Yes, _dates_ !
Interesting issue. The kind of thing you mention can indeed be
annoying. Perhaps even more so in the case of something like,
say, the Epic of Gilgamesh, 2001 :-).
But *which*, and how many, dates would or should a catalog
record give ? And how ?
Plato can be a case in point. If your 1986 publication is an English
translation, its publication date is important. But the translator was
working from an edition of the Greek text, or maybe even from two
or several editions ( or, quite possibly, reprints of same ) ; each of
these had its own publication date. Of course, no two editions are
the same -- since Plato's original is not preserved, and each editor
has to establish a text based on sometimes tens or hundreds of
preserved manuscript copies of the dialogues, each with its own
date, from antiquity ( in the case of papyrus fragments ) into the
sixteenth century. An editor will very possibly also have used the
text version in the editio princeps, the first printed edition ( in
Plato's case 1513, though Ficino's Latin version came out already
in 1484 ) as well as perhaps other early editions, each with its own
date. The editor will have used in establishing the best possible
text not only the existing manuscripts, but also the conjectures of
earlier editors and other scholars, each with their own dates. On
top of all this, the exact dates of composition of the dialogues are
not known ( to say nothing of the dates of conception, or possible
revised versions, or apocrypha ) ; we speak normally of the "early",
the "middle" and the "late" dialogues. Nonetheless, scholars will
have proposed specific, or near-specific, or terminus-post-quem or
-ante-quem dates for some Platonic works.
Which of all these dates should find a place in next-generation
library cataloging ? Who makes the decisions ? Can these be even
approximately standardized ? Does it matter ?
- Laval Hunsucker
Knokke, België
>________________________________
>From: Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_ND.EDU>
>To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
>Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2011 4:07 PM
>Subject: [NGC4LIB] dates
>
>I wish a next-generation library catalog would include a field for date, not the date of the publication, but the date the thing was conceived. I'm tired of seeing works containing the dialogs of Plato and having a date of 1986 or whatever. IMHO, dumb!
>
>--
>Eric Lease Morgan
>University of Notre Dame
>
>
>
Received on Tue Jul 26 2011 - 11:41:57 EDT