Re: [RDA-L] Feedback on RDA

[Myers, John F.]

J. McRee Elrod wrote:

More to the point, I think, would have been a recommendation that work
on RDA cease until a coding system was designed, and ILS development
took place, which could accommodate the implementation of FRBR and
FRAD.

I think RDA implementation should be delayed at least until those two
things have occurred.  We are pouring new wine into old wine bottles.

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A new coding system, like a successor to MARC?  Who are you?  And what
have you done to our colleague Mac?  [Who also would know that the
hazard comes not from new wine into old bottles but from new wine into
old skins.]

But seriously, why would a new coding system be designed if there
weren't a content standard that called for it?  Why would an ILS be
developed for a coding system that didn't exist (for a content standard
that didn't exist)?  We've got to slice the snake biting its tail at
some point. 

The content standard was the one aspect of this daisy chain over which
a) the cataloging community had some control, and b) for which an agency
existed and could reasonably be adapted to new development.  In
contrast, we have little enough leverage with ILS developers to support
changes that we can concretely identify, much less something so
venturesome as new models.  MARBI too, while perhaps more responsive to
input, seems unlikely to spontaneously morph itself into developing a
post-MARC coding standard.

There are changes in the process that I would have preferred we had
taken, but the priority of addressing the content standard is not one of
them.

John F. Myers, Catalog Librarian
Schaffer Library, Union College
807 Union St.
Schenectady NY 12308

518-388-6623
mye...@union.edu