RDA assumes that access points will be recorded in one of the RDA elements.  Most of our access points will fall into the elements creator or contributor and maybe a couple of others.  We have lists of relationship designators in I.2 and I.3 to add to these elements to specify them more precisely.  There is a separate element for publishers (21.3), so RDA assumes that if the element identifies it as a publisher, you don't need a relationship designator as well.  Appendix I.4.2 does in fact have one relationship designator to use with the element Publisher.  The problem comes from the fact that MARC wasn't built around RDA elements and doesn't have a specific field, e.g. some 7XX field, for publishers.

------------------------------------------
John Hostage 
Senior Continuing Resources Cataloger //
Harvard Library--Information and Technical Services //
Langdell Hall 194 //
Cambridge, MA 02138 
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> -----Original Message-----
> 
> I don't understand why there is no relationship designator "publisher,"
> though.  Is it assumed that if an entity does nothing but publish a resource, it
> does not need its own access point?  This is usually true, but not always--
> here at Vanderbilt we tend to trace small press publishers of what I call
> "fancy" books, as I'm sure many other libraries do.  Using "issuing body" for
> those entities seems like a silly workaround.  Any normal person thinks of
> that entity as a "publisher" (though perhaps also "printer"), and certainly not
> an "issuing body."
>