I am puzzled by the treatment of initials in names of persons under RDA.
According to AACR2, I believe there was never a space between two or
more initials, regardless whether the initials appeared in the
bibliographic description (e.g. in the statement of responsibility) or
in a heading or reference. An example in 1.1.F4. reads "edited by P.C.
Wason and P.N. Johnson-Laird", and one in 22.5A1. reads "Byatt, A.S.".
So, the treatment was consistent.
Now in RDA, initials in the bibliographic description are still
transcribed without internal spaces, e.g. "edited by P.C. Wason and P.N.
Johnson-Laird" (example in 1.7.6). Yet they are transcribed with spaces
in preferred or variant names of persons, e.g.
"Rowling, J. K." (example in 8.5.6.1).
I find it difficult to understand why the rule was changed with respect
to preferred/variant names only. Wouldn't it be much easier to apply the
same custom in both cases?
In Germany, we've always put spaces between initials in names of
persons, regardless whether these appear in the bibliographic
description or in headings/references. I think this is mainly due to
matters of indexing. Many systems here simply ignore full stops in
indexing. So without internal spaces we would end up with "PC" in the
index instead of "P" and "C".
Heidrun
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Prof. Heidrun Wiesenmueller M.A.
Stuttgart Media University
Faculty of Information and Communication
Wolframstr. 32, 70191 Stuttgart, Germany
www.hdm-stuttgart.de/bi
