2 messages, 97 lines:
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Date:         Wed, 15 Sep 1993 01:21:13 -0600
From:         "T.F. Mills" <tomills@DIANA.CAIR.DU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Successive entry and common sense

> Successive entry vs. latest entry

As I write I do not have access to AACR, LCRI, etc.-- so I can't cite
chapter and verse very effectively; and my local PAC has crashed-- so
I can't find precise examples ... but some general theoretical
comments on successive entry are in order.

I should begin with the disclaimer that I firmly favor successive
entry for all the standard reasons of international
standards/networking/cooperation, clarity and precision of entries,
etc.  That said, it is also obvious that successive entry has its
problems, of which two stand out in my mind:

1.  The application of successive entry rules eventually brings up the
question of common sense.  While it is easy to appeal to same, it is
very difficult to codify common sense, and it is also painfully
obvious from any perusal of an OPAC or the OCLC database that most
catalogers are quite lacking in this commodity and very rigid in their
application of the rules.  There are even numerous instances of OCLC
records being revised to merge successive entries where a cataloger
once imagined a title change where there was none.  AACR2 and LCRI
could probably use an even more liberalized, yet precise, definition
of what constitutes a title change.  For example, most film buffs
know that "Screen World" has always been "Screen World"; only a
serials cataloger is likely to know that it has gone through the
following "title changes":

        Screen world
        Daniel Blum's Screen world
        John Willis' Screen world
        Screen world

In fact, the last title change consists solely of the omission of an
apostrophe, and thus the application of another rule (i.e. the
grammatically linked statement of responsibility, which seems
particularly absurd for serials).  Successive entry in this instance
does not appear at all user friendly.  Since I was recently doing a
retro cleanup of this title, and we only had one entry in our catalog,
I modified it into latest entry form.  I may have violated the letter
of the law, but I think this is within the spirit of AACR2.

2.  Linking fields do not appear to be well handled in OPACS.
Successive entries would indeed be user friendly if they displayed
successively in an online catalog and/or a single keystroke jumped the
user from one entry to the next.  Perhaps a fellow "Serialst" can
identify for us what systems support such use of the linking fields.
I work in a CARL environment, which until recently did not seem to
even recognize the existence of linking fields.  Now it does, but only
in the sense of creatively and unhelpfully reinterpreting standard
usage of display constants.  User groups should exert pressure on
their systems managers to make the necessary enhancements to make full
use of linking fields.

T.F. Mills
University of Denver
tomills@du.edu

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Date:         Wed, 15 Sep 1993 10:16:50 EDT
From:         "Enrique E. Gildemeister" <EEGLC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Successive entry vs. latest entry

Administrators love latest entry cataloging. RLIN is more lax than OCLC
about following standards, and I know that there is at least one RLG
member that is doing latest entry cataloging.

A difficulty one gets into is consistency for union lists. If everyone
contributes records cataloged "their" way, the list manager has to
decide how to record the data and untangle and reassign holdings
information with no pieces in hand. For universal bibliographic control
and identification of titles a "master record" is needed

Personally, my opinion is this: we've had successive entry policies for
quite a long time; in the beginning there was a mania for micro-title-changes,
but now all sorts of creative solutions are being implemented for difficult
situations; see OCLC #2241027 (LC card no. 75-643179) for a radical
approach. We're moving away from rigidity and will probably wind up
somewhere in the middle.

Enrique E. Gildemeister
Cataloger/OCLC Enhance Coordinator
Lehman College of the City University of New York

Voice:   (718) 960-8831
Fax:     (718) 960-8952

Internet: eeglc@cunyvm.cuny.edu
BITNET:   eeglc@cunyvm