Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 12:37:25 +0400
From: Frieda Rosenberg <friedat@EMAIL.UNC.EDU>
Subject: Manuscript serials and format integration

Serialist colleagues,

In cataloging a number of microfiche sets of colonial "blue
books"--accounts, statistics, lists of officials, some annual, some
irregular--from the nineteenth century, I have run across one title
(New Zealand's "Blue Book, financial") with the date 1840, with text
completely in longhand.  I am curious about how to treat this title
under the rules of format integration.  The longhand (which is lovely)
even has the notation "Triplicate" in the upper left corner, so we know
how many copies there were, if not how they were made.

It seems illogical to me that because this one title is not typeset, I
may not treat it as a serial, but instead must (?) treat it as a book
with the type code "t" for manuscript and add a serial 006, while all the
others, which may have had just as limited a distribution, are serials.
I'm absolutely certain that this is not the first serial MS that we
have cataloged.

On the other hand, it's really all one format, right?  To cloud the
issue further, one could say that since I have only one volume of this
particular title, I can't make an absolute judgment that the other
volumes were in longhand, or even that there WERE other volumes.  Am I
missing something here, or did MARBI make an assumption that the
concepts of "serial" and "manuscript" would never occur together?  Any
thoughts?

Regards,
Frieda Rosenberg
Serials Cataloger, Davis Library
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
friedat@email.unc.edu