As anyone who has read David Weinberger's Everything is miscellaneous knows, the physical arrangement of grocery and department stores, while perhaps not standardized in quite the same way a catalog is, is nonetheless the result of extensive empirical testing. While I don't believe RDA has quite that much laboratory testing behind it (and, to be realistic, there is a huge difference in the amount of money that is available to libraries and to places like Staples to figure these things out), with respect to the Rule of Three, I think the JSC got it right.
The Rule of Three is certainly too restrictive; moreover it reflects a technological context (the card catalog) that has largely been rendered obsolete by bibliographic databases. But there has to be wiggle room: a standard that demands "access points for ALL creators and contributors" leads to a practice that is theoretically satisfying but not always feasible. We have materials with over 100 named contributors, and I'm sure other science and technology-focused collections have encountered the same. If we were forced by RDA (or any other standard) to transcribe and provide authority-controlled headings for every contributor to every work in our catalog, our cataloging would slow us down to a crawl, which results in an even greater disservice to our users because the materials they need are sitting the back room (or in the ERM), not in the stacks or discoverable in the OPAC. At some point it really does make more sense to say, "[and others]", and I think we probably need to remain somewhat vague about what that point is because not every library has the same users, or the same needs. One of the things I think is important about RDA is that it is nudging the profession to look at "cataloging rules" differently. I am tempted to say that the AACR2 approach was "all that is not permitted is forbidden", while the RDA approach is "all that is not forbidden is permitted"; though I readily concede this is a bit of an oversimplification. In any case, to return to the question tracing authors and other contributors, any fixed cutoff number is going to be justifiably labeled "arbitrary", and will be subject to the slings and arrows of those who think it's too high, or those who thinks it's too low. Identifying an absolute minimum, then encouraging catalogers to catalog wisely, and identifying best practices for specific types of libraries and collections strikes me as more flexible and realistic. 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 Adam L. Schiff Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 4:36 PM To: RDA-L@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Plans for Existing Bib Records? On Fri, 20 May 2011, James Weinheimer wrote: > I guess we have probably exhausted our respective points. I will only discuss > one here: > > Again, RDA's standard was made arbitrarily--unless somebody out there can > point to some kind of research done that showed our patrons wanted only a > single author, plus a translator, plus an illustrator only of childrens' > books, although I have never heard anybody suggest this--and then dropped it > all into the lap of the cataloger. Just a couple of years ago--even right > now, that is considered to be *not good enough* and can only be considered a > huge step backward from what it has been. > > What will you do when massive numbers of records come in--all following the > RDA standard--that only have a single author? Or do you really think this > won't happen because catalogers are too "professional" to allow standards to > fall? Why not fault the standard itself? Why even allow it to happen and then > have to clean up afterwards? I go back to John Myers comment earlier. We ALREADY have had a standard for 30+ years that says that all our users can look under is the first author/editor/illustrator/producer etc. when there are more than three entities responsible doing the same function. I have always considered that to be a massive disservice to users and a violation of longstanding cherished cataloging principles. Have patrons only wanted the first of four authors or editors in our current cataloging environment? Have faculty understood why they were left off of statements of responsibility and not provided with an access point simply because they came last in alphabetical order and that was the order decided on by them or the publisher of their book? I don't recall a lot of criticism of AACR2 for the decision to only give one name and one access point in this situation (yes, catalogers have always had workarounds, but we never bothered to change the standard in 30 years). Given what we've already been providing for large numbers of multi-creator resources, I really don't see RDA as being that different. Any number other than providing access points for ALL creators and contributors is really an arbitrary one that doesn't serve users very well and doesn't fulfill the objectives of the catalog that we've cherished for over a 100 years. ************************************** * Adam L. Schiff * * Principal Cataloger * * University of Washington Libraries * * Box 352900 * * Seattle, WA 98195-2900 * * (206) 543-8409 * * (206) 685-8782 fax * * asch...@u.washington.edu * **************************************
