Robert Maxwell writes: > ... It has long bothered me, though, that FRBR defines a lot of > things as attributes that it ALSO defines as entities. Like place, which is > an attribute of a > number of entities, but also an entity itself. Or having publisher be an > attribute of > manifestation when a publisher is a person, family, or corporate body (all > entities). So I do > think this is imprecise, at the least...
But it's not the same thing. What appears in the 260 is a transcription from the item, so it's a slight misnomer to call 260$b the "publisher"--rather, it's what we (used to?) call the "publisher STATEMENT." Unless there is an actual proviso somewhere else in RDA (not having read it yet) that sidesteps this issue, perhaps this attribute should be renamed to "transcription of publisher statement." We had a discussion on AUTOCAT a few years ago about the fact that, since publisher statements vary so widely, it would be nice to authoritize the publisher statement in some way. Well, here's the way. The publisher statement, as transcribed from the manifestation, is simply a fact about the manifestation which implies (but does not explicitly state) a relationship between that manifestation and the publisher entity. Whether that relationship is explicitified elsewhere in the description cloud is a separate question. Misha Schutt Catalog Librarian Burbank (Calif.) Public Library (818) 238 5570 msch...@ci.burbank.ca.us www.burbanklibrary.com
