As the cataloger who made the change to NAR n 92067082 (now: Lonergan, Bernard J. F. $t Works $s (Lonergan Research Institute)), I think it's most appropriate that I should step forward to defend my formulation.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to do this sooner, but I just returned to my office this morning after a week's vacation, during which I wasn't able to regularly access emails (for which I hope I may be excused...). I confess to some trepidation at re-opening this long discussion, but I did want to present my line of reasoning when I made the change.

Here are a number of points I'd like to make -- in no particular order, but numbered for ease of reference:

1. This AAP identifies a specific _edition_ of the works of Bernard Lonergan, so I believe that under RDA and FRBR it must be an expression-level access point, not a work-level access point. As an expression-level AAP, the presence of some qualifier in the string is required, as I understand it -- this is borne out by Bob Maxwell in his email of Wednesday evening, at point #3. It would certainly be advantageous, as has been pointed out, if we had a way of coding authority records to identify whether they are work-level or expression-level.

2. If this had been a straightforward bilingual edition, I would happily have followed the practice Bob describes, of adding a subfield $l for language immediately following the $t Works. But there is an additional wrinkle in this instance:

Lonergan wrote some of his works in Latin only, and some of his works in English only. This particular edition contains both categories of works. His Latin works are presented with parallel English translations, but his English-language works are (obviously) presented in English only.

It seemed to me to be needlessly complicating matters to create a situation in which the bibliographic records might have, in some instances, two 800's (i.e. for a volume containing one of his Latin works and its English translation):

800 1_ Lonergan, Bernard J. F. $t Works. $l Latin $s (Lonergan Research Institute) ; $v v. 1.
800 1_ Lonergan, Bernard J. F. $t Works. $l English $s (Lonergan Research Institute) ; $v v. 1.

and in other cases just one 800 (i.e. for a volume that contained one of his English-language works):

800 1_ Lonergan, Bernard J. F. $t Works. $l English $s (Lonergan Research Institute) ; $v v. 3.

So I chose to place the qualifier directly following the term Works, with no language field interposed.

3. As to whether the qualifier should reside in a subfield $s, I am happy to use the subfield $s in this way. I went back and forth on this question when making the edit. But it seemed to me that the documentation was less than clear. The evidence of existing AAP's cuts both way, and I recalled reading at some point that a qualifier used directly after the term Works was not subcoded. There are definitely other instances where no subcoding was used, for example:

no2016009550, Almada Negreiros, José de, $d 1893-1970. $t Works (Editorial Estampa)

no2015085532, Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, $d 1810-1865. ǂ$ Works (George Routledge and Sons)

I would be grateful for a clear statement in our documentation that it _is_ appropriate to use $s to set off a string used as a qualifier. It would be best, to my mind, to _always_ use $s to set off these qualifiers, regardless of whether the AAP being created is at the work or at the expression level.

4. Then there's the question of whether I should have changed the access point. I was upgrading NAR n 92067082 from AACR2 to RDA, so I felt that it was permissible to re-examine the heading and re-formulate it. That's open to question, I realize.

But I am a strong advocate of using textual strings rather than dates of publication in such instances -- it seems to me to be much friendlier to our users to choose textual strings over dates in such instances, and I am grateful that RDA offers this option.

Any user who is searching for the works of Bernard Lonergan will most likely also have heard of the Lonergan Research Institute, which is a prominent research institution and the major repository of his papers. They are much less likely to know that the first volume of this works edition came out in 1988.

Thanks to all who contributed to this stimulating discussion!

Charles Croissant

Senior Catalog Librarian
Pius XII Memorial Library
Saint Louis University
St. Louis, MO 63108

On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 7:44 PM, Robert Maxwell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Sorry I’m a bit late to the party.

I agree with most of what’s been said this afternoon:

1.       Yes, there can only be one RDA/FRBR work that represents the complete works (or purported complete works) of a single person, so an AAP with the preferred title “Works” will never need qualifying at the work level.

2.       Therefore, qualification has to occur at the expression level, if the cataloger feels different versions need to be distinguished from each other. Note that if there is only one version, no qualifier (whether a date, or a parenthetical qualifier) is needed at all, except

3.       As has been pointed out, if the complete works are presented as a series, it probably always needs some sort of qualification because the resulting 8XX indexing form in the bibliographic record doesn’t make much sense as “… $t Works ; $v v. 10” (given the possibility that there might be another non-series version out there)

4.       All qualifiers (date of work, form, anything) at the work level are within parentheses with no subfield coding

5.       All qualifiers at the expression level are preceded by some sort of subfield coding; they don’t all go in parentheses, it depends on what the qualifier is (e.g., date of expression does not go in parentheses)

6.       So, Pete is correct, Lonergan, Bernard J. F. $t Works (Lonergan Research Institute) is not correct, it needs subfield coding ($s, as Adam has pointed out)

Whew. All that being said, “Lonergan, Bernard J. F. $t Works $s (Lonergan Research Institute)” is a perfectly fine AAP at the expression level, but the presence or absence of subfield coding being the only clue that it’s at the expression level and not at the work level seems pretty thin to me and must be quite opaque to our users (if not most catalogers). (This comment applies to any work/expression AAP, not just ones involving the conventional collective title “Works”.)

This is one reason I favor routinely including the language for textual expressions, even for original-language expressions: “Lonergan, Bernard J. F. $t Works. $l English $s (Lonergan Research Institute)”. The inclusion of the language makes it completely clear that the AAP is for an expression, especially in the absence of any marker in the MARC authority format that explicitly distinguishes work-level authority records from expression-level authority records.

It also clarifies to our users that the text is in a particular language. I realize that all that is necessary from an RDA standpoint is enough to distinguish the expression from all other expressions, which “(Lonergan Research Institute)” or a date do perfectly well, but our users do use the labels we attach to these things to help choose between resources or even decide to give a given resource a second look beyond the index.

Bob

Robert L. Maxwell
Ancient Languages and Special Collections Librarian
6728 Harold B. Lee Library
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801)422-5568