While I was in cataloging class yesterday, it occurred to me that descriptive cataloging is very similar to braille transcription in some ways. Specifically, both are attempts to translate documents into a form which is accessible in ways unlike the original. In both cases, the creator or creators of the original document were most likely blissfully unaware of the implications of their fancy type-setting.
My Braille instructor, Joyce, insists that there is an evil man
in every publishing house whose sole purpose is to make braillists' lives difficult by printing books in ways that are impossible to reproduce in braille. Like braille transcription, descriptive cataloging is supposed to mirror as closely as possible the information in the document itself, but what if the information in the document is unclear? For example, ISBD and AACR2 rules distinguish between title proper
and other title information
(subtitle), but it can be hard to tell what's the title and what's the subtitle. It's a balance of foreknowledge of English grammar, usage, and conventional typesetting practice. I wish publishers would just tell us in plain words what the title is, rather than making us guess.
Both cataloging and braille have miles of books trying to provide methods for dealing with every situation and every problem, but the human word-world never quite fits into a clean set of rules. It would be easier if people wouldn't fancy up the print so much, but then again, why should expression in one form be limited just because it can't be properly translated into another?
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