Weinheimer Jim wrote:
> Do you believe that two items with different dates and/or different
> pagings should be put into the same manifestation? Should a hardback
> and a paperback be put in together? What if one item's statement of
> responsibility is slightly different from another? How much variation
> between items should be tolerated and still be inside the same
> manifestation?
If it is convenient to us to do so, and represents the best trade-off
between staff time and user needs, then, yes--same manifestation. The
answer to "how much variation between items should be tolerated" is not
an 'existential' one of platonic reality, but is one that can only be
determined by a practicing community of catalogers with a real community
of users--it's a question of determining the optimal amount of energy we
can and should put into it to maximize benefit to our users per
cataloging time put in. (But I don't mean with this technical language
to imply it can necessarily be objectively or mathematically measured;
evidence can and should be brought to bear, but it's ultimately a
judgement call--and hopefully a collective community judgement call. But
different communities may make different calls, and we need to learn to
live in that world.)
We have of course certain practices now (with varying levels of
consistency) of deciding "how much variation"; perhaps these need to be
updated, perhaps there is room to make them more consistent (or at least
more explicit), but I don't think it's possible to answer the question
of "how much variation" with "none whatsoever, and if we can't be sure
there's none whatsoever, then we don't put them into the same
manifestation"---I think that is not only unworkable for cooperative
cataloging, but _also_ is entirely unneccesary and not particularly
beneficial to most of our users.
Jonathan
> Jim Weinheimer
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--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Wed Dec 05 2007 - 16:50:29 EST