I feel conflicted about the deprecation of parallel elements. On the one hand, the examples in the discussion paper demonstrate that cataloging outcomes (at least in MARC) could remain essentially the same as our current status quo. Deprecating the elements would also have the effect of streamlining the RDA element set, which is already quite large.
However, I do think the loss of parallel elements could have a negative effect on how users identify and understand resources. In many cases, one language does predominate in a multilingual work, even if very slightly. Duplicating the Manifestation: title proper element, for example, to accommodate parallel titles wouldn't capture this aspect of the resource. Using Manifestation: other title information or Manifestation: variant title of manifestation similarly doesn't capture the prominence of a parallel title on a source of information versus other kinds of titles or title information.
Expanded use of manifestation statements to represent a resource with greater accuracy is useful in theory but challenging in practice. It is true that manifestation statements preserve information in multiple languages in the order and context in which it is found in a source. But what about the role of layout and typography? The order of text on a resource is not the only indication of what is a title proper, and a manifestation statement cannot generally capture the visual nuances. What about cartographic and visual materials, in which information is often scattered across the resource? Our cataloger's judgment guides us in using the "sequence, layout, or typography of the source of information" (a phrase that appears often in the Toolkit) to make decisions about the information we record.
From a rare materials perspective, I want to believe that manifestation statements will provide a more accurate representation of a source of information than is available otherwise. But it is common for early printed and other types of rare materials to have long and complex titles, statements of responsibility, and publication statements. This means that catalogers would have to enter the same information twice but not in exactly the same way, once for the manifestation statements and once for the more structured elements (e.g., title proper, designation of edition, etc.). (Manifestation statements alone don't make for a user-friendly display.) This will almost certainly invite errors, which is exactly what we're trying to avoid in our descriptions, especially for rare materials. We are also limited by the typographical facilities available to us. It is unlikely, for example, that we could reproduce things like early modern letterforms, brevigraphs, and symbols in a manifestation statement. If we could digitize and accurately OCR every source of information, we could more easily generate manifestation statements (or supply the digitized resource as a sort of replacement for a manifestation statement). But we're certainly not there right now.
Although the paper notes that the National Library of New Zealand has opted not to use parallel elements, I find it telling that no other policy statement sets in Official RDA have followed suit. For example, of the eight policy statements published for Manifestation: parallel title proper, seven have opted to use the element, even though the option to use Manifestation: title proper instead has been available for years. I realize that deprecating parallel elements would result in a "cleaner" element set, but if parallel elements are still in active use and they don't contradict the LRM, I don't see the utility in deprecating them at this time.
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Jessica Grzegorski
Rare Materials Metadata Librarian
Northwestern University Libraries
She/Her/Hers
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