Descriptive Cataloging of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Manuscripts
Descriptive Cataloging of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern Manuscripts by Gregory A. Pass
English | 2004 | ISBN: 0838982182 | 159 Pages | PDF | 6.1 MB
English | 2004 | ISBN: 0838982182 | 159 Pages | PDF | 6.1 MB
As an undifferentiated group of materials, manuscripts rest uneasily or not at all in the library catalog. Manuscript descriptions reside more often in finding aids that stand apart from the main library catalog, such as handwritten inventories, card files, printed catalogs, or more recently EAD or other DTD electronic records. Depending on the nature of the material, if an entry is given in the main catalog it will usually be a brief record that refers to fuller information to be found elsewhere. Sometimes this brief reference may be all that exists. The primary reason for the general absence of manuscripts from the catalog is because manuscripts exist in such a variety of diverse and complex physical and bibliographical structures and because the depth of information required to identify and describe them is so great that it becomes difficult to provide satisfactory intellectual control over these materials within a single integrated library catalog. The result is that information on manuscripts becomes widely scattered and simply locating this information itself often involves considerable research.