Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA -- two preferred names for places
Pat Sayre McCoy: [...} Why not catalogers? Why not catalogers? I think the answer is in the news Today, see http://tinyurl.com/68eslta (Gov accountability Office report on duplications, overlap, fragmentation of services) and even if this report is related to US Gov it seems to me the problem is being tackled almost in the same way by other governments in OCSE countries. In the open web we are supposed to pursue interoperability and integration of data, not duplication. Therefore the institutions / organisations that can better provide a certain type of data are obviously the ones that have been dealing with that type of data for ages not only because of the legacy in terms of archives and repositories but because of the skills and expertise in managing them and see the pro and cons of new uses, reuses, contextual aspects etc etc. This is the advantage of having an expertise. Having said that, when there is a good reason why and a sensible cost (a value proposition, a business justification, a market demand for it, a sustainable way to manage it) any type of cataloguing project makes sense from my point of view. I cannot say anything about the best way to produce pieces of furniture but I can say a lot about the best way to catalogue them in order to make them findable! In the past, I have successfully designed and implemented new data collection using traditional librarians skills in a complete new way with the customer and other stakeholders not even being aware of that (because it was very costly for me alone to make them aware of that. That is where the professional associations and the great institutions employing librarians and cataloguers should be engaged). If I can add a bit of humour noir, beware that why not was (or is still I have not read italian newspapers for the last three years but occasionally) the name of an italian mafia /'ndrangheta investigation against duplication and waste of public money in which lot of people from the north of Italy (Lombardia, Veneto) mainly involved with catholic Compagnia delle opere and Comunione and liberazione movements organised faked exchanges of money with people from the south of Italy (Calabria, Campania) - and that was to some extent a truly international operation that touched also nord-americans (mostly canadians) as far as I can remember. Why not in a campaigning / advocacy initiative pro cataloguers in linked data projects could unfortunately recall those news through search engines and newspapers archives. Brunella Longo http://www.brunellalongo.info
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA -- two preferred names for places
Shouldn't qualified values for PLACES depend on international standards like ISO Country Codes http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes.htm or others at national / regional level? At any rate, the question goes beyond the technicalities and calls for reflections about the development of completely new features in catalogues RDA-based or designed with a RDA and linked data approach. As a default solution, I would say that 1) I cannot see any business justification for librarians, cataloguers, copy-cataloguing services etc to collect and treat any personal information like date of birth, death, country of residence etc for living people without the active and responsible engagement of end users, id est the same authors. For instance opening up to wiki-fied versions of catalogues can be a solution (I wrote about this with regard to industry and commercial classifications at http://bit.ly/brublog - Towards wiki-fied versions of classification schemes?). Pioneered versions of participated cataloguing processes can be observed in services provided for free / fee based like Librarything. Catalogues could and should be designed in order to facilitate links with other web sites, databases and social networks through linked data / semantic web standards and identifiers but even is the level of technical interoperability was good enough to proceed in this direction, we must be aware that human, cultural, legal interoperability is truly further down the line as far as personal data of living people are concerned. At least in Europe. For authority control purposes see the recent British Library press release at http://pressandpolicy.bl.uk/Press-Releases/How-to-easily-identify-all-digital-content-contributors-The-answer-is-ISNI-497.aspx. Speaking from a european perspective, again, we see that in some contexts the disclosure of personal data of authors may be appreciated or even be mandatory - I wrote about these options in my recent paper Cataloguing the unfindable (Preliminary self-archived version available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1738079) where I considered challenges of data protection / privacy within records management and cataloguing practices in relation to policies and governance to prevent cybercrime. BUT this does not mean that cataloguers are authorised to pick up personal data out of contexts and without explicit licensing agreements just because there are new RDA elements and attributes to be filled... 2) in particular, data related to residences of living authors in catalogues should be avoided. The idea to put these data in catalogues without explicit and formal users' authorisation, to be provided, continuously updated and managed according to a specific policy within any single organisation sharing the data, is basically illegal in Europe but above all is completely unrealistic from an organisational point of view. As usual, these are provisional thoughts and opinions. Any further consideration welcomed. Brunella Longo
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA
Thanks for the correction. Probably even more reason that these kinds of labels should be encoded in changeable internationalization strings. Peter On Feb 24, 2011, at 1:24 PM, Brunella Longo wrote: It's a pitiful thing but nevertheless we may wish to note that in Italian the singular centimetro means the tool for measurements whilst if you want to say the value for the actual measure for bibliographic descriptions you have to use the plural, centimetri. Orthographic correctors and other software macros embedded within Web based or mobile applications can also impact the accuracy of what we write - I think the ultimate solution can come from some sort of parsing software / collection of qualified abbreviations that it would be nice to know somebody is pondering to provide - creating jobs and developing new businesses bytheway. Regards Brunella Longo From: Peter Murray peter.mur...@lyrasis.org; To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA; Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA Sent: Thu, Feb 24, 2011 5:56:34 PM On Feb 24, 2011, at 2:15 AM, hec...@dml.vic.edu.au wrote: In contemporary bibliographic displays, the context is often fractured. Therefore the meaning may be obscured. Hear, hear. Not only is meaning obscured, but language as well. Which is why a construct like height value18/value unit rdf:resource=http://dbpedia.org/resource/Centimetre; / /height is much easier to deal with to bring meaning independent of context and language. (I just made up that snippet of markup; it may or may not follow rules.) If a system looks up http://dbpedia.org/resource/Centimetre it will find labels in different languages, and can then create: 18 centimetro (Italian) 18 zentimeter (German) 18 centymetr(Polish) ... and even understand enough to compute: 7 inches(English) Peter -- Peter Murray peter.mur...@lyrasis.orgtel:+1-678-235-2955 Ass't Director, Technology Services Development http://dltj.org/about/ Lyrasis --Great Libraries. Strong Communities. Innovative Answers. The Disruptive Library Technology Jesterhttp://dltj.org/ Attrib-Noncomm-Share http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA -- two preferred names for places
___ From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of Adam L. Schiff [asch...@u.washington.edu] Sent: February-24-11 3:09 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA 4. For names of certain places, use abbreviations in Appendix B.11. Isn't this limited to jurisdictional qualifiers? No, it's also applicable to many other elements that can be recorded even if no jurisdictional qualifier is needed in an access point. For example, place of birth can be recorded as just a country if that is all that is known, and you would use abbreviations for the countries found in Appendix B.11. See the first example in RDA 9.8.1.3: 9.8.1.3 Record the place (town, city, province, state, and/or country) in which the person was born. Record the place name in the form prescribed in Chapter 16. Abbreviate the names of countries, states, provinces, territories, etc., as instructed in Appendix B (B.11), as applicable. EXAMPLE N.Z. Place of birth of filmmaker Peter Jackson This is a good reminder of one of the quirks in the names of the places. RDA 16.2.2.4 has ** two ** sets of guidelines for recording the preferred name of a place. 1. The preferred name of a place, as usually found in authorized access points, can be qualified with additional elements in parentheses (those additional elements use the abbreviations for places from Appendix B.11). 2. The preferred name of a place, as found in specific elements associated with works, persons, families, and corporate bodies, can use commas preceding larger places (all places in these elements would use the abbreviations for places from Appendix B.11). So for case 1, these are the preferred names: New Zealand Auckland (N.Z.) Tamaki (Auckland, N.Z.) And for case 2, these are the preferred names which can stand alone and/or be used as qualifiers in authorized access points (as seen in examples above for Case 1): N.Z. Auckland, N.Z. Tamaki, Auckland, N.Z. The following elements are those which use Case 2. Not all of these elements are used as qualifiers in authorized access points: RDA 6.5 Place of Origin of a Work (Use in authorized access point for a work: 6.27.1.9) RDA 9.8 Place of Birth RDA 9.9 Place of Death RDA 9.10 Country Associated with the Person RDA 9.11 Place of Residence RDA 10.5 Place Associated with the Family (Use in authorized access point for a family: 10.10.1.4) RDA 11.3.2 Location of Conference, Etc. (Use in authorized access point for a corporate body: 11.13.1.8) RDA 11.3.3 Location of Headquarters (Use in authorized access point for a corporate body: 11.13.1.3) In thinking about these two ways of recording the preferred name, I wonder if in reducing the number of abbreviations and standardizing how preferred names are recorded, we would be happy with forms like: Tamaki (Auckland (New Zealand)) I think eliminating abbreviations enhances clarity. Nesting larger places in parentheses is just as easy to read as using commas preceding larger places. Are there any compelling reasons to continue the AACR2 convention of using two methods to record preferred names for places? It would make sense to use full forms like New Zealand for all elements for places when required, and not worry when N.Z. would be appropriate. Thomas Brenndorfer Guelph Public Library
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA -- two preferred names for places
Thomas Brenndorfer wrote: In thinking about these two ways of recording the preferred name, I wonder if in reducing the number of abbreviations and standardizing how preferred names are recorded, we would be happy with forms like: Tamaki (Auckland (New Zealand)) I think eliminating abbreviations enhances clarity. Nesting larger places in parentheses is just as easy to read as using commas preceding larger places. Are there any compelling reasons to continue the AACR2 convention of using two methods to record preferred names for places? It would make sense to use full forms like New Zealand for all elements for places when required, and not worry when N.Z. would be appropriate. I'm not sure where I stand in regard to punctuation (since generally this is a non-issue in regard to normalization). This is one of those few areas of presentation that RDA still hangs onto, and really shouldn't have to. In regard to abbreviations in place names, I am definitely all in favor of getting rid of them! Kevin M. Randall Principal Serials Cataloger Bibliographic Services Dept. Northwestern University Library 1970 Campus Drive Evanston, IL 60208-2300 email: k...@northwestern.edu phone: (847) 491-2939 fax: (847) 491-4345
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA -- two preferred names for places
Thomas said:
it's also applicable to many other elements that can be recorded even
if no jurisdictional qualifier is needed in an access point. For example,
place of birth can be recorded as just a country if that is all that is
known, and you would use abbreviations for the countries found in Appendix
B.11. See the first example in RDA 9.8.1.3:
But aren't all the examples you give for fiels in records other than
bibliograohic manifestation ones? And in most of the examples you
give, the abbreviated form is a qualifier.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA -- two preferred names for places
Quoting Brenndorfer, Thomas tbrenndor...@library.guelph.on.ca: This is a good reminder of one of the quirks in the names of the places. RDA 16.2.2.4 has ** two ** sets of guidelines for recording the preferred name of a place.snip So for case 1, these are the preferred names: New Zealand Auckland (N.Z.) Tamaki (Auckland, N.Z.) And for case 2, these are the preferred names which can stand alone and/or be used as qualifiers in authorized access points (as seen in examples above for Case 1): N.Z. Auckland, N.Z. Tamaki, Auckland, N.Z. snip In thinking about these two ways of recording the preferred name, I wonder if in reducing the number of abbreviations and standardizing how preferred names are recorded, we would be happy with forms like: Tamaki (Auckland (New Zealand)) I think eliminating abbreviations enhances clarity. Nesting larger places in parentheses is just as easy to read as using commas preceding larger places. Are there any compelling reasons to continue the AACR2 convention of using two methods to record preferred names for places? It would make sense to use full forms like New Zealand for all elements for places when required, and not worry when N.Z. would be appropriate. I don't see why we need brackets (parentheses) at all; isn't the above example clearer as: Tamaki, Auckland, New Zealand ? Double punctuation is sometimes necessary, as in combination with quotation marks, but in such cases as this does it contribute any value, for either the human reader or processing by computer? The sole advantage I can see is for display on a small screen (e.g. a mobile device) and that doesn't count very heavily with me, not being a user of such a device. YMMV. Anyway, where double brackets occur in bibliographic data, omission of a bracket is quite a common error, in my experience. I grant that smarter data input/edit programs, with elementary word-processing capabilities, would flag that, but I've never had that. Hal Cain Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (not, please, Melbourne (Vic., Australia)) This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA -- two preferred names for places
From: hec...@dml.vic.edu.au [hec...@dml.vic.edu.au] Sent: February-25-11 8:22 PM To: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access; Brenndorfer, Thomas Cc: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA -- two preferred names for places Quoting Brenndorfer, Thomas tbrenndor...@library.guelph.on.ca: Tamaki (Auckland (New Zealand)) I don't see why we need brackets (parentheses) at all; isn't the above example clearer as: Tamaki, Auckland, New Zealand ? It could be one option or the other. The only problem I see with the commas is that the form could be confused for a sequence of three unrelated entities. Thomas Brenndorfer Guelph Public Library
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA -- two preferred names for places
From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod [m...@slc.bc.ca] Sent: February-25-11 7:34 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA -- two preferred names for places it's also applicable to many other elements that can be recorded even if no jurisdictional qualifier is needed in an access point. For example, place of birth can be recorded as just a country if that is all that is known, and you would use abbreviations for the countries found in Appendix B.11. See the first example in RDA 9.8.1.3: But aren't all the examples you give for fiels in records other than bibliograohic manifestation ones? And in most of the examples you give, the abbreviated form is a qualifier. I think you're referring to four RDA elements for places that are not used as qualifiers in headings. Elements that are used to identify Persons in RDA: RDA 9.8 Place of Birth RDA 9.9 Place of Death RDA 9.10 Country Associated with the Person RDA 9.11 Place of Residence These are now found in these new MARC authority fields: 370 $a - Place of Birth 370 $b - Place of Death 370 $c - Associated country 370 $e - Place of residence (also used for Headquarters for Corporate Body-- which can be a qualifer) The values for these fields are entered using the abbreviations in RDA Appendix B.11. Example from http://www.loc.gov/marc/authority/ad370.html: 370 $e Calif. This is a good example of why using AACR2 abbreviations is just silly. It's such a headache for catalogers to 1) look up abbreviations in tables over and over again, and 2) remember which fields use these abbreviations and which ones don't. It's simpler to remember a single value (California in the above example). If a catalog user saw abbreviations like A.C.T. or Man. or Mo., what would we expect the user to think? Thomas Brennndorfer Guelph Public Library
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA -- two preferred names for places
Quoting Brenndorfer, Thomas tbrenndor...@library.guelph.on.ca: From: hec...@dml.vic.edu.au [hec...@dml.vic.edu.au] Sent: February-25-11 8:22 PM To: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access; Brenndorfer, Thomas Cc: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA -- two preferred names for places Quoting Brenndorfer, Thomas tbrenndor...@library.guelph.on.ca: Tamaki (Auckland (New Zealand)) I don't see why we need brackets (parentheses) at all; isn't the above example clearer as: Tamaki, Auckland, New Zealand ? It could be one option or the other. The only problem I see with the commas is that the form could be confused for a sequence of three unrelated entities. But that's equally so for almost any sequence of terms (words or phrases) delimited by commas. I haven't the current (16th) edition of the _Chicago Manual of Style_ (CMS) at hand, but the 15th ed. (at 15.29) prefers the names of states, territories and possessions of the United States should always be spelled out when standing alone and preferably (except for DC) when following the name of a city ... and likewise for Canada (15.30). And 15.31 specifies commas (not brackets/parentheses) between place name and state or other entity. CMS 15 doesn't address usage for names of countries following placenames, but editors following CMS would normally generalize and follow the same practice. Anyway, if these names eventually find their way into a lookup table or whatever, or are subject to verification processes in data entry (a kind of spellcheck function, I suppose!), they should certainly be uniform in style! Hal Cain Melbourne, Australia hec...@dml.vic.edu.au This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA
Hal Cain wrote: snip The dictum that context imparts meaning is, I think, relevant here. In the context of an ISBD bibliographic record, printed or in a screen display, standard abbreviations have a context; nowadays, even so, possibly not all who see them in that context will understand them. In contemporary bibliographic displays, the context is often fractured. Therefore the meaning may be obscured. When we prepare to dismantle bibliographic data and mash elements into hitherto unseen combinations, we can assume no particular context, Therefore it seems to me that abbreviations no longer have a place in our workflows. /snip This is a very important point, but I have a different take on it. In the future, I think it is safe to assume that the catalog records we make will be mashed up with other things out there to create entirely new resources. (At least, I hope they will be because otherwise, our records will be ignored and not used at all) At this point in time, it is practically impossible to predict how our records will be used and changed, but one thing that I think we can assume: the traditional context will be lost, as Hal mentioned. This means that a bibliographic record will be seen *outside* the catalog, in isolation from the rest of the records it relates to, by way of headings and descriptive treatments. It will be just like looking at a few catalog cards taken out of a catalog. There are so many relationships that the headings and descriptions make little or no sense. (To explain this, someone can ask of a single record: Why did you use the form International Business Machines Corporation and not IBM, which is the way everybody thinks of it? Because the other records in the catalog use that same form. etc.) In the future, a record will also be seen from within different cultural/linguistic contexts. So, when a patron sees a record imported into a future mashup, it may be coming from--who knows where, e.g. (I hope these links work) http://tinyurl.com/68jaybd from the Deutsche National Bibliothek, where the abbreviation for pages is S. or from the Russian State Library, where the abbreviation is http://tinyurl.com/6ccpjwq c. but there are all kinds of other abbreviations, too in all of these records. So, while the Russian abbreviations may be incomprehensible to English speakers, the reverse is true as well. This is what our patrons will see and will be experiencing in the near future--I am sure that many are experiencing this right now--and we must respond. All of these library/catalog records will--sooner or later--be mashed up. Of that I have no doubt because people want it so desperately. [Concerning this, I suggest the recent report from CIBER Social Media and Research Workflow. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/social-media-report.pdf, p. 29 where it is clear that above all, *everybody* wants from libraries a single search for all electronically licensed resources. I think we need to do more than that and include non-licensed resources, and that is what I have attempted to do with my Extend Search in my catalog at AUR] For our patrons, the universe of information has gone *far outside* the boundaries of our catalogs, and we must continually look at the information universe through the eyes *of our patrons*, and focus less on the information universe *of library catalogs*, which sadly, is having less and less meaning and importance to the world. This involves a total change in the intellectual orientation of catalogers, it's true, but it is vital that we do it. It has been compared by others to the intellectual changes people went through when the Earth ceased to be the center of the universe, and the Sun became the center of one small solar system inside an average galaxy within an immense, almost unlimited universe. How do/will our records fit in to such a universe? Does typing out abbreviations even play a role in it? How can we fix the situation for our patrons when they can see so many types of records created under so many rules and many times--if not most of the time, no rules at all? These are some of the genuine, and serious, issues that our patrons are facing, and by extension, we should face as well. James Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome via Pietro Roselli, 4 00153 Rome, Italy voice- 011 39 06 58330919 ext. 258 fax-011 39 06 58330992 First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/ Cooperative Cataloging Rules: http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA
Just a quick idea, suggested by the last two messages. Beyond strict cataloguing aspects there is a cultural issue here that should be addressed at another level, without loosing focus on cataloguing priorities in my opinion - e.g. exempli gratia: what about suggesting colleagues keen on self-archiving and open access policies to ask scholars to avoid abbreviations (at all costs!!!) as a way to embrace and promote a more wide interdisciplinary dialog? Brunella Longo http://www.brunellalongo.it
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA
-Original Message- From: J. McRee Elrod [mailto:m...@slc.bc.ca] Sent: February 23, 2011 11:30 PM To: Brenndorfer, Thomas Cc: RDA-L@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA 3. For these elements: Dimensions, Extent of Storage Space, Duration, Numbering of Part, and some elements for music and maps, use Appendix B.7 for Latin alphabet abbreviations. How did those escape? Some esoteric map and music terms are far less well known than p. v., S.l. and s.n. Also, some are spelled out and some not. Some background documents: http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/5chair9-chairfolup4.pdf http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/5chair9-chairfolup7.pdf http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/5chair9-chairfolup8rev.pdf http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/docs/tf-iso1r.pdf http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/5cilip1.pdf http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/5m216-265.pdf A few of those remaining abbreviations are related to indexing of access points, such as Numbering of Part and Numeric Designation of Musical Work. The abbreviations in measurements are in elements where the trend is to use metric symbols. That only leaves two, Right Ascension and Medium of Performance, that have specialized abbreviations found in their respective fields. 4. For names of certain places, use abbreviations in Appendix B.11. Isn't this limited to jurisdictional qualifiers? These are used in place name qualifiers, the same as in AACR2, but these abbreviations may not survive past the first release of RDA, according to the discussions in the documents listed above. The JSC agreed that they would be retained for the first release of RDA. from page 101 of http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/5m216-265.pdf 5. Special cases for specific elements: Laws, etc.; Treaties, etc.; ?Protocols, etc.; A.D.; B.C. If etc. why not et al.? The opposite direction was discussed in the documents above-- either eliminate terms with ,etc. or redefine the scope of the base terms Laws, Treaties, Protocols. That still might happen in the future, and so most of the last remaining required special abbreviations may yet disappear. Thomas Brenndorfer Guelph Public Library
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA
On Feb 24, 2011, at 2:15 AM, hec...@dml.vic.edu.au wrote: In contemporary bibliographic displays, the context is often fractured. Therefore the meaning may be obscured. Hear, hear. Not only is meaning obscured, but language as well. Which is why a construct like height value18/value unit rdf:resource=http://dbpedia.org/resource/Centimetre; / /height is much easier to deal with to bring meaning independent of context and language. (I just made up that snippet of markup; it may or may not follow rules.) If a system looks up http://dbpedia.org/resource/Centimetre it will find labels in different languages, and can then create: 18 centimetro (Italian) 18 zentimeter (German) 18 centymetr(Polish) ... and even understand enough to compute: 7 inches(English) Peter -- Peter Murray peter.mur...@lyrasis.orgtel:+1-678-235-2955 Ass't Director, Technology Services Development http://dltj.org/about/ Lyrasis --Great Libraries. Strong Communities. Innovative Answers. The Disruptive Library Technology Jesterhttp://dltj.org/ Attrib-Noncomm-Share http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA
Quoting Brenndorfer, Thomas tbrenndor...@library.guelph.on.ca: If etc. why not et al.? The opposite direction was discussed in the documents above-- either eliminate terms with ,etc. or redefine the scope of the base terms Laws, Treaties, Protocols. That still might happen in the future, and so most of the last remaining required special abbreviations may yet disappear. etc. needs to go away with its partner other (heavily used in MARC vocabularies, not in RDA). Neither of these imparts any information nor does it provide a way to expand a list as needed. One of the advantages to having the controlled lists online and downloadable is that we can provide a way for folks to add suggested new terms to a list (or to gather those automatically from actual records). RDA allows for using terms from a list or, if the term you need is not in the list, adding your own term. This is the way we should go, but we need to do it in a coordinated way so that new terms 1) are standardized 2) get distributed to the community. I think we can do that in a reasonably efficient and cost-effective way as part of data sharing. One possibility is that for vocabularies for specialized materials (especially fast-evolving media) that a representative group from that cataloging community be placed in charge of the list. That way decisions can be made more quickly than if the entire cataloging community has to consider the new terms. In that way, the specialist group will be performing a service for the whole community, since many of those media make it into all libraries (think DVD, BluRay, and whatever is coming next). Note that the current RDA Vocabularies in the Open Metadata Registry [1] are given a status (provisional, published.. and there could be others) that would help us manage this process. So the list management technology is there, but the community mechanism isn't. In addition, any cataloger workstations would need to allow the cataloger to either select from a list *or* add a new term. The hard part is managing the gathering and evaluating of new terms, but I'm betting that catalogers could learn to check a wiki or specific discussion area for developments before adding a new term in isolation. Working together is what we do well already, we just need to build on that. kc [1] http://metadataregistry.org/rdabrowse.htm -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA
It#39;s a pitiful thing but nevertheless we may wish to note that in Italian the singular centimetro means the tool for measurements whilst if you want to say the value for the actual measure for bibliographic descriptions you have to use the plural, centimetri. Orthographic correctors and other software macros embedded within Web based or mobile applications can also impact the accuracy of what we write - I think the ultimate solution can come from some sort of parsing software / collection of qualified abbreviations that it would be nice to know somebody is pondering to provide - creating jobs and developing new businesses bytheway. Regards Brunella Longo
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA
Not to detract from Karen's statement, but etc. and other do mean something -- that the category encompasses things besides those explicitly identified that, while of a similar nature, are too obscure or insufficiently fleshed out to warrant the intellectual effort to label, identify, or categorize further. The challenge is that, while humans can live with this degree of ambiguity and inexactness, machines and machine processing can't. Every exception of this type would require programming a bail out mechanism for the software to identify it, and a bail out action for the software to treat it. I strongly suspect that the coding occurrences for handling such exceptions would grow geometrically or exponentially with the number of exceptions to be addressed. And as Karen identifies, the value of these etc. and other labels would be nil in the information sense -- one would know that they are exceptions or special cases, but have no further information as to the nature of the exception/special case or how it relates to other exceptions/special cases. (And I readily admit this is going to be one of the hardest things for me in adapting to the programmatic vision of machine handling of our data, because my life and thought processes are full of these little other categories.) John F. Myers, Catalog Librarian Schaffer Library, Union College 807 Union St. Schenectady NY 12308 518-388-6623 mye...@union.edu -Original Message- Karen Coyle wrote: etc. needs to go away with its partner other (heavily used in MARC vocabularies, not in RDA). Neither of these imparts any information nor does it provide a way to expand a list as needed.
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA
4. For names of certain places, use abbreviations in Appendix B.11. Isn't this limited to jurisdictional qualifiers? No, it's also applicable to many other elements that can be recorded even if no jurisdictional qualifier is needed in an access point. For example, place of birth can be recorded as just a country if that is all that is known, and you would use abbreviations for the countries found in Appendix B.11. See the first example in RDA 9.8.1.3: 9.8.1.3 Record the place (town, city, province, state, and/or country) in which the person was born. Record the place name in the form prescribed in Chapter 16. Abbreviate the names of countries, states, provinces, territories, etc., as instructed in Appendix B (B.11), as applicable. EXAMPLE N.Z. Place of birth of filmmaker Peter Jackson Radzymin, Poland Place of birth of author Isaac Bashevis Singer Newark, N.J. Place of birth of sculptor Chakaia Booker In a MARC 21 authority record the first example would be recorded in field 370: 100 1_ $a Jackson, Peter, $d 1961- 370 __ $a N.Z.
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA
In the previous message when I wrote who ignored I should have written who did not know. I picked up the FIRST word that came up to my mind influenced by what I#39;ve been reading all day long and... it obviously was a false friend ;) apologies to both the English and the Latin communities and thanks to the one who made me noticing it. Brunella Longo
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA
From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod [m...@slc.bc.ca] Sent: February-23-11 4:13 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA Abbreviations in RDA is so complex. Abbreviations in RDA are quite simple actually. I can count the basic RDA rules with the fingers of one hand: 1. Transcribed elements: transcribe as found 2. All other elements, except those below: generally do not abbreviate words 3. For these elements: Dimensions, Extent of Storage Space, Duration, Numbering of Part, and some elements for music and maps, use Appendix B.7 for Latin alphabet abbreviations. 4. For names of certain places, use abbreviations in Appendix B.11. 5. Special cases for specific elements: Laws, etc.; Treaties, etc.; Protocols, etc.; A.D.; B.C. and that's it. Thomas Brenndorfer Guelph Public Library
Re: [RDA-L] Abbreviations in RDA
Quoting Brunella Longo brunella.lo...@yahoo.com: I would say that: - Abbreviations are wellcome if they are universally accepted i.e. [id est ;)] if they facilitate cross domain comprehension and are well documented internationally. There is no point in writing centimetres; But I must admit I have some doubts; I have recently met a guy who [did not know] Kg is for kilogram! Anyway, if there is an abbreviation for a word in a common dictionary that is likely to be accepted also in catalogs; - abbreviations belonging to the special language of just one community are deprecated and should be avoided at all costs. The dictum that context imparts meaning is, I think, relevant here. In the context of an ISBD bibliographic record, printed or in a screen display, standard abbreviations have a context; nowadays, even so, possibly not all who see them in that context will understand them. In contemporary bibliographic displays, the context is often fractured. Therefore the meaning may be obscured. When we prepare to dismantle bibliographic data and mash elements into hitherto unseen combinations, we can assume no particular context, Therefore it seems to me that abbreviations no longer have a place in our workflows. On the instance you cite of i.e, I would demur: I used quite often notice confusions (especially between i.e. and e.g.) among people I would otherwise regard as skilled in reading and writing. Therefore I would not except them either. Hal Cain Melbourne, Australia hec...@dml.vic.edu.au This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
