On 6/14/2015 5:18 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
> BF claims to be "cataloging rules neutral." The variant title class
> doesn't seem to support that neutrality. I also wouldn't be surprised if
> there were other such cases in BF. Perhaps this harks back to a
> conflation of goals: a general bibliographic framework vs. the
> replacement for the heavily Anglo-American biased MARC format.

I don't know if it's even possible to be "neutral" here. The idea of 
"Variant titles" presupposes that there are specific title(s) that take 
precedence. In AACR2/RDA, there is the very cataloging idea of "chief 
source of information" (CSI) and there are rules describing how to find 
it on each type of format (books, journals, videos, maps, etc.). Our 
cataloging rules state that the main title comes from the CSI while 
other titles are different types of variants. Not every bibliographic 
agency has this concept of "chief source of information" however and I 
personally have not come across this concept outside the library community.

Plus, there are simply different concepts. As an example, here are the 
codes for "Title types" for ONIX, which is designed for book 
publishers--certainly one group we should be considering. I can't point 
to a webpage for this. You must download it locally as a zip file from 
http://www.editeur.org/93/Release-3.0-Downloads/. I hope it can be read 
in this message. Apologies if not.

> 00 	Undefined 	
> 01 	Distinctive title (book); Cover title (serial); Title on item (serial content item or reviewed resource) 	The full text of the distinctive title of the item, without abbreviation or abridgement. For books, where the title alone is not distinctive, elements may be taken from a set or series title and part number etc to create a distinctive title. Where the item is an omnibus edition containing two or more works by the same author, and there is no separate combined title, a distinctive title may be constructed by concatenating the individual titles, with suitable punctuation, as in “Pride and prejudice / Sense and sensibility / Northanger Abbey”.
> 02 	ISSN key title of serial 	Serials only.
> 03 	Title in original language 	Where the subject of the ONIX record is a translated item.
> 04 	Title acronym or initialism 	For serials: an acronym or initialism of Title Type 01, eg “JAMA”, “JACM”.
> 05 	Abbreviated title 	An abbreviated form of Title Type 01.
> 06 	Title in other language 	A translation of Title Type 01 into another language.
> 07 	Thematic title of journal issue 	Serials only: when a journal issue is explicitly devoted to a specified topic.
> 08 	Former title 	Books or serials: when an item was previously published under another title.
> 10 	Distributor’s title 	For books: the title carried in a book distributor’s title file: frequently incomplete, and may include elements not properly part of the title.
> 11 	Alternative title on cover 	An alternative title that appears on the cover of a book.
> 12 	Alternative title on back 	An alternative title that appears on the back of a book.
> 13 	Expanded title 	An expanded form of the title, eg the title of a school text book with grade and type and other details added to make the title meaningful, where otherwise it would comprise only the curriculum subject. This title type is required for submissions to the Spanish ISBN Agency.
> 14 	Alternative title 	An alternative title that the book is widely known by, whether it appears on the book or not.

So, we see lots of differences, not least of all with terminology. For 
instance, library use of "Distinctive title" means some quite specific, 
and different, from what we see here. We do not see a uniform/preferred 
title. The closest could be "Title in original language" and/or "Former 
title".

"Alternative title" in ONIX also means something totally different from 
what a library cataloger understands. Here, it seems to mean what 
"Variant title" means to a cataloger, but ONIX expands it to front and 
back cover.

I think it is very difficult to make anything neutral.

James Weinheimer [log in to unmask]
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