Weinheimer Jim wrote:
>
> Again, different libraries will consider these things in different ways. The Encyclopedia Britannica is one title, but has several volumes. This is simple. But there may be other publications that come out in a series (Little golden books) and one library may catalog each one separately, while another has different needs, or fewer resources, and catalogs them all under the single title "Little golden books" (v. 1, v. 2, v. 3, etc.).
>
> It's not a science, but I guess people figure that it all more or less comes together in the end.
>
Definitely not always. There was and remains that wide chasm between
some European rules and AACR concerning those multipart publications
that have both a collective title AND individual titles on the numbered
volumes. AACRians consider those as one title comprising several parts,
like as if they were chapters only, and go on to make one record and
stuff all the part titles into a 505 where no amount of artificial
intelligence can pluck them apart and index them as titles.
OR (exclusive or) they give every part its MARC record and put
the series into an 800 $a $t.
In individual libraries, you can find either this or that treatment.
Example: Tolkien's "Lord of the Ring" series. Each part can be cited
and read independently of the series.
This practice runs counter to the intentions and concepts of RDA
and needs to be trashed. The only sound practice is to regard the
explicitly named series as a work and each part as a separate work
that needs to be related (linked) to the former, as indeed RDA 24.4
and 24.6 together with 6.27.2.2 indicate.
LT, on the other hand, lumps titles together into a "series" which
are not numbered and not, by the publisher, open and formally declared
to belong to one formal entity by putting them under one and the
same series title, like for instance E. George's "Inspector Lynley"
series. A series title has thus to be invented by the
metadata editors. There may even be wide consensus on both the
concept and the invented titles, but this "method" would be hard
to formulate into a rule that could be incorporated into RDA or
any catalog code at all.
B. Eversberg
Received on Tue Feb 17 2009 - 04:45:20 EST