[DCRB-L] WG4, Pt. I - whys and wherefores

[Brian Hillyard]

A couple of comments arising out of Jain Fletcher's paper on Collection
Level cataloguing as posted by Deborah Leslie

"1)  Collection level treatment might be employed to address situations
where the individual items tend to fall into lower cataloging
priorities.  Two examples of this kind of situation are given below.
...  In either of the types of categories given above, the intention is
that each piece will eventually be cataloged.  In these cases, the
collection level record will be deleted when the individual parts have
been completed."

COMMENT   Provided that when individual parts have been completed the
collection-level record states that each piece is also separately
catalogued, I can't easily imagine a reason for wanting to delete a
collection-level record.  Sometimes there may be a reason, but it would
be uncomfortable if DCRM laid itself open to a charge of treating as
normal the removal of records that could be interpreted as enhancing
access.

"2)  Collection level treatment can be considered for collections whose
elements have similarity of title, authorship, subject, or genre/format,
might be so extensive that the addition of each piece into a database
would generate a multiplicity of similar entries and actually serve to
hide rather than aid access to it."

COMMENT   In the context of both this point and the later point (3) it
is worth considering provenance indexing.  For interest and convenience
I'm pasting in at the end relevant parts of the Guidelines for the
Cataloguing of Rare Books (London: Library Association Rare Books Group,
2nd edition, 1999). 
 
When David Pearson and I compiled these Guidelines on behalf of the Rare
Books Group in late 1996, the catalyst was the addition of "rare book"
fields to UKMARC in 1992.  The only section (C, Provenance and Binding
Information: Recording and Indexing) in which we strayed into the
drafting of descriptive cataloguing rules was the area of the record
that we thought DCRB (i.e. 7C18) had not covered in much detail.  In
1996 we were responding to an interest in book history that had perhaps
been less marked when DCRB was being written, and now in 2003 I think
there is even greater interest to respond to.  There is a case for
expanding 7C18, to include the point about collection-level treatment
and to follow through Deborah's general Area 7 aim "Promote use of
standardized terminology (from thesauri) and other conventions of
transcriptions (especially for illegible text, expansions) in note
area."
 
>From RBG Guidelines:
A.3.4 In the case of large collections or composite volumes which have
many examples of the same or similar copy-specific details,
collection-level records may be worth considering: but records for
individual items should still contain notes on copy-specific details so
that these details are available to users accessing individual records
via other access points.  see further C.2.4.
C.2.4  At both levels [sc. minimum and higher], added entries with
relator terms should be made for each distinguishable former owner.  In
the case of collections or composite volumes sharing a provenance, the
advantages of indexing that provenance via a single added entry for a
collection-level record should be kept in mind, although provenance
evidence should continue to be described at item level (cf. A.3.4). [fn
29]
Footnote 29  By way of example consider:
245 $a[A composite volume of 8 pamphlets, 1754-1780, relating to John
Home's Douglas]
561 $aArmorial bookplate on front pastedown: David Hume Esq. (D.F.
Norton & M.J. Norton, The David Hume Library, p. 100, no.630)$sLO/N-99
700 $aHume$hDavid$c1711-1776$yformer owner$sLO/N-99
This is a collection-level record for a volume containing eight
pamphlets.  Assuming that each item in this volume is also individually
catalogued, this record could be used to provide the access point for
David Hume as former owner of these eight pamphlets: but in order to
make somebody looking at any of the individual records aware of the
provenance of that item, it would remain necessary for each individual
record to have a note about the bookplate on the front pastedown.  This
method could also be used for a large collection of books sharing a
former owner, in which case the advantages of not having a large number
of separate added entries for the same former owner would be more
obvious.


(NOTE in 2003.  I can see now that it would have been worth making the
same point about describing/indexing bindings, particularly for
composite volumes in which by definition the individual items share a
binding.)

Brian Hillyard

-- 
Dr Brian Hillyard
Head of Rare Books
National Library of Scotland
EDINBURGH EH1 1EW
e-mail: b.hillyard@nls.uk
Fax: 0131 466 2807 *** Tel: 0131 226 4531
Library website: http://www.nls.uk