I would still like to discuss manifestation, which seems to be accepted but
I believe may be the difficult point. "Manifestation" or in earlier times,
unit card or unit record, didn't really exist until the creation of the card
catalog. Before that, throughout the centuries and more, printed catalogs
never described or detailed separate "manifestations" because there was no
need to. For an example, see:
http://tinyurl.com/yf765uo (A catalogue of books in the library of the
American Antiquarian Society: in Worcester, Massachusetts. American
Antiquarian Society. Library. Printed for the Society by Henry J. Howland,
1837. The powers of the Internet are wonderful!)
Look at the descriptions under Ainsworth's Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
Compendium, and try to pick out separate "manifestations." You can't do it
because they don't exist, but each "description" relies on the information
above it to provide complete information, e.g. Ainsworth is not repeated
over and over, and then we even have "Same" with 8vo, differing editions and
dates, i.e. each description supplies only the information that
distinguishes each one from the item above it. They may only say "Another
copy." Here is proof that you can make a coherent catalog without separate
"manifestations."
It was only when they changed over to the card catalog (for maintenance
purposes, by the way!) that readers were faced with the "unit record," or
separate catalog card. This was because of problems of disply since one card
could not easily refer to information contained on another card. As a
result, every card had to contain full information as to author, title,
publication, subjects etc. repeated over and over and over, otherwise a
separate card was simply unintelligible (e.g. a card could not contain only
"Same. 8vo. Philadelphia. 1806.") Early users of card catalogs found them
incredibly difficult to use and complained a lot. (Unfortunately, I can't
cite any sources from here)
This is why I maintain that the manifestation record is a continuation of
the catalog card, with all the problems and intellectual baggage that
implies. In my opinion, the "manifestation" that people are discussing,
instead of being hand-made groupings of different physical or virtual items,
and where people and communities *always* disagree, (Just read the arguments
about "should I make a new record" in Autocat) should be nothing but a
virtual view of the links going to expressions (OK, and works too!) and
items. Then, each catalog can decide how they want to display these records,
showing (or not) information that is repeated. The structure of the actual
database is out of my ken.
So, we should realize that that the separate manifestation record is
relatively new (only in the last 150 or so years), was controversial, and
led to a lot of confusion.
Consequently I ask: do we need to keep it, or is there a better way? I think
it's time to abandon both the card catalog and the catalog card forever,
although I am such a nerd, I love to study and use them!
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Thu Oct 22 2009 - 03:57:19 EDT