My experience has been different from Steven Arakawa's. Training beginners to use AACR2 capitalization has been very easy. The basic lesson is "Use lower case unless there's some reason to use upper case". There are then about five common reasons (depending on the languages most commonly encountered) to use upper case: beginning of a field or sentence, English proper noun or adjective, French proper noun, German noun, acronym. This takes a few minutes to get used to, after which the cataloguers are relieved to have a system that is so clear and economical-of-effort. If they have previously worked on catalogues which require diplomatic transcription, they are even more relieved.
For some purposes, the AACR2 method is *too* simple to convey the complexities of the original text, but at any rate the normalisation that results functions like a house-style for the catalogue, enabling easy reading for the user even when the records come from opposite sides of the globe. Use of a house-style is normal professional practice in communications businesses. This system has been very successful: look at any good library catalogue. I asked on this list in January 2006 "I wonder if the proponents of pure mechanical transcription could suggest an on-line example of such a catalogue which they regard as particularly successful? The more inconsistencies the better, in order to test the principle. Not Amazon please, as that is normalised." Looks as if the RDA test has now furnished a reply. William Schupbach Wellcome Library, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE Visit the Wellcome Library Blog at: http://wellcomelibrary.blogspot.com Original Message On Behalf Of Arakawa, Steven Sent: 12 January 2011 18:59 The rules for capitalization in AACR2 (and default RDA, which carries them over) are very complex and quite difficult for trainees to grasp, even more so when working with multiple languages. If one is running a minimal level project, it eats into training time, and, since it is pretty much impossible to get right, it is then necessary to set up boundaries for revision.... Steven Arakawa .... This message has been scanned for viruses by Websense Hosted Email Security - www.websense.com
