I am beginning to suspect that the difficulties arising for the treatment of the conjunction preceding an alternative title may be why ISBD is formulated to include alternative titles in the title proper. I am not against the JSC's decision to create the new element for the alternative title. But the ensuing discussions have clearly shown how the best of intentions may have unintended consequences or complications.
Despite being in the "throw it in subfield b" camp for many years, I have increasingly made my peace with the alternative title being part of the title proper. The positions advanced by Mac Elrod have merit and are quite similar to those I held myself. In most cases, the first part of the title meets RDA's definition for title proper: "the chief title of the resource (i.e., the title normally used when citing the resource)." A good colleague has a favorite title for cataloging classes however: 20,000 leagues under the sea, or, David Copperfield / by Robert Benchley. I am not entirely certain that this title is well served by any treatment other than treating the whole thing as title proper. Any truncation is misleading. Granted this is an absurd example, but it exists. The "throw it in subfield b" solution is increasingly untenable in light of granularity issues for the multiplicity of data elements we are parking in it. The identification of the alternative title as a separate element highlights the need to provide separate subfield coding for both parallel title and other title information along with the new element. This is a job for MARBI to take up however, not the JSC. I am stridently against reducing the conjunction to mere coding at the loss of transcription. It would seem a disservice to either the author's or publisher's intent to excise transcription of it altogether. It is not so much ISBD punctuation to be disregarded in the new age or under the new rules. I suspect it would be a nasty job of software coding to convert a mere code to the appropriate language equivalent of "or" for all possible languages. Creating a new subfield element to hold the transcribed word is a possibility, especially if it causes the indexing to skip it like the subfield g in formatted 505 fields. I am hesitant however to give unqualified support to that solution in light of Hal Cain's comments about the possibility in Latin of having an alternative title without a linking conjunction. FWIW, Hal's example is a further caution against splitting the alternative title into a separate element, since it will require a good degree of expertise in Latin to identify the two elements. Long enough for thoughts at the close of a Friday, John John Myers, Catalog Librarian Schaffer Library, Union College Schenectady NY 12308 518-388-6623 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
