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Good edit, but I think I will leave out the bracketed section for now regarding making some optional practices mandatory for some scripts.

 

My brain is beginning to hurt.

Peter  

 

From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robert Rendall
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 3:13 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCTG1] Post PCC OpCo addendum to report; PCCNonLatinGuidelinesReportApr29.doc

 

My edit:

A third option would be for PCC to limit the practice set out in 1.5.2 (or certain appropriate subsets of it) to right-to-left scripts (Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and Yiddish). This would establish uniformity across a large body of PCC cataloging, but allow for flexibility where needed for these scripts. [and maybe: For some of these scripts it might be appropriate to make these alternative practices mandatory.]  However, cataloging in left-to-right scripts might also benefit from the optional practices described in 1.5.2., and the loss of those potential benefits would have to be weighed against the advantages of uniformity.

Robert.

Fletcher, Peter wrote:

What about this a third option text (following the addendum as an
additional paragraph:
  


"A third option would be for PCC to limit the practice set out in 1.5.2
(or certain appropriate subsets of it) to HAPY (Hebrew, Arabic, Persian,
and Yiddish; all right-to-left scripts) communities. This would require
more conformity across a large body of PCC cataloging, but allow for
flexibility where needed for these languages. However, other languages
may also benefit from optional headings practice and there may be no
firm logical reason to deny them those options."

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of D. Brooking
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 2:37 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCCTG1] Post PCC OpCo addendum to report;
PCCNonLatinGuidelinesReportApr29.doc

I see variation in the Cyrillic community as well. Most of it I think is

caused by the technical capabilities of the transliteration macro. That
is, if the whole heading is in a Cyrillic language and the macro can
transform it all, catalogers are reluctant to take the time to go back
and
un-Cyrillicize the qualifiers. Still attempting to impose the standard
in
the case of Cyrillic (or other left-to-right scripts) would not be
unreasonable in my opinion.

And at least some HAPY variation is due to right-to-left technical
difficulties with dates and qualifiers and such. But in those cases,
there
is no way the "standard" can be implemented, right? So maybe those
options
can be moved down to the special languages section of the guidelines.

The real answer lies in authority records and a way to link non-Latin
variants to the controlled heading, for both searching and display. It's

not clear to me if a preferred non-Latin form is necessary for this, but
I
would suspect it would make certain kinds of implementations a lot
easier.

Our report is probably a prime piece of evidence of the trouble you get
into without good authority control mechanisms. PCC Standards should
use this as an opportunity to push that forward.

And I do think our charge was to come up with a standard, not just
document current practice. I remember one thing they were hoping for was

to provide consistency across scripts.


************
Diana Brooking (206) 685-0389
Cataloging Librarian (206) 685-8782 fax
Suzzallo Library [log in to unmask]
University of Washington
Box 352900
Seattle WA 98195-2900

On Fri, 14 May 2010, Robert Rendall wrote:


Benjamin A Abrahamse wrote:
    
Re: "the amount of optionality in the guidelines could be reduced by
      
making 
  
some of the "optional" practices optional or mandatory for certain
      
script 
  
groups only", my impression was that we could not do this because
      
there was 
  
not a one-to-one correspondence between a given script/cataloging
      
community 
  
and a given "variant practice".  That is to say some cataloging
      
communities 
  
(particularly HAPY) had more than a single variant in their practice.
      
 
  
Right, but a lot of that variation is pretty much limited to HAPY.  If
    
we say 
  
everyone else is required to follow the "standard" practice, we'll
    
eliminate 
  
a lot of optionality right off the bat without making anyone very
    
unhappy. 
  
The idea of extending HAPY practices to e.g. CJK as an option was
    
basically a 
  
suggested innovation.  We could back off from that.  And then we could
    
see if 
  
PCC catalogers within individual HAPY script groups could agree on
    
single 
  
preferred practices within their own communities.  We can't make those
    
 
  
decisions for them, but we can recommend that they try.
 
Robert.