The date forms that you've mentioned are not in RDA. RDA uses "born" and
"died" and "flourished" in the examples. The Library of Congress has
issued policy statements for the RDA test, labeled "LC practice", which
say instead to use a hyphen after the date of birth rather than "born", to
use a hyphen before the date of death rather than "died", and to use
"active" rather than "flourished". This is LC's practice only for the
test - no decision has yet been made if this is what we will actually do
in NACO.
Since they are currently labelled "LC practice" and not "PCC practice" or
"LC and PCC practice", other libraries are free to follow some other
practice, such as using "born", "died", and "flourished." Or something
else entirely.
RDA 9.19.1.3 simply says "Add the date of birth (see 9.3.2) and/or date of
death (see 9.3.3), if necessary, to distinguish one access point from
another. ... Optional Addition: Add a date or dates associated with the
person even if there is no need to distinguish between access points."
The examples show one way of doing this, but not the only way it could be
done.
RDA 9.19.1.5 says "If none of the elements specified under 9.19.1.3 (date
of birth and/or death) or 9.19.1.4 (fuller form of name) is available to
distinguish one access point from another, add a term indicating period of
activity of the person (see 9.3.4). ... Optional Addition: Add a term
indicating period of activity of the person even if there is no need to
distinguish between access points."
RDA doesn't say what term to add, it just gives examples that illustrate
some possibilities. These include "flourished" and "jin shi" and century
dates, but the examples are not prescriptive.
No doubt that we should probably all agree on a single practice, but the
Program for Cooperative Cataloging, which determines NACO practices, has
not yet made any decisions on when PCC practice will be identical to LC
and when it will be different. Presumably PCC and LC will decide together
if the current policy for the test will be continued if the U.S. national
libraries decide to implement RDA.
Now as to your other other question about whether there are limitations on
the use of "active", the answer is, if there's nothing in RDA and LC
hasn't issued a policy statement about it, then there are no limitations.
RDA 9.3.4 is the element "Period of Activity of the Person". The scope
statement at 9.3.4.1 says "Period of activity of the person is a date or
range of dates indicative of the period in which a person was active in
his or her primary field of endeavour." 9.3.4.3 says "If the person's
date of birth and date of death are both unknown, record a date or range
of dates indicative of the person's period of activity applying the basic
instructions on recording dates associated with persons given under 9.3.1.
... If specific years of activity cannot be established, record the
century or centuries in which the person was active." There's nothing in
RDA comparable to the AACR2 instruction in 22.17A that limits years of
activity to before the 20th century. Since there's no limit in RDA and
since LC hasn't issued a policy statement about this, 20th or 21st century
dates of activity are permissible.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Adam L. Schiff
Principal Cataloger
University of Washington Libraries
Box 352900
Seattle, WA 98195-2900
(206) 543-8409
(206) 685-8782 fax
[email protected]
http://faculty.washington.edu/~aschiff
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On Wed, 8 Sep 2010, J. McRee Elrod wrote:
In 100/600/700$d RDA changes "b." to hyphen after date; "d." to hyphen
before date; and "fl." to "active".
Any gueses as to whether present headings will be changed, or
superimposition used?
Does "active" have the same limiations on usage as 'fl."? (I did try
to find this. Really I did. It's easier to ask Mark :-{)}.)
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([email protected])
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
