1. CONSISTENCY GAINED BY SHARING CUSTOMISATIONS. Divergence in cataloguing practise may be unavoidable where agreement could not be reached. Divergent practises have existed within AACR2. To the extent that the RDA user interface may support customisation features such as workflow practises, user notes, etc., I hope that it will support exporting such customisations. If we can share customisations for how RDA is accessed, perhaps best practises will converge to specify unified recommendations where that may be possible. If the RDA process is not giving us the clarity and consistency of application that those of us dealing with the practical problems of cataloguing would like, perhaps we could graft on the clarity and consistency through shared workflow practises.
2. REDUCING COSTS WHERE THEY COST LEAST. High cost of access to cataloguing rules only increases the likelihood that they will not be consulted as frequently as they ought to be leading to even greater anomalies in cataloguing practise. When cost recovery for standards reduces the level of their use, everyone suffers the burdens from inconsistent adherence to standards. Finding information with precision using our records has enormous value to the economy as a whole. The costs are least at the point of standards distribution where they could be most easily subsidised. The costs are greatest when distributed to those working on automation systems who must do extra work to normalise divergent records or otherwise distributed to every user who must try additional query possibilities to overcome inconsistency for finding information. Every institution should think carefully about subsidising the relatively small costs of standards distribution collectively for everyone in the world or paying the much larger costs of existing in a more expensive economy. Thomas Dukleth Agogme 109 E 9th Street, 3D New York, NY 10003 USA http://www.agogme.com 212-674-3783 On Fri, July 4, 2008 5:36 am, J. McRee Elrod wrote: >>Will RDA be available as part of LC's Cataloger's Desktop in a manner >>similar to which AACR2 is currently ... > > What difference does it make? RDA offers so many options it is > useless as a cataloguing tool. What we might be following is either > the three [US] national library implementation provisions, or the four > [Anglo] national library implementation provisions. > > We can only hope hope that those provisions will be able to stand > alone, e.g., say "follow the option to do such-and-such" as opposed to > just saying "follow the option", without saying what the option might > be. The implementation plans will also need an index. > > > __ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > {__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/ > ___} |__ \__________________________________________________________ > >
