Karen Coyle wrote:
>
> What worries me most about the FRBR WEMI view in which each entity is
a record is that it places a nearly impossible burden on the cataloger.
Which is why I'm exploring the possibility of a "recordless" view --
which would consist of short statements ("Jane is author of Book") that
are each valid, and can be combined with other statements to build up to
a complete bibliographic description. I don't know yet if this is
possible. It would use semantic web concepts, not the RDA scenario 1,
but perhaps scenario 0. It assumes an open bibliographic environment
where statements can exist with metadata contributed by others. If I get
a clear enough picture in my head, I'll make a drawing!
>
While this sounds great, what worries me most is the sorry fact that the
MARC universe is practically immovable. Just think of the non-sort
indicator or the ommission of the article of the uniform title. For
years and years, these issues have been deplored, improvements in
MARC specifications have even evolved - and yet nothing happens.
And these are very minor issues.
It's not the fault of MARC as such, but MARC is the hub of that
universe, and any changes at this hub would send disturbances into
the farthest corners of it, at the speed of light. So, you would have
to build a parallel universe, nothing less, and make the lossless (!)
migration to it less expensive than to stay in the old one.
But what, BTW, is scenario 0?
B.Eversberg
