In the (hopefully soon, but for sure I'm not holding my breath!) future, we will likely—or at least should—be entering RDA elements into workforms with no punctuation at all, unless that punctuation is part of the element itself (e.g., the period in an abbreviation, the question mark in Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?, etc.). Nothing after a title, or after other title information, or after the statement of responsibility. Even if there are multiple statements of responsibility, there will be no punctuation after any of them, because they will be entered as separate instances of the element "Statement of responsibility". Punctuation will be supplied automatically depending on the data output. This will make it SO much easier to follow the RDA guidelines (which don't have ISBD punctuation in the instructions or examples), and will make it much easier to allow for a limitless number of output choices (including ISBD).
Kevin M. Randall Principal Serials Cataloger Northwestern University Library k...@northwestern.edu<mailto:k...@northwestern.edu> (847) 491-2939 Proudly wearing the sensible shoes since 1978! From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of Benjamin A Abrahamse Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2013 1:01 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] cm period/no period and sample records All of this may be true but due to reasons discussed rather exhaustively in this very thread a dotless "cm" will only show up under certain circumstances anyhow. To adequately explain why it doesn't requires informing users (a) that it is a "symbol" or "ligature", not an abbreviation, even though it appears to be otherwise; and, (b) what ISBD is, why ISBD is, and why a standard that is sometimes used to display metadata affects the way we record data in a shared database. And in the end, "cm" and "cm." are both instantly recognizable--even by benighted Yankees such as myself--as representing "centimeters." The good news I suppose is that it would be the rare user indeed who looks this carefully at a 300 field. --b Benjamin Abrahamse Cataloging Coordinator Acquisitions, Metadata and Enterprise Systems MIT Libraries 617-253-7137
