Gene,
You know, can we just record what is actually in the item, instead of
inventing things (note phrase cited above. Who writes like that?)
Inventions of what things should be go back to pre-AACR2 rules. Do we
want to go there?
I'm not sure I get your meaning. I believe RDA _does_ indeed tell us to
record what is actually in the item, so it's not about inventing things.
But RDA also tells us to think of the information we record as two
different elements in some cases. Let's take an example. The source of
information reads:
Fourth edition
Reprinted with corrections
In this case, RDA says that we should record "Fourth edition" as a
designation of edition, and "reprinted with corrections" as quite
another element, namely the one with the awkward name (designation of a
named revision of an edition). I assume that the idea behind this is
that you could then cluster all manifestations which belong to the
fourth edition in a first step and then give users a choice between the
different versions (e.g. the original one and the corrected reprint). Of
course this would only work if the two different elements were somehow
marked in the data, e.g. if we had separate subfields in MARC.
Personally, I'm not convinced that it's really necessary to split these
things up. It feels rather artificial to me. I also find it a bit weird
that the same information will sometimes be treated as "designation of a
named revision of an edition" and sometimes as a straightforward
designation of edition. Consider another resource, where the source of
information only reads:
Reprinted with corrections
Then this would be recorded as the designation of edition, and not as
the "designation of a named revision of an edition" (simply because
there is no named edition to which the statement could refer).
I remember that there was a discussion in 2011 between the JSC and
members of the ISBD Review Group:
http://www.rda-jsc.org/2011jscisbdissnoutcomes.html
which also included this topic.
In the outcomes paper
http://www.rda-jsc.org/JSCISBDISSNOutcomesfinal.pdf
it says under 22.: "Designation of edition / Designation of a named
revision of an edition: BL rep will prepare a proposal on behalf of JSC
for merging these elements with a view to simplification of recording
edition. JSC will then share this with
ISBD RG."
Does anybody now whether such a proposal has been put forward? I can't
remember having come across it.
Heidrun
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Prof. Heidrun Wiesenmueller M.A.
Stuttgart Media University
Wolframstr. 32, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany
www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi
