Quoting Jonathan Rochkind <rochk...@jhu.edu>:
It makes sense for the _Library of Congress_ to use year of receipt, since publishers generally deposit with the LC when something is published -- not always, but often enough that that seems like a fine decision for LC to make for it's own cataloging, to me, for a fairly reliable date guess which will on average be better than nothing. If I was using a record created by LC, I'd be happy to have that date there.
I guess so, for LC. And the library I was working in had many standing orders for specialist British and European monograph series, so we could be confident in supplying a date in square brackets when needed, based on the date of receipt; if in doubt, with question mark appended.
It doesn't make any sense for a random library that buys something possibly long after it's published to do that.
Even then a little searching (and the old British Library records are now in OCLC -- a mixed blessing that -- usually with date of original publication) gets a likely date or range.
Perhaps an example of the problems of using LC internal guidelines for other libraries. Got to use them with judgement as to how you are different than LC.
By my observation, few American cataloguers (and not too many others) are trained to use judgment rather than looking for a rule.
Hal Cain Melbourne, Australia hec...@dml.vic.edu.au ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
