> -----Original Message----- > From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access > [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of James Weinheimer > Sent: May 20, 2011 11:14 AM > To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA > Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Plans for Existing Bib Records? > .....
> RDA has determined that a single author is good enough. I wonder what > the faculty would say about the single author rule where that co-authors > can legitimately be left out, along with authors and other contributors? > I doubt if they would like it very much at all. > But they could also have been left out in the 3 person rule, which was a ceiling, not a floor as in RDA. Deciding what's legitimate should be up to the agency. We need a single creator for minimum functionality (receipt printouts, reports, cutters, etc.). We create bare minimum bibliographic records for some cases (ephemeral material, romance paperbacks) where it's our judgment call to ignore AACR2 and create the catalog records that suit our purposes. We prefer to acquire fuller, richer records for the bulk of our resources, and will augment them as necessary. It's the agency's relationship to the user base that dictates what policies and guidelines for catalog records will be followed. In terms of what's available via technology, there has been nothing but steady increases in the richness and fullness of the bibliographic data we present to our users. Whether it's enriched content (cover art, reviews), or more web links, or incorporating summaries of the content, the shift we're seeing is a focus on incrementally adding data from a focus on creating the picture perfect, compact, well-punctuated all-in-one record. That's the reality I see RDA acknowledging, and RDA should be part of the ecosystem of our information systems for that reason alone going forward. Plus it's a lot more fun working with an element set. As an example, our system no longer uses the GMD (it uses fixed fields to create labels and icons), and having to maintain the GMD and worry about punctuation and filing and display issues is not something I would wish about any library. But segregating and atomizing the components for this information (which is the direction RDA is going with its element set and entity-relationship approach) is such a night and day improvement in terms of maintenance and flexibility over AACR2 cataloging, that more of the same is the only logical decision to make. Thomas Brenndorfer Guelph Public Library
