Re: Cataloguing Jewish music

[holden <holden...>]

Dear Colleagues

I was most encouraged by the positive response to my posting on cataloguing
Jewish music and my thanks to all who replied. At the back of mind there is
lurking the possibility of a joint initiative to produce a list of
recommendations to assist in  cataloguing (I hesitate to call them Rules)
Jewisah music. I wonder how many really interested librarians/archivists
are on the list who are a) prepared to participate and b) would be in a
position to apply such recommendations. Perhaps some of you are in large
organisations with little or no prospect of changing established practice.
If this is the case I would imagine that your interest would be academic
rather than practical.  I would view it as a long term initiative with the
obvious starting point of AACR2 as the most widely adopted standard. (In
fact Recomm. 1.00 would be something like: "Prefer AACR2 wherever it can be
utilised to uniquely identify a musical work" This, of course is the entry
point to a list of recommendations and amendments since AACR2, if used to
the letter, is unable to uniquely identify many works in the Jewish canon.

Having said all this, I don't want to try to re-invent the wheel. It may be
that others have already progressed a long way in the same direction and I
am ignorant of their achievements. In fact I only learnt a couple of hours
ago that there is in fact an  AJL (Association of Jewish Libraries?)
Cataloging Committee at  Stanford University.

Dependent of course on how far others have progressed, my vision is of a
methodical crawl through AACR2. Where a rule is inadequate - particularly
in the Uniform Title area - participants could suggest amendents/additions
for discussion, ending in an agreed recommendation.

I note with interest the opposing suggestions of 1) a cataloguing sub-list
and 2) the keeping of everything on-list if there is sufficient interest to
get the thing off the ground.

Comments please.

Paul


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