RDA-L readers, To address Adam Schiff's concern about how scholars will cite a publication. We as catalogers are contributing to that very scholarship when we document the actual publication date. If scholars care to consult our records, they can correct the false impression that the copyright date creates. Envisage this scenario: A scholar is required to have had a publication during a certain year. The catalog can attest to the fact, when the book itself does not.
Perhaps the next development in this train of thought is that the meaning ofpublished doesn't cover the fact that the book is in print and available to the public. In this scenario, the book can't possibly have been "published" in 2013, since it is copyright 2014. It must therefore be published in 2014, as LC PCC PS mandates be recorded. A question mark is irrelevant: we "know" that its publication date is 2014, just as we know that the book now exists (in 2013) but has not yet been published. If this argument is valid, it is an exercise in making a word mean what you want it to mean. Not thinking that way just yet? Don't worry, you'll get it once the new meaning has been adopted in common parlance, among catalogers if not among the population at large. There's another case in LC PCC PS where the meaning of the word published has been interpreted so that we are instructed to record materials as published when they are in fact restricted to a small, select group of recipients. 2.8.1.1 "Treat privately printed resources as published resources ..." Have we catalogers lost sight of the meaning of published as "made publicly available?" Here's a definition from Wikipedia: Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature, music, or information — the activity of making information available to the general public. - Ian P.S. Anyone read The Gutenberg Galaxy recently? Ian Fairclough - George Mason University - ifairclough43...@yahoo.com
