Martha Yee wrote on 12/10/2007 06:27:54 PM:
> I know that the fact that I have included publisher information at three
> levels in the rules and the model has caused some confusion, so I wanted
to
> discuss it a bit. I thought it might be useful to some catalog users to
> have the following information readily available:
>
> 1. The first publisher to ever publish this work.
> 2. The first publisher to ever publish this expression.
>
> ...in addition to the information that we would collect routinely at the
> manifestation level:
>
> 3. The publisher of each particular manifestation.
>
> This raises a few questions. 1) Would this be useful to a significant
> number of users? 2) Would this have to be collected by catalogers, or
could
> it be generated automatically by computers? I suppose the concomitant
> questions would be: 1) Would our hypothetical virtual catalog usually
have
> all editions ever published of a particular work? 2) If not, would the
> information be available to catalogers in a significant number of cases?
I confess I have not studied your rules, so I hope this comment is not off
base, but a very concrete case occurs to me, a Kalmus edition of three
motets by Josquin des Prez, including a lovely Christmas motet "In
principio erat verbum" (OCLC # 47735825). Kalmus was established in 1926.
It was acquired by Belwin-Mills, which was later acquired by Columbia
Pictures, which was later acquired by Warner Bros., which, I think,
recently sold the Kalmus catalog to Alfred Publications. I count five
different flavors of Kalmus publications, which differ only by the design
of the cover and perhaps title page. It is not unusual for the same
publication to be represented in OCLC in two or more of these flavors.
They are mostly undated reprints, and any information that could identify
the original publisher has been removed. I am looking at a record for the
Warner Bros. flavor, and it has the Kalmus catalog number K 06150. Whoever
cataloged it recognized it as a reprint of an edition published as v. 23
of the series Das Chorwerk, published in Wolfenbüttel by Mösler in 1933.
But at what point in the corporate history did Kalmus first reprint this
collection? Or does it matter?
I am not inclined to look up whether this particular motet was ever
printed in Josquin's lifetime or how many manuscript sources there are,
but that information is available in the current set of his complete
works. Does it matter in terms of establishing the identity of the work?
I suspect that that whoever cataloged the Kalmus edition knew the Das
Chorwerk series and recognized it. Most of the time, records for Kalmus
reprints do not identify the source edition. It might be nice to know, but
is it necessary for the catalog? How much effort must be expended to find
the tracks that Kalmus has deliberately covered?
You have put publisher information at three levels because some users
might find it useful. And they well might if catalogers can find it at
all. I keep hoping for some kind of mechanism for someone being able to
fill in some blanks in a way that everyone else can use the information.
If it ever becomes possible to code a link to an authority record as
opposed to copying a heading from one, then eventually all kinds of blanks
will be filled in. People who really care about the original publisher of
a work or expression will be able to find it if any cataloger ever has.
Until then, I don't see the top two levels of publication information as
practical.
I am very glad you are working on this and that so many others are working
with you. It is a very hopeful step.
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
David Guion
Music Cataloger
University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Jackson Library
320 College Ave.
Greensboro, NC 27412
(336) 334-5781
dmguion_at_uncg.edu
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Received on Tue Dec 11 2007 - 10:41:41 EST