Bernhard Eversberg wrote:
I'm absolutely with you where you say "We have to quit thinking that catalog = library", of course. But it is the catalog that this forum is about.
No, this forum is about Resource Description and Access. And my argument is that we should see resource description and access as something broader than the creation of the library catalog as it exists today. We should see our activity as creating bibliographic data that can be used in a variety of environments and that can be linked to web resources and that can be re-used by programs wherever bibliographic data is needed. To achieve this, we need to define our underlying data concepts in a way that they can be incorporated into computer code, such as web services. The corollary to this is that we should NOT be defining our data as merely strings of text, because this is incompatible with the current computerized environment. Defining the underlying data is step 1. That's what we're working on at http://metadataregistry.org. Step 2 is to make use of the data once it has been so defined. That work is taking place at http://dublincore.org/dcmirdataskgroup. On that site we have developed cataloger scenarios, and are working to implement those scenarios using the registered data elements. (See cataloger scenario 1 and its analysis). This is NOT just taking RDA and creating a new record to replace MARC. This is a new way of thinking about our data. It could make it possible, for example, to link from the mention of an author anywhere on the web to books held by libraries. Directly. Not going through WorldCat. It could also make it possible to perform what the semantic web folks call "inferences," that is, to answer questions in a way that resembles data-mining ("how many books did Henry Miller write while he lived in France?") and to create new views of the bibliographic data easily and 'on the fly.' Have you looked at WorldCat identities? What I want is for anyone (not just OCLC) to be able to use bibliographic data to answer questions and create rich views from that data, using simple tools available on the web. That's what I want. kc -- ----------------------------------- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234 ------------------------------------
