Meeting Notes

Bibliographic Standards Committee Manuscripts Working Group

ALA Annual 2011 Meeting, New Orleans

June 27-28, 2011

Present: Alison Bridger (Wisconsin Historical Society), Deborah J. Leslie (Folger Shakespeare Library), Jennifer Nelson (Robbins Collection, Law Library, UC Berkeley), Margaret Nichols (Cornell University, chair), Elizabeth O’Keefe (The Morgan Library), Heather Wolfe (Folger Shakespeare Library)

We worked on Rules 7A to 7B4.4 Attributions, which included discussion of some rules related to Area 7.

1E3. Transposition of statements of responsibility

•  We are not instructing to make a note when a statement of responsibility is transposed because manuscripts are unique items; we are not trying to distinguish one edition from another as in books.

7A. Preliminary Rule

•  We combined 7A5.1 (citing other works) and 7A5.2 (citing other works and other manifestations of the same work) into one rule, "7A5 Notes citing other works and other versions of the same work."

7B. Notes

•  Order of Notes
•  There were several suggestions:
•  Make Access Restrictions 7B1.
• Put the Scope and Content note before the Biographical/Historical/Administrative Context note.
• Follow the traditional order of the description.
• This order: Restrictions (506), Biographical/Historical (545), Language (546), Scope and Content (520)
• No final decision was made.
• Sentence Formation of Notes in the Examples
• We briefly discussed the use of full sentence formation in notes vs. the traditional, abbreviated sentence structure. Deborah will check RDA and talk to the DCRM(G) and DCRM(C) editors.
• Questions
• Do we need to have a note for everything mentioned in areas 1-5? We think we do not so will probably be combining several notes into more general ones.
• 7B1. Biographical/historical/administrative context
• Continue to think about the wording of this rule.
• 7B3.4 Title in a later script or hand
• Revisit the wording of this header to include:
• A different hand
• Typed, stamped, etc. titles
• 7B3.6 Devised title for a manuscript known by a nickname
• AACR2 uses “physical manuscript” for manuscripts with a nickname.
• We decided to call it “byname” and will include a definition in the glossary.
•  7B3.7 Non-title information on the title page or colophon  
• The note reads: Make a note transcribing or describing non-title information appearing on the title page, colophon, or caption. 
•  Is this instruction necessary, since there isn't a comparable note in B?
• 7B3.12 (Title from a location in the manuscript other than title page, colophon or caption) and 7B3.13 (Title from reference sources) were deleted as the instructions are already covered in 7B3.2 Source of formal title.
  
• 7B18 "With" notes
• We had an in-depth discussion on this and ultimately decided to keep the note since it is helpful to know that those works listed in the note have their own separate instructions.  
• 7B4.4 Attributions:
• DCRM(B) 7B6.3 Attributions reads like rules, not notes. Why aren't these rules in 1E instead?
• The meeting ended before finishing this rule.

Changes to Make to Other Areas

• 1. Title and Statement of Responsibility:
• Review the entire area, particularly 1C (Formal title) for redundancy.
• Deborah will make editorial changes and submit Area 1 to Jenny.
• 1B. Devised title:
•  Include instructions to see 7B1 Biographical/historical/administrative context if there is ambiguity about the creator.
• Do we want to add a rule to 1B regarding a dubious creator, as in 1E2.2 (If the name(s) of the person or persons in the statement of responsibility is abbreviated, unclear, or known to be a pseudonym, make an explanatory note)?
• 1B (Devised title) and 1C (Formal title): If the title is not informative enough, a scope and content note is required, see 7B2.
• 1B3 Legal documents: Add to the optional components as the last bullet point, to give full addresses in a note if abridged in the title.
• 1B5 Manuscript know by a nickname in reference or other sources: Change “nickname” to “byname” in the heading and text of the rule.
• 1B and 1F Collective title rules
• Discussion of "7B2.11. Manuscript containing two or more works described together prompted a conversation on possibly combining the instructions in 1B6 (Manuscript containing two or more works lacking a collective title) and 1F (Manuscripts without a collective title). It is uncertain as to whether this will work, but Liz will look at it.
• 1C1.2.4.1: We might reword this to explicitly exclude reference sources. The rule does not actually mention reference sources, but it refers readers to 1C1.1 which does.
• 1C2.3.1: delete “If considered important, make a note to indicate the original position on the title page of any transposed elements” since it is stated earlier in 1C2.1 Words considered part of the title proper.
• Should that instruction go even higher up in 1C? Maybe 1C1 rather than 1C2?
• 5. Physical Description Area: where we have “place of creation” and “date of creation” change to “place of production” and “date of production.” The creation and production places and dates may be different, but these rules are for production, not creation.
• Appendixes:
• Appendix F. Title Access Points
• In some cases when using a devised title, the describer might want to provide access to what appears on the manuscript.
• New appendix: Examples
•  Include full examples.
• Glossary:
• Add: Attribution

Assignments

See "Assignments following June 2011 Meeting" on the Assignments page. 

Submitted by Kate Moriarty October 12, 2011