1.0F1) and there are various reasons why doing so is a good/bad idea. So no wonder we argue the case back and forth! My favorite example is a compact disc sound recording with title "The Dutchess" (actually, the name of the artist). That is not a typo, so it would not be appropriate to correct it. You can however add [sic] to indicate that you haven't introduced a typo in your transcription, in case anyone should wonder. But that has gone out of fashion, so to speak, along with use of other Latin abbreviations. Personally, I dislike the phrase "Title should read". Who are we catalogers to tell people how their creations "should" read? I hope this helps. Does it answer the question? - Ian Ian Fairclough - George Mason University - ifairclough43...@yahoo.com
