I'm not sure I agree that e-books normally have page numbers. If I see page numbers in a description of an e-book, I usually just assume that they refer to the print book it was reproduced from and are just there to give an estimate of how long the book is. Unless the e-book is a facsimile, e.g. a pdf file made up of images of the original pages rather than re-entered as text, or the original print page numbers are inserted in brackets in the text for citation purposes, there aren't meaningful page numbers which show up on the screen ; some devices may give the "page" you're on (my old Sony reader did, and it changed every time I changed the font size) while others (like my Kindle) just give a percentage. What would the page number mean in the record for an e-book which can be viewed on say three different sized devices with six possible font sizes on each? And what would the distinction of leaf vs. page mean except in a facsimile - what is the verso of an image on a screen? All I see is the back of my Kindle. Except in a facsimile, I don't suppose anyone would leave blank pages in a Kindle file, just so you would have to push the page button twice. Perhaps we need to give some thought to what kind of extent will be meaningful; I've seen file sizes, which may be important for downloading but tell nothing about how much information a book might have or how long it might take to read.
Jim Foster Lehi Public Library From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of rball...@frontier.com Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2013 12:10 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Leaf (new RDA glossary term and definition) How is it that electronic books can have pages, but not leaves, if the main difference is printing on one side vs. both? Many of our electronic books are simply reproductions of the hard copy, and if one of those books had "leaves" in the traditional sense of the word (from a cataloging perspective), we would describe the extent that way (e.g. "1 online resource (14 leaves) : color illustrations"). Maybe we should be thinking of pages and leaves not in a physical sense, but in a strictly descriptive sense. Most "born digital" e-books still have "page" numbers and indexes referring to those numbers; how would those be referred to in the extent area without using the terms "page" and/or "leaf"? Perhaps "1 online resource (157 numbered sequences)"? It gets a little muddy. How about we query our users by showing them some RDA records and asking them to tell us what the data in the catalog record means? My bet is that it's still mighty confusing! Kevin Roe Fort Wayne Community Schools Fort Wayne IN From: Kathie Coblentz <kcobl...@nypl.org<mailto:kcobl...@nypl.org>> To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA<mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA> Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2013 11:13 AM Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Leaf (new RDA glossary term and definition) To return to the original topic, the new RDA definitions of "leaf" and "page": It occurs to me that there's something else wrong with the definition of "page": "A unit of extent of text consisting of a single side of a leaf." It is too "paper-centric," or perhaps I should say "sheet-centric," since we've already established that volumes don't have to contain paper subunits only. Electronic books can and do have pages. But they don't have leaves. And e-books that are "born digital" never had them. -------------------------------------------------------- Kathie Coblentz, Rare Materials Cataloger Collections Strategy/Special Formats Processing The New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, Room 313 New York, NY 10018 kathiecoble...@nypl.org<mailto:kathiecoble...@nypl.org> My opinions, not NYPL's
