I think this is a good idea. Many terms that now appear in bibliographic records as literals could be replaced with uri's to facilitate international data exchange. This would also let users choose whether they want to see a full or abbreviated display of, for example, "p." versus "pages", "[s.l.]" versus "[place of publication not identified", etc. etc.
But it may have to wait until we've managed to transition away from MARC as our encoding standard. Benjamin Abrahamse Cataloging Coordinator Acquisitions, Metadata and Enterprise Systems MIT Libraries 617-253-7137 -----Original Message----- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:RDA-L@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2011 11:43 AM To: RDA-L@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca Subject: [RDA-L] Radical proposal for RDA inclusions When I object that many of RDA's media terms (MARC 336-338) are obscure, I am told that they are codes, and will be replaced in individual OPAC displays by alternate terms or icons. Why not enter, for example, "[s.n]" as a code in 260$b, and have systems display "[publisher not identified]", "[editeur non identified]", "[Verlag nicht identifiziert]", "[chuban shang meiyou queding]", etc., based on 040$b? That would greatly facilitate international exchange of bibliographic records, and would absolve bibliographic utilities, and those of us who serve multiple languages of the catalogue, from having duplicate records. __ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca) {__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/ ___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
