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The Collation

A brief introduction to RDA

Below are four copies of Hamlet. They’re four editions of a French translation by Carlo Rusconi, and at first glance look fairly similar. However, they have some significant differences, such as publisher, date, and inclusion in a series. In order to make sure that someone searching Hamnet for French translations of Hamlet knows what they’re finding, their catalog records each need to reflect these small but important differences, as well as specifying their location in the Folger Library. (Since these are part of the Shakespeare collection, all four are in the vault.)

Four Hamlets (French, 1875-1877)

The two translations of Hamlet below, on the other hand, are quite easy to tell apart: they have noticeably different cover styles, were published at least fifteen years apart by different firms in different countries, and they’re in different languages (Polish and Croatian), with different translators. 

  1. If you hadn’t noticed, the library community loves acronyms.
  2. “What is FRBR?” by Barbara Tillett, one of the contributors to the full IFLA report, is a shorter and easier-to-digest introduction to the main concepts: http://www.loc.gov/cds/downloads/FRBR.PDF.
  3. If you want to read more about new MARC fields, this is a good overview to start out with: http://www.itsmarc.com/crs/mergedprojects/helptop1/helptop1/variable_data_fields/rda_in_marc_bibliographic_data.htm
  4. “Sine loco” and “Sine nomine”
  5. Of course, it’s not always an option—or a good idea—to break this string apart when cataloging early modern works. The Folger is approaching RDA with care, to make sure that our current practices will adapt to new guidelines.

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