One additional thought

One more thought when reflecting on my visitations. There are a number of small details in the cataloging process that are not spelled out in any standard or are otherwise more subject to the library's policies and judgment. For this reason, it's helpful for libraries to have their own internal policy documents and flowcharts or guidelines on how to catalog items.

It seems that this is further complicated by the subjective nature of cataloging. While there are some hard and fast rules, there is a lot of room for interpretation in almost any field. Is this section of the title page intended to be part of the title? How should it be recorded, if at all? And then there are matters of subject headings and call numbers which are inherently still more subjective. This was reinforced yesterday when talking to my supervisor who explained that she preferred the term "accurate" rather than "correct" for cataloging records, since correct implies that there is one true record out there to try to approach, when really there are multiple records which could legitimately be argued to be accurate.