Describing a reel with multiple lectures/speakers/dates? Options

[Brandon Burke]

Hi everyone,

I have a series of lectures on 1/4" reel tapes. The collection largely consists of reels
with only one lecture on them but there are several that contain two lectures, each
by a different speaker, that occurred on different dates. I'm wondering how describe
these reels using DACS.

Here's an example of a reel featuring two lectures:

* Gordon, H. Scott, "Conservation and Utilization of Natural Resources," 9 Aug 1962
* LeDuc, Thomas, "Turner's Frontier Hypothesis," 10 Aug 1962

Suggestions?

thanks,
Brandon Burke
Stanford

[Nathan Georgitis]

Hi Brandon,

For purposes of conversation, and assuming the recording doesn't have a formal title, I'm leaning toward something along these lines:

H. Scott Gordon lecture sound recording "Conservation and Utilization of Natural Resources" on August 9, 1962 and Thomas LeDuc lecture sound recording "Turner's Frontier Hypothesis" on August 10, 1962

*according to DACS, 'form' means the physical or intellectual character of the document...the specification of form in the above title, 'lecture sound recording', describes both the physical and intellectual character of the document. If we abbreviated the form specification to 'lecture', which is the intellectual character of the document, we would be inclined to assume it is indeed a 'sound recording', the physical form of the document. However, this assumption would not serve us if the document were in fact a video recording or a text. Since DACS instructs us to "compose a brief title that *uniquely* identifies the material" (as if that were possible), I'm inclined to specify both the physical and the intellectual character of the document, especially when the document is of an intellectual character that does not usually correlate with a physical form. An 'interview' is another example of this type of document perhaps.

Or, if brevity is preferable:

H. Scott Gordon lecture "Conservation and Utilization of Natural Resources" on August 9, 1962 and Thomas LeDuc lecture "Turner's Frontier Hypothesis" on August 10, 1962

*I'm inclined to keep the prepositions 'on' and 'and' instead of relying on conventions of punctuation ',' and ';'

[quizzical emoticon goes here] Nathan

Hi everyone,

I have a series of lectures on 1/4" reel tapes. The collection largely consists of reels
with only one lecture on them but there are several that contain two lectures, each
by a different speaker, that occurred on different dates. I'm wondering how describe
these reels using DACS.

Here's an example of a reel featuring two lectures:

* Gordon, H. Scott, "Conservation and Utilization of Natural Resources," 9 Aug 1962
* LeDuc, Thomas, "Turner's Frontier Hypothesis," 10 Aug 1962

Suggestions?

thanks,
Brandon Burke
Stanford

[Marsha Maguire]

Well, this is the problem! And I don't think we've figured it out yet -- I certainly haven't. How does the archivist devise a reasonably brief title that provides the essential information but isn't too long or awkward? I do think including "sound recording" makes the title kind of awkward, even though DACS calls for that. Maybe we could suggest using something like a general material designation (or whatever RDA is calling it) that lets us put the format after the title in square brackets or something. Because DACS doesn't address non-textual materials, it hasn't come up yet, and that's where we may need to ask for some changes to or extensions in DACS. Re. the order of title elements, I have seen Bill Landis give examples in his DACS Workshop that don't follow the DACS Name-Nature-Topic formula if the resulting title would be awkward, so I think we can reorder words to make for a better flow.

Re. your example, Brandon: Each lecture could be listed in the title, as Nathan suggests (and which makes sense), but if you had three lectures, would it be better to have a more general title and give the details of each lecture in the summary note? Is anything else known about these lectures that might connect them (the lecture topics don't seem at all related, so it's not possible to say something like Two chemistry department faculty lectures, Chemistry Hall, Stanford U., August 1962). If so, that might help. Otherwise, a more "collective" title might be something like

Lectures by H. Scott Gordon and Thomas LeDuc, at Blah-Blah Hall, Stanford University, on August 9 and 10, 1962

This approach attempts to follow a who-what-where-when formula (except the order is what-who for clarity). That's an approach I favor for titles of events, although it doesn't always work. But which approach is better? I really don't know. I was thinking that a good way to approach the possibilities for devising titles might be to throw out a bunch of different examples, try various ways of formulating titles for them, and then discuss. We were starting to do something like this in my division, but too many other things came up (new hires, big software changes, etc.) , and our supervisor can't turn her attention to it right now.

Marsha