Kevin,
I realize that I must sound like some sort of grouch to you, always
finding fault with RDA - and, what's more, whining about things American
catalogers don't mind at all. And I'm afraid that you (and probably many
others here on the list) will have got rather tired of hearing me say,
again and again, like a parrot: The Germans do it differently, the
Germans do it differently.
Obviously, things like the full stop here will look absolutely natural
to you, as they simply continue the Anglo-American practice. And mind: I
do not in the least deny that the full stop is a perfectly legitimate
way of doing it. What I object to is the assumption that it's the /only/
legitimate way of doing it.
For example, multipart monographs are catalogued in a hierarchical way
according to our tradition. This means that the title of the whole and
the title of the part are not even stored in the same record, let alone
connected by a full stop. They are different data elements recorded in
separate categories of different, hierarchically linked records. Of
course, we can (if desired) create a display where they are shown
separated by a full stop. But we certainly don't want to have this full
stop "hard-wired" in our data.
Well, you might say: Tough luck! If you Germans want to use RDA, then
you will simply have to start typing in these full stops, because the
rule says so. But in times of the semantic web and a "bibliographic
framework transition initiative" (how I love this phrase), one must
wonder if this really is the only way.
If RDA truly wants to become international and open to new communities
(not only library communities from other cultural and language
backgrounds, but also, perhaps, communities from quite different areas)
then I believe it must stop taking so many things for granted. To my
mind, RDA often shows a very good approach, e.g. in the idea of
separating the data recorded and the way it is presented. But the next
minute I am disappointed, because RDA just doesn't go through with its
aims in any consistent way. This may not be much of a problem for those
changing from AACR2 to RDA, but it makes things very difficult if you
are migrating to RDA from a non-Anglo-American standard.
Heidrun
On 30.04.2013 19:18, Kevin M Randall wrote:
Heidrun Wiesenmüller wrote:
By the way, I don't like the instruction in 2.3.1.7 (and other similar
ones) one little bit, where it says: "Use a full stop to separate the
common title from the title of the part, section, or supplement."
Doesn't RDA claim that it is a content standard, and as such doesn't
prescribe a certain way of display (see RDA 0.1: "a clear line of
separation has been established between the guidelines and instructions
on recording data and those on the presentation of data")? But what else
is the full stop here if not a matter of display? In my opinion, the
rule should only express something like this: If the conditions
described in 2.3.1.7 apply, "record the title of the part, section, or
supplement together with the common title". How this is then presented
should be left to the cataloguing agency. If ISBD is followed, then the
rules given in Appendix D apply (see D.1.2.2). But if an agency chooses
not to use ISBD, and instead display the information differently (e.g.
by showing the title of the part below the common title), this should be
acceptable in RDA as well. But as the rule in 2.3.1.7 stands, it is not.
I think when RDA says that it doesn't dictate display of data, it's probably
talking about display of elements in relation to other elements; that is, how
the elements are sequenced, what kinds of punctuation or labels are put before
elements or in between one element and another.
But as Deborah Fritz pointed out, the Title Proper is a *single element*. The different
parts of the title proper are not separate RDA elements; rather, the common title,
section numbering, and section title are all taken together to form the single element
"Title Proper". So there needs to be some way to make an intelligible
statement out of the character string that is the title proper, thus we are given
instructions on using punctuation to separate the parts. While this punctuation
convention is taken from ISBD, I don't believe that this really violates the idea of RDA
content being free of particular display conventions. In this element, RDA needed to do
*something*, and it seems very sensible to do it the ISBD way, since that's already the
way it's been done for decades; the title proper element will fit into an ISBD display
with no problem, and it can also be used in non-ISBD contexts and still make perfect
sense.
Kevin M. Randall
Principal Serials Cataloger
Northwestern University Library
k...@northwestern.edu
(847) 491-2939
Proudly wearing the sensible shoes since 1978!
--
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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
