Author: zemkat

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RDA Tip of the Week: Relationships

Many fields in RDA records now include relator terms to describe more precise relationships between entities in a consistent way. Some relators appear in a subfield at the end of the field:

100 1_ ǂa Green, John, ǂd 1977-, ǂe author.
700 1_ ǂa Bourguignon, Laurence, ǂe translator.

Some appear at the beginning of the field:

700 1_ ǂi Based on (work): ǂa Key, Watt. ǂt Fourmile.
700 1_ ǂi Abridgement of (expression): ǂa Hughes, Laurence P. ǂt Two.

There may even be two relator terms in one field:

100 1_ ǂa DeSerranno, Daniel, ǂd 1968- ǂe author, ǂe illustrator.
700 1_ ǂa Brooks, James L., ǂe director, ǂe producer.

Some relationships do not need extra relator terms in a MARC record, as they are already precisely described by MARC fields and indicators; for example, 7XX with second indicator 2:

700 12 ǂa Martel, Yann. ǂt Life of Pi.

indicates that the work in that field is contained in the main work described in the record.

Encoding these relationships is causing some difficulty now (some catalogs consider “Cai, Luo, ǂe author” to be a different person from “Cai, Luo”, for example) but they will be increasingly useful in a linked data environment.

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Areawide land capabilities and natural resources utilization study, FIVCO ADD : Greenup, Boyd, Carter, Elliott, Lawrence / prepared by Mayes, Sudderth & Etheredge, Inc. (OCLC #871201008)

This large folded map shares most metadata (title, creator, date down to the month) with a book we already have in storage, though its record doesn’t mention an accompanying map of FIVCO (“the five county area”).

If I’d had both of these in hand initially, I probably would have cataloged them together, with a physical description like:

300 __ ‡a 62 pages ; ‡c 28 cm + ‡e 1 folded map.

(note the lack of period after the cm, that would have been there under AACR2!)

Substantive accompanying materal does justify a new record in OCLC, so I didn’t want to just tack it on to our local book record. I passed it on to our map cataloger, who added it to our map collection with its own original record.

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Икота : мифологический персонаж в локальной традиции / Ольга Христофорова (OCLC #871437486)

This book about demonic possession (or “Demoniac Possession” in LCSH) has a title proper which also translates to “hiccups”. Though the two are linked, a bit of reading confirmed that the word had another specific meaning: the Slavic concept of “ikota” is similar to the Jewish “dybbuk”, both being spirits that possess and control people. (Hooray for subject cataloging to distinguish between the two!)

I am somewhat relieved that the book is about demons, because I wouldn’t know where to classify a non-fiction book primarily about hiccups in LC; maybe with other reflexes or spasms, or with the diaphragm? I searched OCLC and found only a few non-fiction works (none classed in LC); mostly I found folklore and juvenile fiction. With all due respect to the hiccupotamus, this seems like an oversight.

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Environmental geology today / Robert L. McConnell, Daniel C. Abel. (OCLC #635477370)

More like Environmental geology tomorrow! Though we have had the book in hand since February 2014, it has copyright date 2015 (even on the publisher web site) and no stated publication date.

The OCLC BibFormats page for field 260 has a nice table that says: in the case where the book is received one year but only has a copyright date of the following year, it should be treated as having a single date (the copyright date).

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The Munsell book of color. Matte collection. (OCLC #871204356)

This binder of color chips appears to be a classic tool for precisely communicating colors; the earliest version in OCLC is from 1929.

The copy I have in hand has no dates on it, and vendor web sites don’t mention when it was last revised. No records in OCLC quite matched it, and the differences were major enough to justify a new record in OCLC: slight change in subtitle, different tools included in a pocket, etc.

It is not surprising that there are so many new and different editions. The back of the binder has a blank to record the date you first use the book, so you can keep track of when it expires (two years later), ceasing to be a faithful representation of those colors, so the publisher may not keep a large stock of the current edition.

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The Early-Middle Mississippian Borden-Grainger-Fort Payne delta/basin complex : field evidence for delta sedimentation, basin starvation, mud-mound genesis, and tectonism during the Neoacadian Orogeny / Frank R. Ettensohn, R. Thomas Lierman, Devi B.P. Udgata, Charles E. Mason. (OCLC #871038597)

Based on its pagination (345-395), this guidebook is part of a larger publication, for which I was able to find a record in OCLC.

Under RDA, the extent of the text is recorded as:

pages 345-395

I recorded the whole-part relationship as well:

Contained in (work):
From the Blue Ridge to the coastal plain.
Boulder, Colorado : The Geological Society of America, 2012.
(OCoLC)820469930
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RDA Tip of the Week: Words and letters as pagination

In an RDA record, when page numbers are spelled out in words, record the pagination using the numeric equivalent. For example, if the page numbers go from “four” to “eighty-two”, record the extent as:

    82 pages

There are no brackets in this field! Extent of text (RDA 3.4.5) is recorded, not transcribed, so it contains the number of pages with no indication that it is spelled out (though you can mention it a note if it seems important).

A sequence of letters is different from spelled out numbers, though; if pages are numbered with letters (like A-R), record that range of letters:

    A-R pages

This is also different from pre-pages with Roman numerals. For example, for a book that is numbered in two sequences i-xi, 1-299, record the extent:

    xi, 299 pages

If those Roman numerals are just part of the main sequence (i-ix, 10-299), ignore the that the form of numbering has changed:

    299 pages
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Memoria de Mario : a deshoras y siempre con Mario Benedetti / Juan Cruz Ruiz. (OCLC #862740886)

This piece has an elastic band around it because it’s not actually bound; it’s just a stack of papers, each folded in half. The current (AACR2) record has the extent as

84 loose folded p. : ǂb ill.

though that should probably be an [84]. The (backs of the) pages are numbered in Spanish words: cuatro, seis, … ochenta y dos (so maybe even [82]).

RDA 3.4.5.2 says to record pages that are numbered in words using their numeric equivalent, so that would be:

82 pages

I would probably mention the loose/folded aspect in a note; some libraries may bind the piece, so it doesn’t seem like an essential descriptor, unless one is doing rare book cataloging. RDA’s “volume (loose leaf)” term appears to be more for updating loose-leaf volumes.

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Silurian rocks of East-Central Kentucky, including adjacent underlying and overlying units / Tom Lierman. (OCLC #871037733)

The geological society that runs this yearly field trip has had several names over the years (Kentucky Society of Professional Geologists, Geological Society of Kentucky, Kentucky Geological Society), so the field trip guidebook series has also had different names: Field conference guidebook (name of the society at the time of publication).

Our local authority records for these series indicate that they should be classed together (646 ǂa c), and that they share a common call number (with the year added). We have a complete enough collection of these guidebooks that our patrons now expect to find them together. A different library might choose to class each volume separately; for example, with other books about the geological period they describe.

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Annual review of analytical chemistry (Palo Alto, Calif.) (OCLC #85479636)

We didn’t find a monograph record for this volume when it came through the gifts process, which was just as well; we already had a couple of volumes of this title on a continuing resources record, and this individual volume probably would not have benefited from additional subject analysis.