record.title() conflates 245a and 245b

[dsalo]

The title() method, if called on an item where the main title is in 245a and the subtitle in 245b, jams title and subtitle together. They need a colon and space separator.

[anarchivist]

Record.title() just retrieves whatever's in the 245$a and $b. If there's no ISBD punctuation in the 245$a, it won't insert it. Are you suggesting that it should if it doesn't find it?

[dsalo]

Might be a good idea, though a little research indicates that yours is actually the MARCly-"correct" behavior. In my case, there was an intervening 245$h that actually had the colon in it -- local practice, I guess.

[anarchivist]

I'd like to get edsu's feedback on this. I think we're really just trying to mirror what's in the data, and my feeling is that the title function is simple enough that people could hack together their own.

[dsalo]

That's fair -- I certainly did. Of course, that was AFTER I had to go through the titles for more than 2000 theses for missing : 's...

[edsu]

Yeah, I think it makes sense the way it is. It's kind of fucked up that ISBD is scattered all over our structured metadata. But it is what it is. I think trying to make pymarc simulate ISBD when it's not there is the path of madness.

[edsu]

I also think I overstated my opinion way too much :-)