And it might be interesting (and valuable) to query the publishing industry to discern their definition of "published" and how they choose to put dates on their items. It's very common in my experience to see copyright dates for the following year months before the year begins. And even more rare to see an actual "publication" date.
And to the user, what does the copyright date actually mean? Copyright is essentially a legal date that publishers use to protect their content, while the actual date of publication is a better guide to when the item was issued. And let's not forget to mention printing dates, copyright renewal dates, revised printing dates... Kevin Roe Supervisor, Media Processing Fort Wayne Community Schools 1511 Catalpa St. Fort Wayne IN 46802 260-467-2510 (voice) 260-467-2538 (fax) -----Original Message----- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of Michael Borries Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 9:50 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Publication date/copyright date I have wondered whether originally the approach of separating publication date and copyright date didn't arise, in part, at least, from this phenomenon of having books published earlier than the copyright date indicates. I am sympathetic to the concern that a cataloger with the book in hand in 2013, copyrighted 2013, might wonder why the cataloging record available has 2012 in the 264. However, I wonder if the 588 note, or a 500 note, could not be used, e.g., "Item received for cataloging March 10, 2012," thus indicating that the book was in fact available in 2012. Michael S. Borries CUNY Central Cataloging 151 East 25th Street, 5th Floor New York, NY 10010 email: michael.borr...@mail.cuny.edu Phone: (646) 312-1687
