Moving Image Cataloging (Introduction)
The stipulations found in this online help for recording the descriptive data of a catalog record are in several respects different from those in traditional cataloging rules. This difference is due primarily to the archival need for a conflation in one record of data covering several physical pieces, perhaps bearing different identifying indicia but belonging to the same moving image title. These separate physical pieces may be either copies (in whole or in part) of the original or they may be other manifestations; there is little of the "normal" concept for a single, ideally complete, physical unit.
Catalog records for books and other non-archival library materials are for complete items usually produced separately, edition-by-edition (or, in some cases, issue-by-issue), and thus the records reflect the different bibliographic indicia more or less faithfully. This means, usually, transcribing exactly one title, one sequence of statements of responsibility, one edition statement, one set of publication details, and formulating one physical description--per record.
This phenomenon of sets of single details needed per catalog record is also reflected in archival moving image materials, as when the archive holds only the original in one copy. Frequently, however, such simplicity is not possible. The moving image archive may have several manifestations of a work, each incomplete, but which when taken together approximate a single whole item. It also may hold in separate physical items various manifestations that are dependent, e.g., a separate sound track. The result is the ground-breaking provisions found in this online help for recording sets of multiple details.
Thus a single record may include an original title and original release details followed by the physical descriptions for the original and later versions with minor changes all grouped together in a listing, one physical description after the other. Associated details (edition/version statements and distribution information) of later versions are given in formal version notes. A moving image archive considers that these sets of multiple details need to be given in one catalog record: a complete "item" may be the sum of these parts. Under this concept, the details relating to the original title are the basic part of the of the record with other details added for later versions, even when the original is not in the archive (in that case a physical description for the original is omitted). All these details are given whether or not the pieces of film or video material being cataloged actually bear them. This introduces another major departure from traditional library cataloging: the recording of data from reference sources without the contradistinction normally made between such data (off a "chief source" or outside the item) and data transcribed from formal statements on the material. In some cases then, there will be not bracketing of any data except possibly a word or phrase made up by the cataloger.
Attention must be called again to the multiple physical descriptions the ground-breaking system described above entails. As mentioned already, not only are different pieces of various versions accounted for in archival records but also differing copies: negative and positive copies, master and viewing copies, etc. Also, a film and/or television archive can have as may as forty or fifty physically separate items, all of which are essential parts of a single feature film. All elements must be described accurately and carefully, with a shorthand which draws component parts of negatives, masterpositives, sound tracks, prints, etc., together and provides a quick method for comparing each set, one with the other. This interrelationship is expressed by providing multiple lines of physical description, each arranged in a standard manner. This online help also implements area 3 of AACR2 for archival moving image material and defines it as the "Country of production area," i.e., the country in which are found the principal offices of the production company involved in the origin of the work. See Section 3 Country of Production
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