All this makes some sort of sense to me, but I don't see how this leads you to argue that the publication details should be in the item?
Owen
Owen Stephens
Assistant Director: e-Strategy and Information Resources
Imperial College London Library
Imperial College London
South Kensington
London SW7 2AZ
Tel: 020 7594 8829
Email: o.stephens_at_imperial.ac.uk
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Weinheimer Jim
> Sent: 05 December 2007 08:58
> To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Martha Yee's cataloging rules fo
>
> Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
>
> > Manifestation is simply the entity that we have always
> cataloged in a
> > 'bib record'. I'm confused as to why you are claiming that
> there are
> > conceptual problems with manifestation, or that it's only a "virtual
> > view" in a way different than the other entities. To me,
> manifestation
> > is instead the fundamental entity cataloging has traditionally been
> > concerned with---to the contrary, I consider work and
> expression to be
> > essentially 'virtual views' of sets of manifestations, but
> manifestation
> > to be the fundamental entity. (And 'item' is something that
> generally
> > only rare-materials people are concerned
> with----traditional cataloging
> > has never been concerned with describing the item level, has it?)
> >
> > Are we understanding FRBR differently?
>
> In cataloging, there has always been a problem of whether you
> catalog the intellectual aspect of an item, or the physical
> aspect of an item. There have been several problems in this
> regard, and technically, it is called "content vs. carrier"
> Cataloging rules have almost always concentrated on carrier
> and not so much with content. I don't want to speak for
> Martha, but that is probably why she said that "we have to
> believe the publishers" when it comes to edition statements.
>
> There are different states of a text that a book can go
> through. I remember reading about one of Mark Twain's books
> where he used "flickered" in a book, but during publication,
> he changed this to "flittered." No difference in paging, no
> difference in dates, or publication information, yet, if you
> find one of the 10 or so exemplars with "flickered," you can
> probably pay off your house. In library cataloging, we never
> look this closely, but the public often thinks we work to
> this level, or at least that we should. Therefore, I could
> get a book with the same title, publication information,
> paging, and series, and consider it to be a copy, while in
> reality, the text itself might be quite different if not
> completely different.
>
> How we determine a copy is based on LC Rule Interpretation
> 1.0 (http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcri1_0.html) or now the
> ALA publication "Differences between, changes within"
> (http://www.ala.org/ala/alctscontent/alctspubsbucket/webpublic
> ations/cataloging/newrecord/Differences07.pdf ).
>
> These give quite different guidelines for determining when
> something is a copy or not. An example is: there is a record
> with the same title, publication information, series, etc.,
> but it has 351 pages and mine has 353 pages. Is this a copy
> or a new edition? In LC terms, it is very definitely a new
> edition and therefore gets a new record, p. 8:
> "2) anything in the following areas or elements of areas
> differs from one bibliographic record to
> another: title and statement of responsibility area, edition
> area, the extent statement of the physical
> description area, and series area. (For an exception relating
> to CIP items, see below.)"
>
> but in the ALA guidelines, it's quite the opposite:
> "A5a. Extent of item (including specific material
> designation). A different extent
> of item, including the specific material designation,
> indicating a significant difference
> in extent or in the nature of the resource is MAJOR. Minor
> variations due to
> bracketed or estimated information are MINOR. Variation or
> presence vs. absence of
> preliminary paging is MINOR. Use of an equivalent
> conventional term vs. a specific
> material designation is MINOR. For example:
> • 351 p. vs. 353 p. is MINOR"
>
> So, we have contradictory rules and we must decide which to
> follow. As you see, if we follow the LC rule, we can conclude
> that the physical items included in it have exactly 351
> pages, but in the ALA guidelines, it's SOMEWHERE AROUND 351
> pages. A big difference, especially when we are discussing
> different expressions.
>
> Now, as far as I know, the copy with 351 pages and the one
> with 353 pages may be the same expression, or almost, or
> whatever. In fact, I don't know if it's the same with just a
> couple of empty pages that got numbered or has some kind of
> substantial revision.
>
> It is important to realize that this is only one tiny, little
> point in determining the differences between content vs.
> carrier, but cataloging is based on many of these tiny,
> little points. When you include publication/printing dates,
> variations in almost everything, sizes, movies, serials, etc.
> etc. you can have all kinds of differences from one "copy" to
> another. But I would suggest that very few people care if
> Random Hourse or Blackwells or Wiley or Brill published a
> certain work/expression--they are much more interested in the
> expression itself, no matter who happened to publish it.
>
> One item may have:
> WAR AND PEACE
> LEO TOLSTOY
> and another item is exactly the same with all publication
> information, dates, paging, title and so on, but it has:
> WAR AND PEACE
> BY LEO TOLSTOY
>
> Is this the same item or not? Does the word "BY" make that
> much of a difference? In some rules it makes a huge
> difference, in others it is totally irrelevant. The examples
> can go on and one. The reason why there is all this variation
> is because we have to shoehorn everything into this
> "manifestation" record.
>
> Now, multiply these differences by varying rules and
> practices around the world (remember, the ALA/LC differences
> are both based on AACR2 and ISBD!) but others around the
> world are based on completely different rules, or they have
> their own interpretations of ISBD.
>
> I may be nitpicking here, but I don't think I am. If I am
> considering adding something to my collection and the record
> says 351 pages, while my item has 354 pages, do I just decide
> that it's a duplicate and discard it? If I decide to discard
> it, is this the best for our users? Would my users be angry
> if they found out what I am doing? If I have to get up, go
> get the book and look at the individual item, then the very
> purpose of putting in the paging becomes useless. If I follow
> the ALA rules above, my catalog record doesn't even tell me
> how many pages the items have in my collection.
>
> How does all this fit into the new formats? Yes,
> manifestation describes what we have always done, but are
> there possibilities of actually being more accurate by
> measuring expressions with word counts and file compares
> instead of the relatively inaccurate method of page numbers?
> Will we forever be forced to describe the physical aspects of
> a resource when people really want different expressions?
>
> Anyway, these are some of my concerns when we assume that the
> publication information (describing the physical item)
> determines the expression. I realize this is how it has been
> done from the time of the card catalog and before, but it is
> a practice that has always had problems and could be
> reconsidered with better tools such as word counts, and file compares.
>
> Jim Weinheimer
>
Received on Wed Dec 05 2007 - 04:29:16 EST