Mac said:
Interesting. I would be inclined to stick with title page, because the same content (same type setting as was said when type was still set) may be reissued with a new cover and/or spine title, or rebound locally with a new binder's title.
Be assured that I also want to keep the title page as the chief source of information for printed materials. There are, I believe, a number of good reasons for doing this, and you mention some of them. Another is that questions of design play a much bigger part on the front cover than on the title page - so the version on the t.p. can perhaps be seen as the one more appropriate for the aims of a catalogue.
But I think James Weinheimer has a point when he says that our patrons may have different feelings about what is the most prominent part of a resource.
Where I would apply your insight is for motion picture videos. The DVD container is what patrons see. The DVD represents a new manifestation. with resources (e.g., deleted scenes, interviews) not in the original film. In North America. often the non English title on the title frame is not even on the container.
Actually, our German cataloguing rules differ from AACR2/RDA in exactly this respect. RDA 2.2.2.3 says: "If the resource consists of moving images (e.g., a film reel, a videodisc, a video game, an MPEG video file), use the title frame or frames, or title screen or screens, as the preferred source of information." According to our German rules, we prefer the information given on the container (if there is one). So for e.g. a DVD, the container would be our chief source of information. This, by the way, is another example of the many things we'll have to change when making the move to RDA (sigh...).
I suppose the main reason for our rule is not "thinking as the patron does", though, but rather a practical one: It is simply seen as too time-consuming if a cataloguer always had to start the DVD (or whatever it is). Also, you can't be sure that cataloguers have the technical devices necessary to play all kinds of media in their own work environment.
Heidrun -- --------------------- Prof. Heidrun Wiesenmueller M.A. Stuttgart Media University Faculty of Information and Communication Wolframstr. 32, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi
