Comments from the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL):
By defining a jurisdiction as a corporate body that is somehow distinct from the place that it governs, this misses the essence of what a jurisdiction is. The change proposal states "the two entities themselves are disjoint: one is a government and the other is a place," but the beauty of the term jurisdiction as used heretofore in RDA unites these two entities in one. This misunderstanding leads to more semantic discussion and circular recommendations such as "governing jurisdiction of: A corporate body that is a government that governs a jurisdiction."
The change proposes that 3 relationships are needed:
1. between a law and the place that it is applicable to.
2. between a law and the government that it is applicable to.
3. between a government and the place it governs.
Every law is applicable to some place. In most cases that is the territory (jurisdiction) of the government of the place, so the enacting jurisdiction and the jurisdiction governed are the same. In some cases, a government can enact a law that is applicable to a different territory, such as when a state legislature enacts a law governing a county, or a national government enacts a law governing an outside territory.
However, we still want to state a relationship to the enacting jurisdiction.
A law is not "applicable" to a government in the same sense, so it makes no sense to have a relationship "between a law and the government that it is applicable to."
The relationship "between a government and the place it governs" is inherent in the concept of a jurisdiction.
In simpler and more overarching terms, how does this change proposal assist the non-law cataloger when law catalogers already have to take much time and effort to unpack this verbiage- for that matter, how will official RDA help any cataloger (in performing their job and serving the needs of others) when they must grapple with the overly complex language of the guidelines?
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Ryan Tamares
Robert Crown Law Library
rtamares@law.stanford.eduHe/Him/His
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Original Message:
Sent: Sep 11, 2023 08:13 PM
From: Adam Baron
Subject: Comments requested: RSC/ReligionsWG/2023/2 DEADLINE Sept. 13
I have some editorial comments.
Recommendation #1
- I'm concerned about the parallelism in the revised definition.
- Suggested revision: A word or phrase indicative of royalty, nobility, rank, or office. Includes a term of address for a person of religious vocation.
- The inclusion of "civil" in "excludes civil terms of address that simply indicate gender or marital status such as Mr. or Mrs." seems unnecessary.
- It is unclear what is considered a civil term of address and a Google search of the phrases "civil term of address" and "civil terms of address" retrieved very few results.
- Qualifying "terms of address" implies that there are other terms of address that simply indicate gender or marital status that could be recorded, but it is not clear what those terms are.
- The original instruction seemed clear: "excludes terms of address that simply indicate gender or marital status such as Mr. or Mrs."
Recommendation #3
The proposed option introduces inconsistencies with the option under Other term of rank, honour, or office (
88.07.44.56).
- Option 1: To be consistent with existing RDA instructions, the proposed option should read:
OPTION
Record a term of rank, office, or address in the language in which the term was conferred, in a language used in the country in which the person resides, or in a language preferred by the agent who creates the metadata.
- Option 2: Update the option under Other term of rank, honour, or office (88.07.44.56) to be consistent with the proposed option. The revised option would read:
OPTION
Record a term in a language in which it was conferred or in a language used in a country in which a person resides.
Adam Baron
Head of Metadata Services
University of California, Berkeley Library
Original Message:
Sent: 9/11/2023 2:40:00 PM
From: Jeanette Norris
Subject: RE: Comments requested: RSC/ReligionsWG/2023/2 DEADLINE Sept. 13
Recommendation #1 – I think the addition of 'civil' before terms of address raises more questions about what would be considered a 'civil' term of address than it clarifies the intention. I would recommend removing 'civil' proposed definition and scope.<o:p></o:p>
I also question why some terms of address are included and others are not. It's not clear why persons of religious vocation should have different rules regarding the inclusion of terms of address than other persons. If there aren't clear guidelines for why some terms of address are included, and others aren't, it may make most sense to move this information to community resources, application profiles, policy statements along with other similar guidance.<o:p></o:p>
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Jeanette Norris
Manager, Monographic Latin Script Cataloging Unit
Yale University Library
She/Her/Hers
Original Message:
Sent: Sep 05, 2023 09:46 AM
From: Amanda Sprochi
Subject: Comments requested: RSC/ReligionsWG/2023/2 DEADLINE Sept. 13
Comments requested on RSC/ReligionsWG/2023/2 [http://rda-rsc.org/sites/all/files/RSC_ReligionsWG_2023_2.pdf, sorry, I can't seem to get a direct link to work], a proposal to the RSC to Revise term of rank or honour or office
This complements the proposal on changes to instructions for adding these titles proposed in RSC/ReligionsWG/2023/1. CC:DA members: please register your comments on this page (so that non-CC:DA members can also discuss) by September 13. Yes, this is short notice. Yes it sucks. Yes it seems to be what we are stuck with. Sorry.
Abstract: We are proposing changes to the instructions for the element Person: term of rank or honour or office (http://rdaregistry.info/Elements/a/P50110). This is related to tasks 2 and 3 of our charge (RSC/Chair/2023/4) to review instructions that address religious agents and to consider where general, internationally applicable instructions should be placed and how they should be framed. Our proposal would eliminate some conditions, condition options, and options that are specific to Christian denominations from base RDA, add a new general condition and condition option group that is not specific to Christianity, and generalize the condition group on terms of address for religious vocation. As always, individual communities can choose to keep removed instructions in their application profiles. We also propose a change to the definition of the element to make it applicable to religious denominations beyond those in Christianity.
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Amanda Sprochi
Cataloger/Data Wrangler
60 Ellis Library
University of Missouri
520 S 9th St.
Columbia, MO 65211
sprochia@missouri.edu
573/882-0461
She/Her/Hers
The University of Missouri occupies the traditional land of the Osage, Kiikaapoi, Peoria, and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples.
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