Re: [RDA-L] Variant series titles in RDA
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: Mary Mastraccio wrote: While I heartily agree that control number linking is the way to go, I am surprised that Bernhard ties the failure to do this to MARCistan. No, to the current practice thereabouts, was what I wrote. Esp., LC not providing IdNumbers in their records is what really counts for us in Europe, and OCLC's practice is no better. Of course, it is much more difficult in a shared, networked environment than in a local system, but at least LC could do a better job. There being numerous local systems doing the right thing, even in the US, of that I am aware. B.Eversberg I think a lot of the problem is that libraries still transfer their records through ISO2709 format. Because of this obsolete form of record transfer, which is all based on textual strings and old methods such as logical record length, it becomes difficult to transfer other types of information using this system. Although some clever person may be able to figure out how to transfer relational information such as ID numbers for separate authority records using ISO2709, I don't think it's worth the effort. What needs to be done is to start to transfer records using at least MARC XML, if not some other standard. If we started transferring our records in more modern formats, we could even consider making our own web services and APIs, such as Google and Amazon.com have done. This is one of the main reasons why many systems people don't want our records. Before anything meaningful can really be done, lots of conversions need to take place. Even though the information within our own catalogs probably no longer use ISO2709 and internally, everything may be in relational database format or even XML, we are still hobbled by the limitations of our transfer protocols. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Alternatives to AACR2/MARC21?
This is really the crux of the matter, While we can build the greatest
bibliographic structures devised by human beings, the information inside must
be correct. (What correct means is a separate, huge discussion!) Whenever we
build these structures, we have to remember that what people really want are
not the structures, but the information. The situation seems to me to be the
same as at the end of the 19th century (or around that time anyway) when
everybody wanted to share catalog cards. The fundamental problem came down to:
what will be the size of the catalog card. Everybody had a different size, and
if your size was not the size chosen, you would have to redo everything. You
couldn't have all different sizes in one catalog, and cutting down each one and
writing in words you cut off was too stupid. So, it was a big fight since it
came down to all or nothing.
When they finally decided on the catalog card, that was a monumental decision,
but naturally, all they had decided on was a blank card! Absolutely nobody
outside the library community cared about it--readers wanted the information on
the card. Of course, that took about 50 or so more years before ISBD was agreed
upon. (And may be going away, unfortunately!)
I will say again that I don't believe that FRBR user tasks are the tasks that
users undertake today. Google has changed the entire landscape whether we like
it or not. As I work more and more with my students, I question the utility of
the well-made AACR2 record. When I am lucky enough to have someone who is
interested, and I can spend enough time with them, I can show them more
accurately what they are doing when they search an AACR2 catalog record, or an
index that uses different non-LCSH thesauri, and full-text databases. The idea
of *not* searching full text is very difficult for many to understand, and they
are really surprised.
Business will eventually bow to their customers and provide full text, and more
and more are doing so right now. I believe we should prepare for the time when
all full-text will be searchable in a Google books sort of way, where
downloading the full text may not be available, and people will be expected to
pay for access to the item in some way, but the full-text is still searchable.
Already Google Books is becoming the starting point for some searchers. The
availability of full text for searching must have profound implications in any
user tasks, and changes the traditional user tasks from Panizzi and Cutter
completely. How can we fit in to that world, which may not be so very far off,
and if just a few people change their minds, could even happen tomorrow?
Jim Weinheimer
http://futurelib.pbwiki.com/Framework
I find it discouraging that in the suggested Framework for the next
generation of cataloguing (url above), replacing AACR2/MARC21, the
sample bibliographic dataset considers Autobiographies to the the
subject of an autobiography, with no mention of the author of the
autobiography being the subject, and autobiography being the genre.
The subject of the made up work is *not* autobiographies. That would
be the appropriate subject heading for a work of criticism about
autobiographies, or a work telling one how to write an autobiography,
not for an autobiography.
If is the the level of sophistication of those who propose to design
the next generation of catalogues, I despair.
nbs
p; __ __ J.
McRee (Mac) Elrod ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
nbs
p;{__ | / Special
Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
[RDA-L] =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re: [RDA-L] [Possible Spam]=A0=A0Re: [RDA-L] Alternatives to AACR2/MARC21??=
Robin M. Mize wrote: If all full-text will be available in a Google books sort of way, then the materials found in that particular set up will have metadata describing it and considering that many of the subjects Google offers to narrow a user's search results are worded with LCSH standardized language it's not out of the realm of possibility that something as detailed as AACR2 and/or MARC21 would be of even more value. If you want to think of one thing that hampers the count of words within a document from being the only way to provide relevance in a source, just think of one word: homonyms. I agree absolutely. I deeply believe that what we are doing is highly relevant to information retrieval and will remain so in the future. While the idea of authority control is foreign to many non-librarians and especially to many IT people, the Semantic Web is all the rage. I consider authority control and the semantic web as practically the same thing, once the hideously complex coding is out of the way. Therefore, I believe there is an immensely important place for librarians and catalogers in the future. The problem is, as I stated in my original post, that FRBR and its user tasks were determined before this incredible onslaught of full-text materials became available. Our users have mostly left us en masse in favor of these full-text materials. I think it is absolutely obvious that these fundamental changes in how people access information must have an effect on user tasks, and therefore, the user tasks must be reconsidered. I don't know how people search things today--there are many ways and several studies are available, but everything seems to be in flux. In any case, I don't believe that the user tasks are to find, identify, select, and obtain works, expressions, manifestations and items. I really don't think that is what people do today, I don't think they particularly want to, and perhaps they never did. If we had perfect FRBR displays and searching right now, today, I don't think our users would notice any difference at all. If we want our tools to be relevant to our users, we must fit our tools and resources into their work. This is the way of the web and is a major change from the past: we no longer have a captured audience. They can go elsewhere very easily. Jim Weinheimer
[RDA-L] =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re: Re: [RDA-L] [Possible Spam]=A0=A0Re: [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks (was: Alternatives to AACR2/MARC21?)?=
discoverable), then we need to continue to find ways to break down the silos that lock up these resources. To do this while not losing the high quality of our metadata, we need to come up with a way to integrate our libraries' metadata with the wider information universe effectively. This, I believe, is one of the fundamental goals of FRBR/RDA. To speak in terms of books-as-information-packages (as is the legacy of AACR2) is no longer enough. Revising AACR2 incrementally is, a! nd has been, a band aid. To say nothing of the quality of the *data* stored in MARC format (which is often quite high) or the sophistication of the format, our retrieval tools have failed us for too long. Whatever the cost of developing and implementing a new standard which approaches integration of library metadata with the wider universe, the *opportunity cost* of standing still and waiting, and adhering to the reactionary claque, is much too high. We may be trapping ourselves in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lest I end on too grim a note, I concur with Jim's tip-of-the-hat to librarians who are doing it for themselves, developing their own retrieval tools. We have the energy and collective intelligence in this profession to charge forth with elan. We mustn't underestimate ourselves... Casey Alan Mullin MLS Candidate School of Library and Information Science Metadata Assistant - Variations3 Digital Music Library Indiana University Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:40:30 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [RDA-L] [Possible Spam] Re: [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks (was: Alternatives to AACR2/MARC21?) To: RDA-L@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA /It brings me no joy to point out these issues, but I think somebody needs to do it. It's the future of our field. It's only reasonable to ask that in the information landscape of today, is FRBR/RDA any kind of a solution? Undertaking these changes will demand enormous efforts from library staff and budgets, and we need to know that it will be worth the effort. I question it and feel that the same efforts would be better used in different areas. I may be wrong, but I think it is vital to discuss it. / I don't know if FRBR/RDA is the solution. I tend to agree with Mac that there is a lot of potential in MARC--even given the fact that it needs to be updated to remove redundancies and other problems. The reason it has potential is that it has been designed to accommodate those who need complex and detailed description and those who just need something simple and quick. It's never been fully utilized by any given system that I've ever worked with, but it could do a lot of the things we talk about wanting now if we had the right data environment. I'm not saying MARC and only MARC; and I agree with many that RDA has a lot of problems that need to be addressed before it would become a true standard in the sense of being used by most. I'm saying that we shouldn't abandon good tools or any set of users for the sake of following a sexy trend because that approach doesn't serve anyone well in the long run. Regarding funding. Since when have we had the funding to do whatever we want to do whenever and however we want to do it? I think that the expense of resources going into staff and programming is partly why it's so hard to find a system that takes full advantage of something like MARC; because even in the best of economic times, the commercial interest is only going to invest as much as is in the interest of its profit margin. That's why there are so many open-source applications--because there have been librarians who know enough about systems and programming to design something useful in spite of our given resources, and they have been willing to share their efforts in the interest of the community. To paraphrase the song ... Librarians are doing it for themselves. (and the users, of course) Robin Mize Head of Technical Services Brenau Trustee Library Gainesville, GA 30501 [EMAIL PROTECTED] / /Weinheimer Jim wrote: snip I thought that Robin Mize had written an excellent response to Jim Weinheimer, but once again Weinheimer insists that the FRBR user tasks are not relevant. I'm wondering now if maybe the problem is that Weinheimer is not characterizing the user tasks accurately. He says: I don't believe that the user tasks are to 'find, identify, select, and obtain' 'works, expressions, manifestations and items.' I really don't think that is what people do today, I don't think they particularly want to, and perhaps they never did. /snip I don't want people to get the wrong impression that I think that the FRBR user tasks are not relevant. I think that people do want to find items by their authors and subjects (less
Re: [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks
Mike Tribby wrote: Rather than show off my spectacular disinterest in some of the points Diane raises, let me venture a guess as to the answer to her overall question: Perhaps others disagree with your conclusions. Not saying they're wrong, but I'm definitely saying that one of the biggest problems with this whole dreamscape has been that many catalogers, perhaps most, have never been convinced of the urgency you and others see in this push forward. Or, for that matter, that although it's obviously a push, forward may not be the perceived direction. I'd say that this could conceivably indicate that not enough effort was put into making your case. Or those of us who are not enthusiastically backing the push are idiots, although that's usually only a subtext. I guess one way of looking at it all is whether librarians and catalogers think we are leading or following. I would like to believe that we are leading the way, but experience tells me that we are following now. Many catalogers seem to think that we can just sit back, do what we have always done, and others will come and beg us to save them when it all turns sour. I don't think that's going to happen. The rest of the information world will most probably remain extremely disinterested in MARC format and our rules--that is, until a project arrives that shows them the advantages of using our tools. But the methods cannot be the same methods as searching the card catalog. The web has proven that those days are gone. Still, I don't believe that the primary task of cataloger was to build card catalogs, or MARC records, or AACR2/RDA records. We provide controlled, intellectually coherent access to information resources selected by experts. I think users would like that a lot if they understood that this is what we do. But we must demonstrate it to them first Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks
Case in point. Flexibility and interoperability ... and I might add it works between languages as well as between schemas or systems. But why should we carp on about something that has proven so handy and adaptable? Got no eye for the future, there. Why, we old timers might as well be talking about how we used to fight bears in waist-high snow uphill both ways to school before we had to work all night in the mines and all we had to eat was biscuits and water! Dang kids! Get off my lawn! There are a couple of problems with this: one is that conversion doesn't just go one way. We want others to map *to* our format, and so long as our formats are MARC based, non-librarians just won't do it. MODS would be far more popular with non-library systems people than MARC. Another problem is the relative inflexibility of MARC itself. Putting aside the ISO2709 problems (which are highly serious), it is still primarily a flat-file format. I am sure that MARCXML can be adapted to allow for URIs instead of textual strings for headings, but I don't know if it currently can allow for URIs for other records or items. As I have mentioned (I think on this list), the WWW is going toward APIs and mashups as the Semantic Web grows. This means that little chunks of information will be brought into our systems behind the scenes, where it will all come together on our screens. We need to build systems that fit into this scenario, both from the point of view of using this information in our own catalogs, but also in supplying compatible information for uses by other, non-library computer systems. This is one reason why the ISO2709 transfer process is becoming outmoded. But MARC is almost beside the point. For the cataloger, the display of the input screens can look however we want. So, it won't have to say dc.creator or dc.title. It can say 100 or 245 if people love the numbers so much. Catalogers would take as little notice of the change just as much as they did with the conversion from MARC-8 to Unicode. I'm just worried, now that Google has dumped OAI-PMH--which is much simpler than MARC since it just uses Dublin Core--in favor of their XML sitemaps, what would we do if they came out with Google Semantic Standards i.e. their own cataloging rules? It wouldn't surprise me a bit if they are doing something like this. James Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] FRBR user tasks: subject access
B. Eversberg wrote: Even in Cutter's time, the concept of subject was much different from personal names and titles. In a small library with a rural clientele, their holdings may back then have covered a limited number of topics and more or less every book fitted well enough into one of those rather broad categories. Thus may have arisen the tacit assumption that topic or subject is something sufficiently clear-cut and representable by one crisp term to describe it, much like a title or an author's name. Another definite change is in the concept of item. Back in Cutter's time, it was the monograph, and perhaps in some cases, the journal article. Today, it is much different, since often people don't want a book or even the entire item. I have discovered that the limited preview in Google Books is enough for some people because they are able to get the little bit that they (think!) they want. Another discovery is with the database eHRAF, which uses as its primary unit, *not* the monograph, *not* the chapter, *not* the journal article, but the paragraph! It's quite a humbling experience to see index terms assigned for every paragraph of a book. In U.S. libraries, there is the 505 note, which is often not used in other systems. They prefer some type of linked records with in-depth analysis and consider our 505s to be woefully inadequate. Finally, the method of access that we have for subjects is completely incomprehensible to many of my students. For example, there is the wonderful Goddard Library images page (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/70627032?tab=subjects) with the subjects: * Space sciences -- Pictorial works -- Databases. * Space biology -- Pictorial works -- Databases. * Space medicine -- Pictorial works -- Databases. * Space microbiology -- Pictorial works -- Databases. * Outer space -- Exploration -- Pictorial works -- Databases. * Remote-sensing images -- Pictorial works -- Databases. It would be interesting to do some research and find out how long it would take before somebody who was interested in the Goddard Library site would come up with one of those subject headings! I do think it would be sooner than a roomful of monkeys typing out the complete works of Shakespeare, but probably not much sooner! In a card catalog, where people were forced to browse cards, this structure made sense, but when people search keyword, it becomes almost impossible to find things. Many users see these subject terms that would never occur to them in a million years and conclude that they are useless. I disagree since I believe that users want the resources organized under these headings, but catalogs must take into account how people really search today. James Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] libraries, society and RDA
Karen Coyle wrote: Quality does matter. So does efficiency and a consciousness that we can't possibly afford to give full attention to every item. Some choices have to be made, and, as the LC Future of Bib Control report pointed out, we have no measurements of usefulness or success that would guide us in making those choices. I'm afraid that the occasional anecdote about user success or failure just isn't enough to justify our decision-making for the huge expenditure that is cataloging. If we can't show that what we are doing makes a difference, it's going to be hard to make our case as the budget cuts continue to come down. This is the main point: it is not we who will decide these matters, it is others who have no understanding or interest in what we do. It's very difficult to get someone to sit still long enough just to tell them the difference among traditional library catalogs, traditional journal indexes, and full-text aggregators. Don't assume your faculty and administrators know anything about this. Of course, how can anybody do a decent search if they don't even know what they are searching? And then to add in RDA and FRBR? Even professional, non-technical services librarians fall asleep! When these people can search Google with big smiles on their faces, and big frowns when they have to work in a library catalog, how can we even conceive of them deciding that what we do is important and should continue with major funding? People normally understand prototypes and whether something works for them or not. A lot of these people come from the business community (Boards of trustees, etc.) and understand the need and importance of shared standards. I think we must take our work beyond the theoretical stages and make prototypes, no matter how clunky they happen to be, so that the people who make the decisions can see the potential. This is one reason why I am so in favor of the open source movement. We can do things ourselves, share ideas and we can all see what works and doesn't work, instead of waiting for a deus ex machina from the vendors, when they decide to get around to it. And who knows if their tools will succeed? So, I return to my old saw of RDA: maybe it's OK as a theory on paper, but how will it convince the powers-that-be that it is important and a solution to anything at all? Remember, it doesn't matter if we are convinced--that's completely beside the point, that is, for those catalogers who are not on the higher executive and budgetary boards of institutions (which I would guess is probably about 999% of catalogers, although this may be an underestimate). Why can't we say what RDA and FRBR are a solution to, and how their introduction will make this huge difference to our users? These are the questions that sooner or later, the decision makers will ask when the axe comes down on our budgets and we should have some answers ready. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] libraries, society and RDA
Karen Coyle wrote: I think we have made a mistake in focusing on the catalog as the main user tool. Our model for user service should instead be the reference service. The catalog is inherently about the library's holdings, already a narrow scope. In reference service, the user comes in with a general information request, and the library seeks to connect the user to that information, regardless of whether it leads to an item in the library's catalog. We have to quit thinking that catalog = library, and start looking at a wider range of services that we can (and do) provide. I think you're right and is one reason why I keep hammering away on the FRBR user tasks. I still don't think that those user tasks are what people want. Certainly, some people still want the traditional access points (I am one of them), but I believe that we are seeing that these user tasks are much more librarian tasks. This is not to say that these tasks aren't important--but they are just not that important for our users. They want, and are now expecting, other things. There are some very interesting projects out there that envision the Semantic Web and new uses for various types of metadata. We should be front and center in these projects. For one, take a look at http://wiki.dbpedia.org/ which has several projects, and one is RDF Book Mashup, which takes information from DBpedia (a knowledge base or in many ways, a subject authority file), Google and Amazon (bibliographic and other information, and mashes it together, along with the FOAF (Friend of a Friend schema, or name information). As a result, a lot of the work that we have been doing is being replicated, and it can be used and reused in all sorts of innovative ways, and in an open fashion. All of these projects share their data. Developers could be using our data as well. When I say that our work is being replicated, this is not AACR2/LCSH/MARC21 at all, but it is being done and it is being shared. For free. And with better user interfaces---they are still too RDF-ish for now, but the interface is easy enough to fix--people may like it alot. Especially library budget directors Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] libraries, society and RDA
Shawne Miksa wrote: You write: Bibliographic data available freely on the web can be combined and presented in different ways, available to those who might want to try new aggregations and methods of discovery and presentation. In your view, where does that bibliographic data originate? Who puts it into a shape or form so that it is available for the web? Or does it shape itself? I was recently contacted by a library looking for a fresh new student to help catalog some original materials that have no previous records/bib data in any system. Once those description are made--formed into some sort of representation--then that data can be shaped into anything we want and made available through any system, web-based or not. When I try to understand your argument I don't see that part of it--I just see something miraculous happening and then all of sudden things are on the web. Are you suggesting that we set are representations afloat--like paper boats in a stream? I'm not saying that I necessarily like the way things are going--in fact, I do not. I feel just as Mac does, who wrote in one of the recent messages that he fears for the future. But even though I may not like the trends in metadata creation, we cannot stop these developments. For example, the fact that Google stopped development of OAI-PMH (using only DC!) in favor of XML Topic Maps is a huge development. Imagine that you are a publisher, or any other producer of non-MARC records (i.e. anybody who is not a library), are you going to go in the direction of our directives or in Google directives? Especially when our directives are not directly useful in any way except that there may be a record after a few months or years in a local web-OPAC someplace (i.e. hidden to 99% of users of the web), or it may be in WorldCat, where it is hidden to probably about 95% of the world's users (since I am sure very few users go to the OCLC site). Or do you opt for XML Topic Maps, put your full-text into Google Books and/or Google Scholar and/or Amazon.com, which are the places where people go? (Especially after this deal that Google made with the book publishers. It now looks as if Google will be one of the major--if not the major--book retailer in the world) I think I know where most publishers would go. So, who will be following the library directives? Libraries and nobody else. This is the information world as it is Metadata creation is being done on many levels by many people in many ways. There are many experiments going on right now. For example, when I hear that students are creating AACR2/LCSH/MARC21 records, I just cringe. It takes months just to learn enough to do LC copy without being revised. To learn how to do simple original records takes a lot longer. To learn how to do complex records takes a career and never stops, and you need other opinions. I remember an incident when I was learning. I was fortunate to work with Ann Murphy (the recording secretary for AACR2, and someone with long years of experience. Look in your AACR2), and I had a question about something I was cataloging. I remember how shocked I was to hear (as I was to hear many times after that!), I've never seen anything like that before. I have great respect for experience and consultation. But not everyone does, especially information specialists who are making the decisions. They like the idea of creators making metadata, or secretaries making metadata, or automatic metadata creation. Many publishers manage the process of their publications with systems using metadata, and some think that is enough. Have you seen OpenCalais by Reuters? It makes metadata automatically for you. For free. Or, if you have a larger collection, you may have to pay something. Sure, the results stink (not as bad as I have seen in similar projects of the past), but you get RDF-encoded metadata that someone can edit, and it can even work with authorized forms. And although the records stink, you have to be very good to understand how they stink. Explaining to others how these records stink is extremely difficult, since these other people are mostly skeptical--after all, they think you are just trying to save your job! This is the information world as it will be, and perhaps relatively soon, especially with looming budget cuts. Again, I want to emphasize that I do not like this at all. Users need reliability, consistency, and I believe they want information presented to them in an unbiased fashion, which they do not get in other systems. But thousands of projects are going on out there. The place where the newest developments in information are happening is *definitely not in libraries.* This is most unfortunate, but at least in my opinion, the future lies with these projects and not in libraries. This is a bleak picture I have created, yet I think there are still possibilities for us to influence the future course of these projects. But it
Re: [RDA-L] libraries, society and RDA
Karen Coyle wrote: I interpret this statement differently than you do. Nowhere does the report say that consistency is not worthwhile -- this is a study of consistency, not the value of subject headings. Their conclusion, as you quote above, is that consistency is unlikely across a broad spectrum of metadata, especially between different communities. (Remember, this is a report about repositories, not libraries, so we aren't talking MARC records or AACR or even LCSH.) Since the question of consistency in this report has to do with record sharing, they are pointing out that some areas of the record are less likely to be consistent than others. They aren't advocating AGAINST consistency, IMO. They use different terminology (consistency of judgemental metadata) but I still read it as: Given the expense and nature of this type of content, we believe it is not feasible to expect consistency with regard to metadata of judgement, except perhaps where it occurs in a tightly controlled, narrow and consistent environment such as a database of drug trials. This seems to be a pretty clear statement to me. I said worthwhile and they said feasible. What I meant by my rambling message earlier is that I think that people want and expect consistency, and that it is incorrect to conclude that it is not feasible and that it is too expensive. (I have seen this often. What wouldn't be too expensive? Why aren't the authors or publishers or IT people too expensive?) I think another conclusion, just as logical, would be to figure out methods to ensure and improve consistency in a cost-effective way. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] libraries, society and RDA
J. McRee (Mac) Elrod wrote: MARC handles multiple subject thesauri for our multiple clients quite handily, with 2nd indicators and $2, allowing us to provide LCSH, RVM, MeSH, etc. as wished. The same applies to 050 LCC, 055 FCPS or Moys, 060 NLMC, 080 UDC, and 082 DDC. While I basically agree with this and the other points you make, this is a chance to show how the more modern formats can work. With the new formats based on things such as URIs, you would not be forced to add separate headings for MeSH or RVM to each record. The URI could import *on the fly* a record from another file, held either locally or remotely, which would include all of these terms. Some of this in the the VIAF project. An example would be a book by Leo Tolstoy who has the form in the NAF: Tolstoy, Leo, $c graf, $d 1828-1910 but in the DNB it is: Tolstoj, Lev N. $d 1828-1910 and in the BNF, it's: Tolstoj $b Lev Nikolaevic#780; $f 1828-1910 all reflecting cultural needs and respective coding. If all of these things could be handled with a URI, such as: http://orlabs.oclc.org/viaf/LC|n+79068416 and the correct system were in place, all of these forms would be available for the user. This is OK with names, but I think we will see the real power in subjects, when related terms in different thesauri are linked together. So, specialized thesauri or headings can be linked together to really help people, and I think, even open their cultural horizons. (This is similar to a dream of a former professor of mine, Fran Miksa, which could be realized today) As an example, I may have the concept cow in the LCSH, and find that it has the broader terms cattle -- livestock -- Animal industry etc., but in a thesaurus from India, the view of a cow is probably quite different. We want things to interoperate as much as possible for our own efficiency and to ease the task of the user. These are the sorts of tools that can be built today But such a system will work efficiently *only* if we have records that follow high-quality standards--and based on the practice of consistency(!)--that are created by well-trained people. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] libraries, society and RDA
Owen Stephens wrote: The question of 'feasibility' takes us beyond a question of whether it is 'worth it' to whether it can be done. What the report says is that the authors do not believe it is possible to achieve consistency with metadata of judgement except within a tightly controlled, narrow and consistent environment - and the repository environment is not any of these things. This is not just about cost, but about people and their behaviour. No argument here. I was being generous in my original message, but I went on to say that it is possible to achieve consistency in metadata of judgement. I will go on to say that people have relied precisely on this consistency for over a hundred years, if not far longer, and for someone to say that it isn't feasible is an unjustified conclusion, in my opinion. Certainly, this consistency is not 100%, and people must be trained to do it correctly (I fear that current training in subject analysis and heading assignment is not improving). For many years, studies have shown that two different, highly-trained people will assign different subjects to the same item. My reply is: so what? This ignores the power of the syndetic structure of the catalog, where users can find related terms and therefore find everything. Perhaps one cataloger assigns Despotism while another assigns Authoritarianism, users can still use the syndetic structure to find the works. Humans may not hit the bull's-eye each time, but they will come close, and with the use of the structures, things should be found. Compare this to computer systems automatically assigning terms that are completely off the mark. Instead of either of the headings above, a computer may come up with Military art and science or x-ray photography. I realize that general understanding of the use and importance of the syndetic structure is not appreciated, and this is probably because it is so poorly implemented in our current catalogs. Before concluding that something that has been relied upon for such a long time is not feasible, a little more work should take place and the alternatives need to be explored in depth. I will be the first to agree that deep and profound changes are needed and that automated subject assignment is improving and may actually work someday. But not today. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Open development : an example
Attached to Bernhard's excellent prototype, I want to share something else. At: http://www.galileo.aur.it/opac-tmpl/npl/en/libweb/RDA-Koha-Example.html you will see a non-working copy of my Koha 2.2.7 entry input page. Koha is an open-source ILMS. By the way, Koha 3 has a much improved data entry page. When you click on 2 in the left-hand corner, you will go to the 2xx fields, and under the 245 field, you will see how I can link into the appropriate areas of Bernhard's rules. This is very quick and very dirty, but someone asked how long it would take to implement the system described by Bernhard. While expecting a company to implement something like this could take years (luckily months) this small example can serve as an example of how *frighteningly* fast open development can be. I could implement this right now, and I'm not even all that good at computer programming Someone who knows what they are doing could do something much, much better and much more efficiently. There are a lot of programmers out there who are positively itching to do something like this. And when you add into all of this the cooperative comments from suggestions from people on such a list as this, the results can be unbelievably good. But it must be open. Jim Weinheimer A small demo example for what open development could do: http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/wtr/content.htm Using modest, no-frills tools and designs, this offers browsing by rule number, rule title, core elements, and keyword (all words from all rules). Appendices are not included. If you want to jump in directly to, say, rule 1.6.3, just say http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/wtr/page.php?urG=PARurS=1.6.3 This is _just_ for _demonstration_ purposes. It will be of little use after the full software becomes available, and will then be withdrawn. Presentation of rule texts is suboptimal, and it is not possible to download any of it in a format usable by other software. There are inaccuracies and some chapters are omitted. The important parts are the browsable indexes. OTOH, it would be possible to link from this presentation into the finalized online version, provided it comes with an open linking interface. Of course, lots more and a lot of very different and much better things might be brought about by open development! There's a big chance here to really open up to the metasphere at large. If, however, open development should be excluded due to a reluctance to make rule texts available for at least non-commercial re-use, as it is with AACR2, success of RDA will be impeded and even a split of the catalog sphere may very likely become unavoidable. This may well turn out the most crucial stumbling block on the road to acceptance and implementation. Esp., closed source text will hardly be accepted in the DC arena, and that means the DC-RDA collaboration and the outreach to other communities will remain academic or pie-in-the-sky. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] How to catalog digital objects in RDA?
And as an extra wrinkle when considering these matters, the original file may
be in XML and the different formats are merely generated from this one file
through the use of different XSL Transformations. So, a single file in XML
format can create *on the fly* a pdf, html, MSWord, and theoretically, anything
else you would like.
As a very simple example of how this works in action, see:
http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/xsl_transformation.asp, which takes an xml file
and transforms it using your browser into an html document. But, correctly
coded, any XML file document could even be turned into a MARC record!
I think this will be happening more and more often since it is such a waste of
time and resources to literally store multiple formats, when they can simply be
generated by modern browsers. And, these abilities can become extremely
powerful. This is an example of information resources that are genuinely new;
these resources don't really exist except as viewed on your machine at a
specific moment. Change the XSLT and what you see on the screen changes
completely, but the XML file does not.
It's interesting from a theoretical point of view since the idea of
manifestation disintegrates completely, while the idea of expression
becomes tangible in the XML file. But how to deal with it in our everyday
workflow remains to be solved.
Jim Weinheimer
Jakob asked:
For instance how to you catalog a a web page or a PDF file deposited at
a repository? And what do you do if the PDF is also availabe at a second
server and there is a HTML version of the same document at the third?
RDA Appendix M has examples:
http://www.rdaonline.org/constituencyreview/Phase1AppM_11_10_08.pdf
There are examples for an audio book, audio music, two books, a
serial, a streaming video, a video recording, and a website. There is
no example of an electronic document; neither electronic text nor
electronic document are in RDA's list of possibilites at RDA 3.3 p.
12, only the very general online resource, which is more like a GMD
than an SMD. Electronic documents make up the bulk of our work these
days, and often exist in the variety you mention. RDA is distant from
the bibliographic world we experience, and the needs expressed by our
clients.
Regardless of how RDA would have you do it, I can tell you how we do
it, and will probably continue to do it.
There seem to be four possibilties: (1) a record for each format
(driving reference and patrons mad); (2) a record for one format with
the others in 530's; (3) repeating collations and 856's, one for each
format (300 is repeating because of the British way of doing kits);
and (4) a generalized 300* with repeating 856's, or an 856 which takes
you to an introductory page which has links to the various formats.
*300 $a1 electronic text (x, 100 p. : graphs) :$bdigital file.
We use the last of the four methods mentioned above. Offlist I will
send you the cataloguer instructions for one such project.
nbs
p; __ __ J.
McRee (Mac) Elrod ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
nbs
p;{__ | / Special
Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
Re: [RDA-L] How to catalog digital objects in RDA?
Interestingly, as I understand it the new biblios.net cooperative metadatastore from LibLime takes this approach. I don't know if it uses XSLT or not, but if I understand correctly, the underlying data store supports having multiple schema-representations of the same resource, and relating those different schemas (say MARC, DC, ONIX, some future RDA-inspired schema, etc--although I don't think it supports all of these YET, the architecture does). An individual schema representation _can_ be actually individually uploaded, and the store will keep track of it's relation to other representations of the same resource. But if a representation in a particular desired format hasn't been uploaded individually---biblios.net has the capability of automatically translating an existing representation into the desired representation. I find this approach very exciting. Thanks for that about biblios.net. I need to look at it. In any case, I agree. It will be great. And for cataloging, if a book or article were in XML (happening more and more) and it were coded correctly, the title, subtitle, statement of responsibility, etc. could be taken automatically into a record without any human intervention. Of course, for this to be done correctly, would assume that the ISBD rule of exact transcription continues. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Access points. Was: RDA comments
Prejsnar, Mark wrote: This is a good and important point, and only needs one clarification: the concept and phrase access point actually arose BEFORE the card catalog (pre-1890), when all catalogs were a series of printed books. I suspect that few people realize how extremely recent the card catalog is. This is interesting to reflect on (among other reasons) because we have really, in a very short period, gone thru three phases, each introducing more flexibility to the catalog: printed books, to the card catalog, to the computerized catalog.. In keeping with Jims post, access point was especially crucial when there was least flexibility. True, and you make some interesting points as well. When I started studying the history of card catalogs, I was surprised by how much people disliked them. Even the catalogers referred to them more as tools for their work and kept trying to emphasize that the real purpose of it all was to create printed catalogs, which were much easier to use, portable, and so on. Of course, to create a printed catalog meant essentially, to create two catalogs: one printed and the other in cards, so as more and more books were published and bought by the libraries, the printed catalog became obsolete even before the day it went to the printers, and it eventually became an unjustifiable luxury. I don't know when the last printed catalogs came out. At Princeton, there was one of the greatest catalogs I have ever seen that was published around 1889, and later a linotype title-a-line catalog was created as late as the 1920s. That last one was a complete debacle and no other comprehensive catalog was ever printed there again (that I can remember, anyway). But this is in essence, how I see the real goal of FRBR and RDA: to recreate virtually the displays found in the printed catalogs. Without any doubt, they are excellent displays and are far better than the the card displays were users are doomed to look at multiple records with quasi-duplicated information over and over and over again. Those who complained about the card catalogs were right. While the idea appeals to the historian in me, I just think it's time to move on and come up with other solutions. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] FRBR, RDA, and Platonism
After reading RDA and its application of FRBR, it seems thatwe dealing with librarianships application of Platonism, especially inthe descriptions of work, expression, manifestation, and item. There really isno work; it is like a Platonic form, which is reflected in itsphysicality by expression, manifestation, and item. We, as catalogers,actually deal with the item. So perhaps in the real world the relationship shouldbe item, manifestation, expression, work. The item points to the manifestationwhich points to the expression which points to the Platonic ideal, work. Interesting ideas. I have thought in similar terms about the URI identifier, especially as it is rendered in RDF. In one sense, the URI equals the Platonic archetype, or the original form of the idea. Only when it takes on a word that a human can understand, does it become, in a sense, real. Of course, there is a problem: almost nobody in the real world is interested in the work as such. Very few people indeed want the complete work of War and Peace, or of the Atlantic (Monthly) magazine. They want either specific expressions of War and Peace (English, French etc.), or they want individual articles or issues. People are also interested in different versions of expressions (e.g. translated by Constance Garnett into English, 1932 version) but very few are also interested in the Greek and Japanese expressions as well. Although some perhaps. A related issue is the problem between the expression vs. the manifestation. The manifestation is defined in physical terms that have little or nothing to do with the output of the author, i.e. 245 abc, 250, 260, 300, 4xx. These are all determined by the printers/publishers. Throughout the individual printings, the author may have corrected some points throughout the text in ways that do not affect the fields noted above. I submit that it is these changes that people are interested in. It's always curious to physically examine and compare items that are bibliographically the same. They often look quite different, and there is a sneaking suspicion that there are lots of other changes within the text, although the paging is the same. Or there is the opposite case, where the 245, 250, etc. are different, but the actual text is most probably the same. Of course, this is the way it has always been, but I don't think that simply transferring these methods in to the virtual world will work very well at all. Still ruminating over existentialism Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] FRBR, RDA, and Platonism
J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca) wrote: The difficulty I have with the concept of such links is that if a particular collection did not have those expressions/manifestations, they would not have the records to which to link. Should they link to records via the Internet for resources they do not own, or which are not available electronically for remote access? Presumably a library catalogue would only have the records for manifestations available in their collection either in physical form or by remote access, with associated expression and work records? The links in any work/expression/manifestation record would differ for every library, since no two libraries would have the same galaxy of expressions/manifestations. Wouldn't this halt exchange of records which could be used without extensive local changes? Wasn't this the fact which killed multivers at the Toronto Conference? Pardons to all. Obviously, I didn't make myself clear in my musings. I don't question for a moment that we need to catalog the work aspects for all sorts of reasons, but at least in relation to texts, I still believe that these are some of the least used areas of the bibliographic record by the public. Work is needed by librarians for various reasons, although apparently LC does not completely concur since they dropped series authority records. Also, based on my experience, the uniform titles are some of the least understood parts of the records. I would venture to guess that where work is used, and understood, best by the public at large would be in musical recordings. People want the work and to know the specific expressions and (my own bugbear since I don't believe in its existence) °manifestation to get the item. But I definitely want to retain the work aspects in the records! We just have to recognize some of the issues involved and some of the problems experienced by our users. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?
J. McRee (Mac) Elrod wrote: Accurate transcription of the title as on the item, even if titles as found on containers are substituted for DVDs and CD-ROMs, seems to me to remain the basis of patron helpful cataloguing. Variant forms of the title as found in CIP or publisher produced metadata are helpful (in MARC terms) as 246s, but not 245s. Your humble member of the cult of the title page, And I guess I'll play my normal role of the wild, anarcho-syndicalist. ;-) Cutter and his comrades were dealing with other technologies and assumed that a particular resource would not change. Therefore, a title page was forever, just as the extent, the place of publication and so on. That is as true today as it was then. But with virtual resources (I hesitate even to use the term electronic resources) all of this must be reconsidered. Even in printed materials, the weird publications (loose-leaf) didn't fit into the classical norms all that well, since updates could change a publication completely. Everything previous was thrown into the transfer box more or less randomly for the user to figure out. With online materials, the older versions often completely disappear (unfortunately) and the record made so carefully by transcribing the title page may end up describing nothing at all. This does not mean that we should reconsider cataloging printed materials--our rules work very well as they are now--but the problem arises when we try to insist that the same rules must operate in the virtual world. They don't make sense. This is why I feel it would be more productive to leave the tried-and-true methods alone and simply consider virtual materials to be fundamentally different--which is true. We do this now with manuscripts in many ways, where the rule of transcription of the title of a draft of a speech or letter that was dashed off in a couple of seconds and full of typos is not necessarily transcribed exactly. How should virtual materials be handled? That is a huge question whose answers must evolve with time, but does it mean that we should reconsider the tried and true methods of describing physical materials because of some theoretical belief that all materials must be handled in the same ways? To me, it doesn't make sense that it is so important to transcribe faithfully the chief source of information for a title of a virtual resource when it may change in a week or within the next 5 minutes. It doesn't serve the purpose of the cataloger or the user and can lead only to confusion for all. What is the solution? Again, that can come only with trial and error. I have some ideas of my own but I admit they may not work. But still, I do not see how these considerations should change how we transcribe the title of a book or serial. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?
First, I need to say that these were my statements, so I don't want Jonathan to take responsibility for any comments of mine, if he doesn't agree. The list owner was kind enough to say that there is some sort of problem with my email. My idea of working with integrating resources is based on practical issues. I will be the first to agree that cataloging a website is no more difficult than cataloging anything else: a book, serial, map, video or anything. Where it falls apart--completely--is record maintenance. When I catalog a book, the basic *description* of title, publication dates, responsible author and so on will be the same tomorrow, next year, and next millenium. The problem with websites is that they change often but irregularly and without notification. Therefore, none of the description, plus the URL, may match the item, and it may even become impossible to know if the record in the catalog is describing the same webiste. Even if you do figure out that it is the same thing, and you update the title and other information, the fact is thousands of people around the world are doing exactly the same thing over and over and over again. This is a tremendous waste of resources that cannot be justified in the current climate. And every time the resource changes, all ot that high'quality work in the record becomes useless because it no longer describes anything that exists. Someone mentioned in an earlier message concerning the concept of °Work° the idea of lost resources e.g. Aristotle's treatise on comedy that no longer exists and Umberto Eco wrote that novel about. With integrating resources, it becomes a similar thing. I am interested in finding a sustainable solution, and this includes creating records that faithfully represent the resources they describe. With integrating resources, they no longer do, and the note °Description based on web site (viewed Nov. 22, 1999) is absolutely no solution. It is only a cry of despair from the cataloger. As a user, I couldn't care less what it was in 1999. If I want to find something now, am I forced to turn to Google? What is the solution? Cutter and others of those days could not imagine these resources, but I am sure they would have wanted their descriptions to bear some resemblance to the resources themselves. I don't know the solutions. As I said before, I have some ideas, but they may be wrong. One idea is to use the Internet Archive extensively or build something similar. There are other ideas too, and I would love to hear more. But if we are supposed to recatalog every record for every integrating resource we catalog whenever it changes (and we don't even have any notifications), this is the road to increasing futility and eventual breakdown. This was another of the real-world issues that I was hoping RDA would address, but it hasn't. By the way, there are lots of other practical problems with digital materials that need to be addressed, and some part of RDA should discuss interoperability with other standards. Jim Weinheimer Jonathan said: But with virtual resources (I hesitate even to use the term electronic resources) all of this must be reconsidered. Even in printed materials, the weird publications (loose-leaf) didn't fit into the classical norms all that well ... We have found the new integrating resources category in AACR2 and MARC21 work equally well for both loose-leaf services (we do a lot of these for law firms) and updating websites (we also do a lot of these). The note* concerning when consulted works equally well for both. Information is information, whether print or digital. It is good to have 247 for earlier forms of the title when cataloguing as integrating resource; successive changes in title are easily transcribed. A recent experience might be relevant here. We prepare MARC records for an electronic publisher of research papers (i.e. electronic documents) in a particularly esoteric field. We had assumed, since they are sometimes updated, that they would be catalogued as integrating resources. The research library customers for these high priced resources said absolutely *not*, when contacted by a consultant hired by the electronic publisher. Those papers are cited in doctoral theses, including page numbers, as particular iterations. Each successive iteration must be preserved as it was at the time cited, along with a monograph record describing that iteration in their catalogues (with accurate transcription of the prime source title), and an url** taking one to that particular iteration. The needs of scholarship have not changed as much since Panizzi as Jonathan seems to think. An added wrinkle not yet addressed by rules (so far as I know) is that each of these papers comes in two electronic forms: one for consulting online and one for printing. Libraries did not want two records, one for each electronic form. Our first inclination was to
Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?
Karen Coyle wrote: Jim, et al. - Although I don't know of a 'cataloging solution' I think we should look at some of the ways that the web itself is dealing with these issues. One is the wiki ability to store versions for every change. That means that you can link to the December 31, 2008 document and it will always be there, but from it you can arrive at all of the previous and subsequent versions. Another way is RSS -- which gives notification of changes, and presumably could carry the relevant metadata to describe a change. And the main technology is the spider or crawler, which can return periodically (an intelligently, based on history of updates) to a site to update information. None of these currently updates a library catalog, but I think the concepts are relevant to our problem. kc p.s. Happy New Year! Yes, there are several technologies such as these that could be considered towards a solution. But the idea of continually playing catch-up with the web, *while there are other alternatives for our users* such as Google and Yahoo, but many other possibilities in the future as well, make me think it is possibly the most serious issue and we must consider other alternatives that lie outside the box. One idea that I still believe has merit I published several years ago in Vine Magazine, entitled something like How to keep the practice of librarianship relevant with the internet. (An extremely poor title, I know... but it seemed good at the time, and there is little to be done now. The article is far too long, but I was attempting to speak to both computer specialists and catalogers in the same article. I probably should have done two articles.) I had the idea of cooperating with the authors/website creators (gasp!!!) for them to use embedded metadata in their main pages that each website would keep current. Although discovering updates in an integrating resource is a truly thankless task for a cataloger, it is a simple matter for the website creators. They know their dates of update, they know where their sites begin and end, they know when titles change, and so on. Updating all of these parts of the *description* could be more or less easily done by the creators. There would be clear rules that they could link into *for free!!!* that would answer their questions. I had something in mind much as Bernhard's excellent versions. Naturally, headings would remain the realm of the cataloger, but it is my suspicion that the headings would change much less rapidly than the description. Of course, that is just a feeling on my part, but I think it seems reasonable that subjects would change less quickly than a latest date of edition. Uniform title changes are a different issue, and I don't have any idea how often these would change. So, my idea was for selectors to select a site and inform the website creators that their website had been selected for inclusion into the super-library catalog (whatever form it would take). Catalogers would catalog it *very well,* send the record as metadata to the website creators where they imbed it into the selected page(s). The library catalog would have spiders that would be constantly checking the local record with changes to the embedded version. Website creators would be responsible for changing anything in the bibliographic description, spiders from the super-library catalog would check for any changes, and updates would be made automatically to the catalog, again only in the descriptive areas. Any update would trigger an email notifying the website creators and the catalogers that changes had been made (this would attempt to eliminate errors and spamming). Even though I wrote this a decade ago or so, I still think the idea would be worth a go. Again, the problem would be to get the cooperation of website creators--they have to care that their websites would be included in these traditional catalogs that fewer and fewer people care about today. We have to make something worth everyone's while, plus it should be cool. If so, there could be enough demand for catalog records (especially analytics) that for-profit companies could have a very good business. It has been my feeling that website creators would willingly do this, if the work were simple enough and the super-library catalog was attractive enough. Since that time, I have learned some XML and realize that if a web resource is in XML, updates to the catalog could even be automatic for both the creator and the cataloger. HAPPY NEW YEAR! EVERYONE!! Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?
J. McRee (Mac) Elrod wrote: Properly approached, and shown that included bibliographic data would increase hits, website creators might well welcome such a feature. Some publishers who fall outside LC's cataloguing in publication program pay Quality Books $50 for CIP for inclusion in their publications, because they have found it increases sales. Some Canadian publishers purchase CIP from us (at less cost because we do not establish the related authorities as does QB). Imbedded bibliographic data in websites could be thought of as CIP. It's not a new or novel concept. It would be best if website creators could be included in the LC and LAC CIP programs as are text publishers. No, it's not a new idea at all--that's one of its greatest advantages. It's simply a new application of a tried-and-true model, plus there would be a division of labor based on the most efficient workers: the initial record made by catalogers (with input from the creator), updates to the description by the creator, updates to headings by the cataloger, while everything remains under the watch of the selectors. If someone else wants the record, they could just take it from the embedded metadata. I am sure there could be numerous variations on this, but the main thing is to increase the number of people working to create and primarily, maintain the metadata. Many catalogers would see this as a loss of control of the record, and it would be since untrained people could make many mistakes, but nobody can convince me that a record created by an experience cataloger that becomes outdated, where the title no longer describes anything that exists and a URL that points into the 404 Not Found Twilight Zone is good for anything except to confuse everyone and provide bad publicity for our field. MARC should change in this scenario as well. First, to XML and then to allow some freedom for the creators, perhaps an area for some keywords of their choice, some special URLs for them, and other possible fields reserved for their use. And yes, for static digital resources, AACR2 has proven itself to be adequate. I think a lot can be done today that would help everyone concerned, from the selectors and catalogers, to the creators and researchers. The technology is so powerful today that we are only limited by our imaginations. Jim Weinheimer
[RDA-L] [Fwd: Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?]
Stephen Hearn wrote; Actually, I think there are more factors involved than just powerful technology and limited imaginations. Consider organizational structures--the relationships which national library CIP programs are based on are not between an author and a cataloger, but between publishing companies and a national library. If every individual website creator could voluntarily demand CIP cataloging, that would be a major change to the CIP program, not just a new application of a tried-and-true model. It would likely overwhelm LC's ability to uphold its side of the bargain, since the allocation of limited human resources is another factor that the powerful technology and limited imaginations equation ignores. One way around this is the distribution of CIP creation to a host of other providers, as Mac suggests--but does this really have the same value, given that these alternate CIP sources presumably cannot be supply an LCCN or other national library record identifier for their data? To clarify, I had this idea several years ago, but I never thought in such literal terms as LC being responsible for it all. That would obviously never work. I was thinking in macro terms of the field of professional librarianship retaining the traditional library contols of: selection, description, organization, access and trying to achieve this in the most efficient way possible. One way of looking at it is to assign responsibility for each task to the entity best suited to achieve it. My experience then, as it is now, is that the hard part of cataloging integrating resources is not the cataloging, but the maintenance. And more specifically, the maintenance of the descriptive elements: titles, dates, URLs. Finally, it seemed (and seems) to me futile that the same work of selection, description, organization, access--and now maintenance--is done over and over and over again in hundreds or thousands of libraries around the world. Such a model cannot be justified in the lon! g run. Th erefore, all library selectors responsible for selection, all library catalogers responsible for cataloging, web creators responsible for maintenance of the description. While creating an appropriate computer system is relatively easy today (isn't that simply an amazing statement to be able to make?!), I agree that the biggest hurdle is getting enough cooperation to organize something like this. I have never really thought that such a system stands a chance because the changes are simply too much for people to accept: catalogers would lose control over much of their records, all selectors, catalogers and creators would have to be involved in a single, cooperative endeavor, and local institutions may not see a lot of the benefit locally. For example, individual institutions would have to accept that their employee's work will often be more useful outside the local institution than within it (such as, when a selector in library A selects a site that a cataloger in Library B catalogs, but the record may be useful only for Library A), or as in your case, CIP, these records would be made by someone in the field authorized to create such a record,! but not just the national library. The biggest problem, which is even more important now than before is: why would a website creator or outside, for-profit publisher want to cooperate at all if this record is placed in some stinky, old library catalog? Huge problems are easy to point to. But, if we do not attempt some way to increase our efficiency in creating and maintaining the records for online integrating resources, then I submit there is little sense to add them to the catalog in the first place. Yet if we decide to not add them, I maintain that we immediately seriously marginalize our own usefulness to the information world that people increasingly use and we justify the stereotype that the library world is populated with people who cannot change. But we must question whether the note Description based on web page (viewed Jan. 2, 2003) i s useful for much of anything if everything in the record has changed. I said that it is a cry of despair from the cataloger because the old ways just don't work for these materials. And finally, I have a sneaking suspicion that all our bibliographic records will eventually all be thrown in together into a gigantic Google soup pot anyway, which will search literally everything that is online, whether it comes from the Germans, French or Romanians, while variant records will be handled as Google Scholar handles duplicates now with the versions. Or they might come up with something else. I think we can create something better than that. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] [Fwd: Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?]
Karen Coyle wrote:  Just to note on the idea of pushing out the creation of cataloging to  the creator, that was the original impetus behind Dublin Core      http://dublincore.org/about/history/   and it has failed, even though it promised to make web searching more  accurate (not put data into library catalogs). Creators aren't  interested, especially as long as their work can be found, without that  effort, through search engines. You can argue all day about how much  better things would be if we had metadata for the title and the creator  and the current date, but we've been there, done that, to no avail. It  is possible to extract some metadata from web documents, and it's  possible that Google may make use of some of the html coding in its  indexing. But I am convinced that we're going to have to get along  without much human cooperation. Pardons for yet another clarification, but I don't believe that record *creation* could ever work with creators, whether it is in Dublin Core or whatever. This would be much like expecting a car owner to actually make the automobile. But, automobile owners are expected to *maintain* their cars, and this is what I think would have a better chance, that is, so long as it is something very simple, related to updating titles, dates of update, and a few other points. Still, I don't know if it would work at all. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Preferred access points for Expressions
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: In this regard, the preferred access point is of course a misnomer. The important function here is not the access aspect, but the naming aspect. An entity needs a name! For wherever an entity is mentioned, cited, listed, referred to or related to, the question is what should be the name (or name-title reference) displayed to the end-user so they can best make sense of it? Internally, URIs can serve to do all the linking, and other new tricks, but externally we need consistent naming of works and everything else. I think we're in agreement, but the main point I want to make is not to confuse An entity needs a name! (with which I agree) with An entity needs a [single] name!' Today, this is no longer necessary and all of the variant names can be found, and displayed, in all kinds of ways. It's also important to realize that this is nothing new. Thomas Hyde's catalog of the Bodleian library from the 1600s appeared to work in a similar manner. Although I can't find a copy of his catalog online, his headings were remarkable in that they included all of the variant forms. I remember the heading for Peter Abelard was something like: Abaelardus, Petrus, seu, Abelard, Peter, Abeilard, Pierre, Abelardo, Pietro, [..]. and there were references from each form. I personally found this method of presenting all the variant forms along with the heading to be excellent, and it was much clearer for the user than the modern methods (except that everything in his catalog was in Latin!) I can see something very similar with URIs. The gathering point will be the machine-readable URI, and the display of the heading[s] would be based on various factors. No. 1 would be based on the user's search, but the others could be based on IP address, user preferences, or who knows what else. Of course, the machine could be set to display only one or two lines and if this is not enough to display all the variants, then [more...] can be displayed. This would demand some changes in our policies and procedures however. One example would be that each heading should have a language component, and there would be other changes as well. But it is important to realize that today, all forms can be equal and there is no need for preferred form anymore. This would be looking toward building something for the future, which is what we need to do. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Preferred access points for Expressions
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: Although it can still be a big help. How does, for instance, Google Booksearch do its job of bringing together what belongs together? It has got nothing but textual strings to go by. Therefore, it will miss many references out there that use idiosyncratic forms of names and titles. I think we need more tools for interoperability than pie-in-the-sky URIs which are still very far from being ubiquitous and not likely to be used much in citations and quotations at all. I'm getting the impression, with all due respect, that you have yet to overcome a certain main entry phobia that was rampant some years ago and that was eager to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is still, let me repeat, very helpful and thus a Good Thing to have a clear and consistent name for as many entities as possible. As for RDA as it stands now, it would otherwise have to be rewritten in a major way. But here is exactly where everything begins to disintegrate: which will be the preferred form in the universe of the World Wide Web? Will everyone be expected to use the English form? (I doubt that very much) The German? The Czech? If we rely on preferred forms, then interoperability will be limited only to those who share those forms. This is the situation as it is now. But I want my users to use your records for discovery; I want to be able to use your records for copy. I also don't think that people will ever search separate databases to discover the myriad versions of the preferred forms for Leo Tolstoy, not to mention subjects that are used in different databases. Why? Because they don't search separate authority databases today--why will they search something that is even more complex? For me, I think it's great that we do have the pie-in-the-sky URIs available as a possible real solution. Can they be implemented tomorrow? Certainly not, it would take years of development if not longer, but some places are really trying with the Semantic Web, and at least it does allow for the promise of real interoperability. I haven't seen any other genuine proposals out there, although I may be missing something, but in this economic climate, we absolutely must work together. How would citations work in such a system? I don't know, but from my experience with reference work, it certainly isn't done very well today. Figuring out citations often needs some pretty amazing acts of imagination! One thing I am sure of: someday, perhaps sooner or later, all of the bibliographic records will be dumped together somewhere and there will use automated methods for finding duplicates and so on. We should all keep in mind that Google is working very hard to mine the hidden web which includes us, and I'm sure they will eventually succeed. Where will our preferred forms be then? What purpose will they serve? It would be nice to have a clear and consistent name (although very few people use a clear and consistent name concept today). In the world of print, it was done with text strings and organization of records and cards, but today there are other options which may even be simpler. If all we are aiming for however, is to come up with unique text strings, AACR2 does that right now. And by the way, Bernhard, you did catch me--I do have a main entry phobia ;-) but to be more precise, it's a single main entry phobia, since the purpose of the single main entry died with the end of the card catalog. Some changes to the MARC format (preferably the XMLMARC version) would allow for the strange idea of multiple main entries, or in DC terms: creators vs. contributors. (But that's another topic) Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Preferred access points for Expressions
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: Here's where the VIAF idea comes in. It was conceived _because_ not everybody wanted to use English forms. And it may be the best starting point currently in existence to support your vision! With VIAF in place, a user may enter any form of name, and as long as VIAF knows that form, it will silently replace that name with its IdNumber or URI, whatever, and send that one instead of the name to the (VIAF-enabled!) catalog(s) in question, not bothering the user with this maneuver. BUT: This works as long as the name entered leads to one and only one authority record in VIAF. There are two other situations: 1. There are several candidates for that name (When truncation is used, this will happen more often) Which of potentially very many name forms of the several records should be displayed? All of them, with no one emphasized? 2. VIAF doesn't know the name In this case, the best thing to do would be to open an alphabetic index in the vicinity of the name in question and let the user browse and pick. This may lead on to a case of situation 1. I have followed the VIAF for some time and applaud the general direction. This is the sort of project that should be given high priority since true exchange of this type of information can lead to genuine cooperation and a real savings in time and money for users as well as for libraries. It would also be one of the most important advances toward the Semantic Web, which could raise our profile significantly. There was another project called Onesac in Denmark that I consulted with briefly. If was all in RDF(!!!), had authority records from all over Europe and was extremely advanced. It seems to have died, however. http://www.portiadk/websites/onesac.htm The cases you point out are probably just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems in implementing something like the VIAF.These are are a couple of possibilities, but other people will have all different kinds of ideas. I wonder, though, in what way VIAF may be of help in boolean searches where one of the terms is a name. For you will want to enable users to enter sawyer clemens and the system to find Twain's Tom Sawyer. Me seems neither RDA nor VIAF address that kind of situation. Maybe we should have an interpolated search in some kind of works authority file, and from the result, use a (or several) work URIs to do the actual search. But as always, it's easy to build castles in the air, trouble starts only when you try to move in. VIAF, as mentioned before, would have to be extended to include work authority records. Which do currently not exist, but should come into being with Scenario 1 of RDA. The example you point out should be eminently fixable although I don't know how it would work now: finding references of references. Using URIs can be done in a whole variety of ways. Using URIs is not that much different from how relational databases work today; just on a grander scale. The records referred to in the URIs could reside on the web, be downloaded automatically to a local system, be updated automatically, or who knows what? The technology exists right now. And if I understand you right, you also advocate a general deregulation of citation practices? I think it's fairly deregulated now. My reference experience has shown to me that people almost always get citations wrong and that it is a huge waste of my time to assume that a specific citation is correct. Also, when I do an information literacy session, the no. 1 most popular and exciting thing I can show people is... automatic citations! I show them how to get them on WorldCat and in each electronic database. Faculty and students both love them! This shows me that citation practices will probably change from the painful practice they are now to something much more exact and automatic. Our present citation practices are, as so often, based on 19th century technology and practices. So, I guess I am an advocate of much more regulation in citation practices! :-) Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Preferred access points for Expressions
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: What exactly do you want to say here? Do you really mean relational databases? I see this term frequently used erroneously instead of entity-relationship databases. The word relational in RDBS does precisely not say that the database cares about relations between objects or entities. The term was created by mathematicians who developed the first models. For them, a relation was just a mathematical term taken from set theory and meaning a subset of a table. Apologies for the shorthand. What I meant was the use of primary and foreign keys in databases. RDF is an extreme example of this way of operating, but in any case what I meant was the use of a primary/foreign key or a URI instead of text strings. It is my personal view that a lot of this is highly technical and should not be designed or decided upon by librarians or catalogers, although we should have a lot of input and be the primary testers. Our areas of expertise are different from those of an RDF or RDBS expert. Will any of these projects happen or finish anytime soon? Of course not, but look how long it took to get ISBD. In many ways, the information community is screaming for a project that they can hook URIs into. I suspect that instituting such a system would take less time than ISBD so long as people remain flexible. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Preferred access points for Expressions
Jonathan Rochkind wrote: See, I don't think the techniques we're talking about here are really specific to rdbms or entity-relational databases. .. This is a pretty important fact of information systems that has direct impact on how we record metadata. Those designing standards for recording of metadata need to understand it. If those doing that designing are catalogers are not programmers (as they probably should be), then those catalogers need to understand at least a bit about information systems. Because to live in information systems is the destiny of the metadata created. Very good points. I think it is clear that in such a system, some practices and even information would have to change in some ways. What do you think they would be? When I worked at FAO of the UN, where we used non-AACR2, non-MARC, and I was trying to imagine how we could fit into a VIAF/Onesac type of system. For only one example, FAO needs additional access for FAO corporate names, specifically, they need more specific access for FAO offices in each of the local offices: Bangkok, Santiago, Accra, and so on. In the NAF there is the single heading Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations but FAO needed to have separate headings for each sub-agency. Many times this was impossible for a non-FAO cataloger to know since there were little points to look for. My idea was to include a relations field, where the relationship of the headings for bodies/entities would be delineated. These relationships could take all types of forms, e.g. 1:1, 1:3, 3:5, °probably the same,° or even unclear relationships. Naturally, there could be added language form (necessary for FAO but not for AACR2) and even time frame (for corporate bodies). Finally, cataloging/encoding rules and even specific database where heading is used could be added. A colleague and I published an article on this but--I blame myself on this--we gave the examples in MARC21 format when we should have provided examples in XML. (We realized it could be done in MARC format, which was amazing to me!) In any case, I think that if we had given everything in an XML format, people would have understood it better. In such a system, the procedures would have to change significantly, although not completely. I thought that the main change would be in the worldview of the cataloger. I wonder what else would have to be done? Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Preferred access points for Expressions
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: We have to keep in mind that XML as such is not on the same level as MARC. It is a punctuation standard and as such can only replace ISO2709, whereas MARC is a grammar and as such can be replaced, in the XML context, only by a Schema. So I suppose that's what you mean. Leaves us with the question Which schema? MARCXML? That's nothing but MARC in a much more unwieldy costume. What else have we got? I believe that XML formats of MARC are far more flexible than you appear to believe--certainly far more flexible than any ISO2709 head-breaking format. I wouldn't have opted in my article for MARCXML, probably a variant MODS, Dublin Core, or even made up a unique XML coding simply for purposes of examples. *Nobody* besides librarians understands anything about MARC, certainly not in the ISO2709 or even in the XML version. One practical question: You suggest we get rid of the preferred title and have just titles, as many as needed? In my suggestion, all titles would be treated equally. The function of the traditional string of preferred title of grouping would be handled by the URI which no one would see (probably). Each user could set their own preferred title so for example, if an Italian were in the US or Germany, he or she could set Italian forms of names. Again, this would necessitate changes in the current structures of our files, i.e. adding a language subfield for each form of name. Also, at least in AACR2/LCRI practice, if a reference conflicts with a heading, you are to break the conflict, but if a reference conflicts with a reference, you do not break the conflict. In a system such as I am proposing, you may have to break those conflicts as well. I am sure there would be other changes, too. In such a system, the procedures would have to change significantly, although not completely. I thought that the main change would be in the worldview of the cataloger. The new worldview according to RDA is here: http://www.rdaonline.org/ERDiagramRDA_24June2008.pdf That's an entity-relationship diagram. (Can anyone sketch a relational database design based on it? Would that be practicable? Would it scale?) Print it out on 3 by 4 stationery and wallpaper your room with the 15 sheets you get. What a great diagram! That will send everybody running for sure! But to be fair, what I meant by my statement that the worldview' of the cataloger would change is the inevitable fact that records produced by German agencies, French agencies, Italian, Russian and others will all go into the same pot someday. Therefore, the cataloger's worldview should include all records in all rules. Not only AACR2/RDA, but in all rules. Why? Because people will want to use--and will use such a tool. The informational universe of our users is changing to include much more than ever before and if we want to continue to be relevant, we must make tools that will serve their needs--not just ours. Expecting everybody to use a single form of name would be just as unrealistic as expecting everybody to learn Esperanto. It simply won't happen. The world will not change to suit our purposes--we are the ones who must change and use the full power today's technology affords. This is why I think that preferred title is based on 19th century methods and ultimately will prove itself not to be sustainable. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Preferred access points for Expressions
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: The necessary migration to something new can only begin on a scale worth mentioning once there is a robust, extensible, and well-tested schema that can accomodate all the important elements and support all the vital functions. Then, nothing convinces more than a running model that easily demonstrates the advantages. Lacking that, I'm afraid, MARC remains the default. Yes, and it is also one of the reasons why we remain so marginalized. There are also other ideas, such as an exchange format that is used only for transferral This is the fundamental idea of OAI-PMH for example. In this scenario, each database does whatever it wants locally, but when interoperating with other databases, they must follow OAI-PMH. I've done some work in this area. Google apparently abandoned its work with OAI-PMH in favor of XML Topic Maps, which I do not know at all. IOW, Yes, we can!, but the vehicle in which to sail down the newly conceived avenues still awaits its construction. Or is it rather Don't ask what RDA can do for you, ask what you can do for better metadata!? If that, who's taking up the challenge? Unfortunately, I believe other organizations are, such as Google. Google practices are not so great, but perhaps our field needs that kind of a leader. The new information management ideas are quite different from librarian ideas. They would rather get something going now and fix it later, an idea that frightens someone like me to death. But otherwise everyone is faced with endless waits while we seek perfection. I don't think the world will wait for us. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Preferred access points for Expressions
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: Now the Google approach to making information findable is an _entirely_ different one. For their general search engine, they rely not on metadata at all but on statistical and algorithmic evaluation of text as it is, and in huge quantities, setting huge arrays of text crunchers to the task and evaluating giant amounts of user input as well in innovative ways. None of these components is available to us, at least not in the quantities that it takes, and not to speak of the infrastructure. (They operate the largest server network on this planet.) OTOH, what works for HTML and PDF documents doesn't work so well for their scanned books. One reason is that the book scans lack the syndetic structure (the links) that are a natural component of the web files and that contributes a great deal to the success of the search engine. So, they've come around to use libary metadata. But they're far from making the most productive use of it. While I agree with you that Google results don't work very well (for example, the Google Book search results are positively horrible since often, even if I have the exact title, author, etc. I still can't find the books that I know are in there), lots of people like it anyway since they don't understand a lot of the problems. (Just as logical to me is: if the Google Book Search is so bad because I know it is, how can I know that the Google web search is any better? Maybe I just don't know what I'm missing) All people know is that they can find stuff more easily in Google than in a library catalog. So, the moment we compare Google products to the library catalog, we've already lost. But even Google appears to see some of the problems. See: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/retiring-support-for-oai-pmh-in.html for the announcement that Google was stopping support for OAI-PMH in favor of XML Sitemaps to get some structured metadata. (I remembered Topicmaps incorrectly) At least it seems you can create your own namespaces, but it's yet another new thing to learn. I feel that these are some of the formats we will have no choice but to provide. It won't be our decision. Yet the one area we could immediately take the lead in is with providing URIs for concepts. Nobody else has the forms and references like we have. All we need are to create the URIs and make them available to everyone. Then let people play with them and see what happens. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] ISBD and RDA
Attached to these concerns are the very real ones discussed on another list right now: alcts-eforums, where the current discussion is how the budget cuts are impacting technical services. Has anyone asked, and gotten an answer: what are the costs foreseen in implementing RDA? There will definitely be costs associated with buying access to the RDA rules---and this will be difficult enough to justify in itself--but there will be even greater costs in staff (re)-training, refreshers, lost productivity as people slowly master the new rules, and so on. I believe it will be increasingly difficult to justify *any* increases in these costs if we cannot point to associated major increases in productivity, or cost savings in other places. So, if it's not too impertinent to ask: 1) What are the costs for retraining an experienced professional? 2) How long will it be before productivity returns to today's level? (and this cannot be the ultimate goal, of course, because things must improve) 3) What are the real benefits from implementing RDA that are not merely theoretical? How much will productivity rise? How much more usable copy will become available? How will record quality improve? 4) Is it worth the costs? These are questions that absolutely must be asked and answered by libraries around the world, since cost-cutting in all areas of the budget is the order of the day, and this includes staffing. There is no avoiding it now and nobody believes it will improve anytime soon. James Weinheimer Justin, I'll try copying your message to RDA-L. Your point that MARC21 coding could automatically produce some AACR2 notes, such as Includes and bibliographical references and index is a good one. Print (i.e. display) constants for indicators in 246 already do this. Mac You wrote: RDA is a giant step backward in terms of IFLA's goal of UBC (universal b= bibliographic control), including international standardization and exchan= ge of records. In an age when cataloging is under siege, and more clerks(para-profession als) are doing it, cataloging rules should be made even more simple than A ACR2. This RDA thing goes in the total opposite direction. If we code the fixed fields right, for instance, there's no reason why we should have to add includes index in a record. These are the things we should be talking about; and RDA has nothing to do with this. Our problems are system prob- lems, not rule problems. I tried to post something like this on the RDA listserv, but it wouldn't let me. God forbid we criticize the wonderful RDA, uh? Like the quote I added above, I just wanted to thank you for continually pointing out all the problems with RDA. I hope it doesn't turn into the disaster i'm seeing in the near future. What I would love to see is catalogers and libraries simply refusing to use RDA, and like minded people form an alternative if OCLC refuses to accommodate us. - Justin Lee Tyler Bibliographic Division Detroit Public Library (313) 833-1016 jty...@detroitpubliclibrary.org http://www.linkedin.com/in/justinleetyler
Re: [RDA-L] ISBD and RDA
Jonathan Rochkind wrote: I don't know if OCLC is, but I know that Ex Libris is considering it for their upcoming metadata management module of the 'universal resource manager', which is pretty much vaporware right now, but they're thinking in the right direction. I bet biblios.net would consider it too, if RDA resulted in a metadata element set that was actually useable. We may have to find ways to, not abandon OCLC (which I would not want to do), but not be beholden to use OCLC alone either. All of these are valid considerations, but it still doesn't address that concerns in my post: 1) What are the costs for retraining an experienced professional? 2) How long will it be before productivity returns to today's level? (and this cannot be the ultimate goal, of course, because things must improve) 3) What are the real benefits from implementing RDA that are not merely theoretical? How much will productivity rise? How much more usable copy will become available? How will record quality improve? 4) Is it worth the costs? These are the realities of the situation today. I don't think many institutions can justify paying for subscriptions to RDA for the staff while at the same time we are cutting databases to users. I know I certainly couldn't make a case for it. Could you? Add to this the additional costs of retraining, now that simply sending people to conferences is becoming extremely difficult and matters complicate even more. From what I could glean from the German report sent by Stephen, (and I may be wrong), the justification for moving to AACR2/MARC2 was that by accepting AACR2 the amount of copy cataloging records would go up significantly, and by accepting MARC21 the internal processing would be simplified. Therefore, costs would ultimately go down. Completely logical and correct. But I fail to see anything similar with accepting RDA. As a result, if I were going to implement RDA at my library, I must find some justifications for it that will convince people to reallocate money and resources for it. I can't figure out anything, and I don't think that simply saying, Well, everybody's doing it will work. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. What are others planning to do? Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] [ACAT] NELIB presentation: RDA: Boondoggle or Boon? And What About MARC? by Rick Block.
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: J. McRee Elrod wrote: If the purpose of RDA is to make library catalogues easier to use for patrons, as recently stated. it seems strange that library catalogues are not its prime subject matter. Matter of fact, the word as such doesn't even occur in the text, other than in examples. Catalog is a word to be avoided, that was clear from the beginning. I'd vote, nonetheless, for a new title that would at least give users, if not even decision makers, a chance to figure out or make an educated guess what it is about. And this all sidesteps the question as to whether RDA *really will* make catalogs easier to use, or if our patrons will even notice any difference at all. We will notice the difference, since we will be forced to use all new tools. The final product could be more useful to others if our records would be widely shared and in a better format than what exists now. The introduction of truly universal URIs for our headings that are now shared in text strings would be very useful. Plus, figuring out how to interoperate with full-text in clear and reliable ways would have a major impact. Navigation within a single catalog is being experimented using various systems, e.g. Aquabrowser and XML/Zebra indexing such as Koha. But we don't need RDA to do any of those things. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Utility of FRBR/WEMI/RDA
Dan Matei wrote: -Original Message- From: Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:31:32 -0400 Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Utility of FRBR/WEMI/RDA Yes, it's an arbitrary judgement. They are ALL arbitrary judgements, either way. I would prefer to call them cultural conventions. IMHO, they are not completely arbitrary: they are based on the evaluation of the amount of added creativity. But I think this misses the point: does WEMI define the universe of information, *and* define what people want when they search information? From my understanding of FRBR/RDA, everything must be boiled down to WEMI. Certainly if I have a book by one author and they make a movie out of it, that may be one thing, but there are almost infinite possibilities today. What if I have a single document in XML that outputs MSWord, pdf, HTML, text, djvu and so on? Each output has different page numbers and can look completely differently, but they are all have exactly the same information. Many newspapers are produced this way so that they don't have to make separate paper versions and an online version. Even among these different versions, there may be specific outputs for a different screen sizes, for different browsers, or on a specific mobile phone (becoming more popular) and now probably with different ebook readers. Remember, these versions are derived from one, single file, and most of these versions are only virtual i.e. while they can be printed, they won't be. Add to this a mashup of bits and pieces of separate items of information from different websites using APIs, each of which may have gone through a similar transformation as mentioned above. It seems to me that trying to relate this to WEMI is literally mind-blowing and an exercise in futility. I see our task as trying to give access to this information in the most coherent way for our users. Is seeing everything through WEMI-colored lenses the only way, the best way, or even a correct way, of doing it? Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Utility of FRBR/WEMI/RDA
Jonathan Rochkind wrote: But everything is NOT boiled down to WEMI. Many other relationships between WEMI entities are possible. The FRBR report itself says this, although does not definitively describe a vocabularly of possible relationships, leaving that to a later date and/or to individual communities. RDA may make a contribution here, I'm not really sure, finding RDA somewhat impenetrable. It is a misconception that everything must boil down to WEMI and we can record no other relationships that are not in WEMI. Perhaps I am completely off base, but I do not believe I am talking about relationships here, I am talking about some new types of entities that do not seem to fit the WEMI theoretical framework. These new things I discussed do not seem to me to fit in very comfortably to work, expression, manifestation, or item. They seem to be completely different animals. I guess I see it as similar to the introduction of printing, which brought in some brand new concepts, such as exact duplicate. With hand-made text, such a thing as an exact duplicate never existed before, and before printing, collectors went to great lengths to get as many copies of a text as possible so that all could be collated and compared. But with printing, there were suddenly exact duplicates. (I actually did a bit of research on this at one point and, so far as I found, the first time this was mentioned was by Thomas Bodley, who complained that his librarian was spending his money, buying lots of texts he already had. The librarian was doing the same thing that he had always done, but technology caught up with him, even though if memory serves, this happened in the early 1500s. Please, anybody feel free to correct me!) I think we are entering a similar time with new things popping up. These new things could not have been foreseen during the development of FRBR,in the 1990s, but they are everywhere now and wildly popular. Certainly we can shoe horn everything together and make things fit, but I don't know if that would be correct or wise. Naturally, I could be wrong in this and WEMI is forever and immutable, but I think that at least the issue itself is debatable. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Utility of FRBR/WEMI/RDA
J. McRee Elrod wrote: In article 49f31a67.6050...@kcoyle.net, you wrote: One way around the WEMI straight-jacket that I've been exploring is to use the relationships inherent in that rather than seeing it as a structure. It's nice to see that someone has at least recognized that WEMI is more of a straight-jacket than ISBD ever has been. RDA applies WEMI to material to which it is not applicable. We find ISBD can be applied to all resources, realia to websites. There is a fine line between required structure for coherence, and straight-jacket. ISBD does not cross that line. RDA does. Completely true. FRBR/RDA constructs a theoretical framework that we will all have to fit the materials into one way or another (what is the work in this resource? what is the expression? what is the manifestation? what is the item? and now with the newest web resources, what is the thing-that-has-yet-to-be-named?) Then comes the practical task of: what do I do with this thing-that-has-yet-to-be-named? And let's just assume that even if we decide how to deal with this thing-that-has-yet-to-be-named, there will be new things in the future that still won't fit. On the other hand, ISBD is focused on providing standards for description and is based very much on practical considerations: - enter the title -- where do I find it -- for each format, from these places -- add additional titles in these cases - enter the title -- there is none -- devise one -- make a note. - enter the title -- it has appeared differently on other resources -- make a uniform title -- do it this way I can just imagine the long, involved, learned, academic disquisitions on which of the parts a specific resource is or has a specific work or an expression of a work, and then someone else will pop-up to say that what they are discussing are really all manifestations and the argument continues... I'm more of a practical kind of guy. If it could be demonstrated that going through this process will help users find the information they need, or make our tools more comprehensible, that would be one thing, but I haven't seen any studies out there, although I may be in error. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Uniform titles
Karen Coyle wrote: I'm becoming more aware that RDA is a complex beast, and some parts of it may be more desirable than others. I can't comment on the individual rules, but in addition to rules on how to determine what data one records, RDA is an attempt to implement FRBR. What that means isn't very obvious if we stick with the MARC record, since it isn't structured in a FRBR way. At the risk of beating the same old drum, I still think that we need to rethink the very purposes of FRBR (those user tasks), which seem quaint today. What would make much more sense, and could be far more achievable and less drastic, is to stop focusing on MARC as the primary means for record transfer, especially the ISO2709 version of it. (This is what I *really* wanted to say in my rather poor posting about Martha Yee's article. I should have said ISO2709 instead of just MARC. ISO2709 is completely obsolete everywhere as a storage format and is now obsolete as a format for exchange except for libraries. It should be obsolete for us, too.) If our focus had been on sharing our records instead of trying to shoehorn ourselves into a theoretical data model, I believe that our work would be much more visible than ever before. This focus on sharing has been the foundation for success of other internet enterprises, and I think we could succeed as well. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] www.rdaonline.org
At the risk of being terribly impolite, I would like to again remind people that there is a choice. By using the Cooperating Cataloging Rules at http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/, you can: 1) continue to catalog using the rules you follow now, thereby avoiding the need for retraining 2) be able to contribute personally to the development of our field 3) it's free 4) 5) 6) ... ??? (we'll figure these out together!) Remember, there is a choice! James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Bernhard Eversberg [...@biblio.tu-bs.de] Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 9:10 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] www.rdaonline.org Troy Linker wrote: Thank you to the members of the list that made us aware of an incursion to www.rdaonline.org http://www.rdaonline.org that added some text ad links to the bottom of www.rdaonline.org pages. We have found some malicious code inserted on the site by outside sources While it is laudable that this malicious code was removed, it remains desirable that more beneficial code be inserted by inside sources. All of this, I'm sorry to say, is apt to undermine users' confidence in the site as such and, consequentially, in the RDA enterprise. Is it not high time to do everything that might lift the spirits of those on whom the success of any implementation will eventually depend? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Items without a collective title
B.Eversberg wrote: Alternatives are a mixed blessing. They are meant to make more users happy but they burden them with the decision making. As goes without saying, agencies need to specify which alternatives to follow in what cases - or very quickly they'd find their databases messed up with inconsistencies. Hence LCRI have been a needed addition to AACR2, and LC will no doubt have to make many new decisions for their work, and networks - as before - will be wise to adopt these decisions rather than formulating their own or leave everything to individual libraries or catalogers. Same old story, really, but the volume of necessary extra specifications isn't known yet. To achieve close consistency with legacy data, it will turn out that more often than not those alternatives will be chosen that are in harmony with AACR2. And that means RDA will end up little more than a more modern but also more ceremonious way of saying all the well-known, not so modern things and not really venture down new avenues or break new ground. And the LCRI will remain in full force and in need of extensions, so it's fortunate they are already online and free: http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/Home As an additional consideration, I would like to ask a question that I was trained specifically *never* to ask about a cataloging rule because you honestly do not want to open up that can of worms: Why? It is still beyond me why we are even considering changing any of these rules, e.g. in this case of how to deal with items without a collective title? I thought all of this was figured out a long time ago. Were our previous rules simply bad or too useless? (I don't think so) I agree that there are a huge number of problems facing libraries and librarianship, and cataloging in particular, so why are we discussing changing cataloging rules instead of changing cataloging and the catalog? I still do not see how RDA will make any difference to cataloging and the catalog. Let's imagine that right now RDA is completed, all the cataloging tools have been re-written, everyone is fully trained, the library catalogs are retooled--this seems to be quite some time in the future, but I still don't see what difference it will make towards what we are facing today. We will still be stuck with ISO2709 record transfer of MARC21 records which limits us severely. Alex has stated emphatically that MARCXML is not a solution, and I am fully prepared to believe him. Google has nixed OAI-PMH. Where does that leave us? I don't believe anyone wants to predict that RDA cataloging will make us more efficient (i.e. generate more records per cataloger) than what we are doing now. I don't see how any publisher will want to follow the new rules any more than they wanted to follow the old ones. Our competitors such as Google will certainly ignore it (I can't imagine otherwise) and are going off in entirely different directions. And I don't need to mention again what I think of the FRBR displays. If we concentrated on getting away from sharing our records using ISO2709/MARC21 to more modern methods, there could be some hope that our records may become relevant to the world outside libraries. To this purpose, I am very happy that OCLC has put out their API for the world to play with [http://worldcat.org/devnet/wiki/SearchAPIDetails]. At last, there is something everyone can use! It uses RSS instead of MARC format, which is much simpler and consequently, can be shared far more widely and very quickly. I am experimenting with it now, and have gotten the citations to work. Now I have to figure out how to fit it into my catalog. (I can experiment with this on my own because of open source) These are the sorts of initiatives that could make a big difference, e.g. our records can go to the public, instead of the public coming to our records. And yes, we need to create high-quality metadata records (there's already lots too much junk metadata created automatically every day!) but what high-quality means today, and what it will mean tomorrow, must be considered 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
Re: [RDA-L] Sharing records (was: Items without a collective title)
J. McRee (Mac) Elrod wrote: I'm more concerned with our records being shared among libraries and being relevant internationally, than their use outside library catalogues. By going to inclusions in the language of the catalogue RDA is segregating catalogue records, and departing from the IFLA ISBD ideal of Universal Bibliogrpraphic Control (UBC), in which the description prepared in the country of publication is shared internationally. We are moving *away* from record sharing, shrinking ourselves into an Anglo solitude, despite the increasing multilingual nature of our collections and patrons. I am also very concerned about this. Being in a more international area than many, I can see the tremendous opportunities, savings, and genuine help we could all get by sharing records and really cooperating(!!!) with other metadata communities more widely. Something tells me that cataloging, catalogers will be a no-growth industry for some time to come, but metadata creators metalogers(!) or whatever will merit more attention. I think the reason for the, as you put it, segregation of the catalog records, is that many do not understand the genuine malleability of our tools today. When you see and play around with Google's language tools: http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en, using some imagination, you can get a sense of what can be done. But I do want to emphasize that many of our patrons live in a Web2.0 world and that means sharing with them as well. While changing our systems to interoperate with these new communities should be a very high priority, it shouldn't make that much of a difference to library catalogs (and library cataloging) themselves. All we have to do is provide a highly simplified view of what we have now, similar to the WorldCat API that uses rss and atoms feeds (very simple). [Not to blow my own horn, but I've already implemented the citations part in my own catalog, e.g. http://www.galileo.aur.it/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=20176 Now, anybody can easily interoperate with Worldcat. I did it with citations, but you can do queries as well. The records go to the patrons instead of the patrons having to go to Worldcat or another library catalog. There are tremendous implications to all of this, but I think the WorldCat API is a major advance! Thanks OCLC! 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
Re: [RDA-L] Systems v Cataloging was: RDA and granularity
Daniel CannCasciato wrote: snip Karen Coyle wrote in part: all of the needs are user needs . . . Brava! /snip Pardons, but this is not correct. If we are to manage the collection (whatever the collection happens to be), we will need tools, and some of these tools will be designed for library use and not for the users. There's nothing strange about this: for example, there are many things on an automobile that the general public does not need to understand in order to drive the car safely and correctly. Still, just because I do not understand them, I do not conclude that they are unnecessary. Some of the things may be there for no other reason than to make it easier (and cheaper) for the mechanics to do maintenance. Good! If I insist on knowing what all of these strange things are, I can learn what they are there for, but it is highly presumptuous to conclude that they are unnecessary. For this reason, something like the number of pages is useful and vital primarily for librarians to manage a collection. What do I mean by this? If a selector is deciding whether to buy a copy of a certain text, e.g. yet another copy of Romeo and Juliet, he or she first needs to know if there is already a copy in the collection. The paging must describe the item well enough so that the selector does not have to march into the stacks to check how many pages the item *really* has. If the selector ends up buying an additional copy of something already in the collection, everybody gets mad because of the waste of money, staff time, and shelf space. But very few patrons, i.e. only the extreme specialists of our general reading public, really care much about how many pages something has. There are many other areas of the record like this: the publishing/copyright/printing date(s), statement of responsibility, series statement, arguably the series tracing, many of the notes, and so on. The traditional catalog serves many functions for many people, and one of the primary functions is as an inventory tool. It remains to be seen whether e.g. the incredibly complex system of subject headings are there for users, or more for librarians to ensure reliable retrieval. In today's mashup world, where all kinds of metadata will be thrown together in ways we cannot predict, it is our task to figure our some way to have all of this make sense. See for example, the current thread in the NGC4LIB list about CERN making their bibliographic data open, which is non-ISBD. I am sure that other libraries will follow and Anglo-American libraries eventually will be forced to do the same. Sooner or later, our metadata, based on different standards, will *HAVE* to interoperate with CERN's metadata, and many other standards. But let's face it: this is what is happening in our catalogs right now, since they contain various bibliographic standards other than the current flavor of AACR2. Our catalogs have always managed to contain AACR2, AACR1, non-ISBD, Cutter rules, Dewey rules, ALA rules, and on and on. If RDA is implemented, there is yet another standard. Looked at in this way, the new environment may not be all that much different from what we have today. Again, I think these are the directions we should take instead of coming up with yet another new set of rules that few metadata creators will follow. Jim Weinheimer
Re: [RDA-L] Systems v Cataloging was: RDA and granularity
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip Some metadata creators are inclined to follow no rules except their own, not disclosing what these are. But OK, we should not be pointing fingers at them but try very hard to make sense of everything they might come up with, creating a grand mashup (resisted to write hotchpotch.) If that is so, and if metadata creators are not interested in getting the most out of our stuff either, why do we keep following extremely complex rules requiring innumerable elements? Dumb down RDA and MARC so we have only one element for keyword indexable text, and a few indispensable codes and dates. Wouldn't that immensely ease the job of creating the mashup? After all, what more is Google doing, and who except us is saying that's not good enough? /snip I think that each group sincerely believes its own standard to be better than anyone else's. (I believe it!) So long as everyone holds onto such ideas, there can be no change and the result will be that a separate metadata record will forever be made and remade by each metadata community (or when taken to a reductio ad absurdum, even each library/bibliographical agency). This is the situation as it has always been, but before the WWW it was practically impossible to know about and share records with all of the other bibliographic agencies. Those difficulties have now been overcome. This situation becomes uncomfortable however, since earlier, while we honestly could not see the records produced by others, today we either have to pretend not to see them or willfully ignore them. This results in a situation that I don't believe serves anybody very well. The practice of cataloging is based on the principle of consistency which can turn cataloging into the most conservative of endeavors. By following the principle of consistency, catalogers ensure that the records they make today must work with the older records, some of them made 100 or more years ago. If you don't keep this in mind, the result can be hiding the previous records or at least making those earlier records incomprehensible. Of course, lots of practices have changed tremendously, but the basic idea is for everything to work together. Can the principle of consistency be retained in an open, shared, cooperative environment? I think it can. Perhaps I'm a dreamer, but since it seems as if the general public wants reliable metadata (ref. the Language Log discussion about the metadata in Google Books) I still think that it's not too late, so long as catalogers are willing to adapt to some different practices. If we could simply get the rules pertaining to each separate bit of metadata, e.g. these page numbers follow the rules of the FAO of the UN, or by CERN, AACR2, Dewey, etc., it could go a long way for making the information more understandable. I emphasize that this would be for librarians, who need this level of detail for their work of maintaining the collection, and not for users, who rarely need anything like this. 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
Re: [RDA-L] Systems v Cataloging was: RDA and granularity
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip But we can do that without giving up internal use of MARC. We need never expose MARC to anybody out there, all we need is useful exports and services. And these can be changed any time without changing internal formats. But first of all, as we noted yesterday, right now there just *isn't* this format that is usable for others because others agree in nothing but that they need something different. /snip Yes, we need what is called an Exchange Format, something that I worked on extensively when I was at FAO, helping to create the AGRIS AP. It's based on all different kinds of existing formats and we created namespaces (i.e. new tags) only when something did not exist already. How things are coded within local databases can be totally different. Still, I think we could provide something pretty useful with qualified DC or MODS Lite. It's worth a try anyway. I think the basic idea should be simplicity, and trust that the people who want to use our information will figure it out. Of course it won't be perfect, but it can be (and will be, I might add) updated and improved in all number of ways. The main idea is to put the information out there. Also, the traditional catalog attitude of, do it once, do it right so that you don't have to update doesn't apply to this new world in some areas. The attitude does apply to the information itself, but not to the coding, which we can assume will change drastically many, many times in many, many ways. In the following MODS-Lite info, we can assume that the mods coding will change as new formats come up, e.g. DC, OAI-PMH, Google-type metadata which most probably will come up sooner or later, and things we don't know anything about now, but the *real* information Springer will not change. mods:publisherSpringer/mods:publisher Catalogers should keep their focus on the unchanging bits. Changing the coding is child's play. Perhaps CERN should consider redoing their catalog in MODS-Lite. I tried myself just now with MarcEdit but got an error message. (Error message 4, whatever that means!) Still, all the tools exist right now, today, to do it. The biggest question is whether libraries should put the records out in an open manner or not. 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
Re: [RDA-L] Systems v Cataloging was: RDA and granularity
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip. Look at WorldCat, they already offer exports (citations) in formats suitable for ReferenceManager or EndNote: TY - CONF DB - /z-wcorg/ DP - http://worldcat.org ID - 148699707 LA - English T1 - The maritime world of ancient Rome : proceedings of The Maritime World of Ancient Rome conference held at the American Academy in Rome, 27-29 March 2003 A1 - Hohlfelder, Robert L. A1 - American Academy in Rome. Conference, PB - Published for the American Academy in Rome by the University of Michigan Press CY - Ann Arbor, Mich. Y1 - 2008/// SN - 9780472115815 0472115812 T3 - Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 6 /snip OCLC has also done something similar in a webservice, which I implemented in my catalog e.g. http://www.galileo.aur.it/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=24699 and click on Get a Citation in the right-hand box. I have to say, my students *absolutely love it* and are visibly shocked when I show them they can click on it. This is done through RSS, which is quite simple. http://worldcat.org/webservices/catalog/. Who knows what some clever people in India or South Africa could do with our records? 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
Re: [RDA-L] Systems v Cataloging was: RDA and granularity
for this task, make this task very difficult when we're still stuck with MARC.These reasons get back to that technical definition of 'element vocabulary'. In order to reliably translate from one format to another, you really need an explicitly defined agreed upon element vocabulary at both ends. MARC's effective element vocabulary, never designed to be such, has ended up incredibly confusing and complicated and inconsistent; this makes the task harder. In order to translate in both directions (round trip) without losing information, you need to have a common element vocabulary that is granular enough to support both directions. MARC's granularity is also odd and unpredictable, sometimes not enough for our needs, sometimes far too much to support a round trip from any other reasonable format. I know this won't convince anyone that isn't already convinced, this discussion gets awfully abstract and hard to understand. But based on my experience, I am making the argument that while _theoretically_ we could continue to use MARC as an internal format and simply translate to other formats people need, _practically_ the general weirdness of MARC (accumulated over many years of use in ways different than originally designed for) makes this a very challenging thing to do, so challenging that we may be better off chosing another direction. It is important to remember that not only do we want to share 'our' data with others, but we want to _take_ others shared data, and incorporate bits and pieces of it into ours as well. The general confusiningness of MARC makes this latter task especially hard, but it's a task we really need to do, we can't afford to generate all our metadata solely with paid library community catalogers, and it wouldn't make any sense to do so even if we could afford it. Jonathan Weinheimer Jim wrote: Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip But we can do that without giving up internal use of MARC. We need never expose MARC to anybody out there, all we need is useful exports and services. And these can be changed any time without changing internal formats. But first of all, as we noted yesterday, right now there just *isn't* this format that is usable for others because others agree in nothing but that they need something different. /snip Yes, we need what is called an Exchange Format, something that I worked on extensively when I was at FAO, helping to create the AGRIS AP. It's based on all different kinds of existing formats and we created namespaces (i.e. new tags) only when something did not exist already. How things are coded within local databases can be totally different. Still, I think we could provide something pretty useful with qualified DC or MODS Lite. It's worth a try anyway. I think the basic idea should be simplicity, and trust that the people who want to use our information will figure it out. Of course it won't be perfect, but it can be (and will be, I might add) updated and improved in all number of ways. The main idea is to put the information out there. Also, the traditional catalog attitude of, do it once, do it right so that you don't have to update doesn't apply to this new world in some areas. The attitude does apply to the information itself, but not to the coding, which we can assume will change drastically many, many times in many, many ways. In the following MODS-Lite info, we can assume that the mods coding will change as new formats come up, e.g. DC, OAI-PMH, Google-type metadata which most probably will come up sooner or later, and things we don't know anything about now, but the *real* information Springer will not change. mods:publisherSpringer/mods:publisher Catalogers should keep their focus on the unchanging bits. Changing the coding is child's play. Perhaps CERN should consider redoing their catalog in MODS-Lite. I tried myself just now with MarcEdit but got an error message. (Error message 4, whatever that means!) Still, all the tools exist right now, today, to do it. The biggest question is whether libraries should put the records out in an open manner or not. 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
Re: [RDA-L] Google Exposes Book Metadata Privates at ALA Forum
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip Karen Coyle said in that meeting: ... the team tried to figure out when alphabetical sorting was really required, and the answer turned out to be 'never'. Does that mean alphabetical index displays of names, titles, subjects etc. can safely be considered dead? We've long suspicioned that non-librarians neither want them nor understand them in the first place. Decisions to abolish them should, however, not be based on suspicion but evidence. Do we have it? Is that team's conclusion evidence? If so, to the dustheap with non-sort markers and indicators! /snip This would demand some research. I would say that LCSH, i.e. subject heading strings, lose most of their coherence when they are not browsed alphabetically (and even then they are difficult). With personal names, I would think that people would find it very helpful to arrange all of the Robert Johnsons by surname instead of by first name (Bob, Rob, Robbie, etc.), but I think we could learn a lot from Wikipedia on this. I just cannot agree that surname-forename Johnson, Robert is so foreign for people's understanding. I think alphabetical arrangement is highly useful for finding sub-bodies of corporate bodies. (Of course, all of this assumes cross-references) As far as book titles go, my research has shown that alphabetical arrangement is rather recent. In several card catalogs, there were no title added entry cards made, only for title main entry. And in earlier times, in manuscript catalogs, I often found that even title main entry was not used. If there was no clear author, these items got placed into the section Anonymous, Pseudonymous, etc. Works by order of acquisition(!). That was really bad. Browsing by title may not be that important today with keyword retrieval since people should be able to sort in other ways. I believe that is the only place for non-filing indicators (other than series titles), but I may be wrong? 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
Re: [RDA-L] Utlility of ISBD/MARC vs. URIs (Was: Systems ...)
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip J. McRee Elrod wrote: imposes structure where it isn't helpful (e.g., where it was based on obsolete card design). Every word of your post rang true, until I reached that last sentence. Insofar as the old unit card structure is reflected in the choice and order of elements of the ISBD, it is *very* helpful. Mac, I wasn't targeting ISBD here, and I'm as convinced as you are about its usefulness and importance. (We only want to get rid of punctuation at the end of subfields.) Rather, I was getting at the innumerable rules that concern the arrangement of entries and tracings and whether or not an added entry was necessary, and how to control these things. Most of the indicators that concerned card production are not helpful any more but add to the confusion that governs opinions about MARC. Also, stuff like the omission of leading articles in uniform titles, which came into being *only* because that field lacks the indicator. /snip In addition, I think it's important to consider how it is best to focus our (most probably) ever decreasing resources in a truly shared, open environment. Let us just imagine for the moment, that we can get ONIX or DC copy for every single resource we catalog (that will be quite some time in the future if ever, but let's just imagine) and the cataloger updates the record. Efficiency will probably still dictate that there be copy catalogers who concentrate on the simple updates, and complex catalogers who will do more. How will it look if the copy catalogers report that for the week they have added filing indicators to 200 records and 245$b to 300 records? :-) Joking aside, I think we have to get to the kernel of what our users need, plus I think we need to accept that once projects such as Google books comes online, fewer and fewer people will search our local catalogs separately. They will come to our catalogs (if at all) from Google Books, where they will find the full-text plus a mashup of our metadata mixed in with who knows what, to find whether a library near them has a physical copy of an item, although they will be able to read the book online. Only time can tell how long it will be before people don't care so much about the physical book. (As an aside, I just bought a Sony ebook reader, and although I am definitely a bookman, I absolutely love it! For the first time, I can actually enjoy reading a book I have taken from the web! I have shown it to people and most want one too) I admit this is a terrifying scenario (for me, at least), but it is one that is both logical and easy to predict. Once it is accepted however, we can begin to consider exactly what catalogers can provide our patrons that the Googles and the Yahoos cannot. I think there is an awful lot we can do and we can prove that we are still necessary. But I don't know how much of it will resemble what we have always done. Is browsing alphabetically by title *really* so important to people that we must devote resources to do it? Would those resources be better used in adding new materials? I don't know but I have my own opinions. I think the situation is becoming so important that today we must make a case why people need something so desperately, e.g. browsing alphabetized lists of book titles, that we must devote staff time to redoing records that are otherwise correct. No longer can we rely on simply continuing current practices. Of course, this goes for all of MARC and the cataloging rules, but one must start somewhere. 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
Re: [RDA-L] RDA anyone?
And I must point out that some librarians have said that changing over to RDA
is neither economically feasible nor practically the right thing to do. We have
come together with the Cooperative Cataloging Rules at
http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/.
Please be sure to read the 1st blog entry and think about joining!
James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
Rome, Italy
From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access
[rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod [...@slc.bc.ca]
Sent: Monday, February 08, 2010 7:13 PM
To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA
Subject: Re: [RDA-L] RDA anyone?
Jo Hudson asked:
Can you please answer a question for me? Is RDA going to replace AACR2
in cataloging and is changing to RDA from AACR2 something every library
cataloger needs to be aware or ready to implement in our library?
Yes, no, and maybe. Testing of RDA does not begin until June of 2010,
with implementation (unless we all come to our senses) in 2011. If
implemented, you would certainly have to cope with derived records in
RDA.
Many libraries will not be able to afford access to the full RDA tool,
so it will be monkey see monkey do. Sample RDA records are here:
http://www.loc.gov/acq/conser/rda_examples-rev04-15-2009.pdf
The most dramatic change is MARC21 fields 336-338 replacing 245$h GMD.
ISBD would have them display in advance of bibliographic information
(Area 0). If displayed in MARC21 tag order between collation and
series, they are out of logical general to specific order. What SLC
plans to do is at http://slc.bc.ca/cheats/practices.htm. Offlist I
will send an essay expanding on my answer here.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
Re: [RDA-L] RDA requirements in LMS
With modern databases, the same record can be exist in various ways. For example, the Koha catalog places the records in a relational database, plus the records exist also in MARCXML that drive the Zebra indexing. To demonstrate this rather vaporous statement, look at the Koha catalog at the John C. Fremont Library District http://jcfld.us.to/ (chosen at random). Do a search and you will see how the Titles, Series, Authors, and so on are extracted and shown in the left-hand column. It also searches so fast that you don't need a stop word list. Best of all, Koha is open-source software, which means that it is free (but certainly not without cost: a server, maintenance, and so on). I would only add to Mr. Lam's excellent advice that eventually it will be important to be able to offer your own web services from your catalog so that your data will be able to interact with all kinds of other data out there. 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 -Original Message- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Henry Lam Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 3:55 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] RDA requirements in LMS Dear Su Nee The keyword of RDA is extensibility and interoperability. I would think a xml-based system would be better than a marc-based system. The new system should support integration of traditional collections and digital collections into one catalogue. It should have an open cataloguing workflow with ready tools supporting exporting and importing of records offline. This is to give you more freedom to do mass modification due to change of rules and practice, and ingestion of records from external sources. Regards Henry Lam On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 6:38 PM, Goh Su Nee su...@ntu.edu.sg wrote: Hi, Our Library is considering a change in LMS. I've been asked to look into cataloguing requirements, including future ones. I'm wondering with the upcoming RDA, what are the things I should be looking out for? Your thoughts would be deeply appreciated. Thank you. Best regards, Su Nee Goh Su Nee :: Head, Bibliographic Services Division :: Head, Library Facilities Planning Division Nanyang Technological University :: Lee Wee Nam Library :: North Spine 3, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798 Phone: (65) 6316 2905 :: Fax : (65) 6791 4637 :: E-mail:su...@ntu.edu.sg:: http://www.ntu.edu.sg/library CONFIDENTIALITY: This email is intended solely for the person(s) named. The contents may be confidential and/or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete it, notify us, and do not copy or use it, nor disclose its contents. Thank you. Towards A Sustainable Earth: Print Only When Necessary
Re: [RDA-L] Question about RDA relationships (App. J)
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip Schutt, Misha wrote: The moral of this story, I guess, is that two works may be separated by multiple layers of derivativeness. True. Traditionally, we didn't give much attention to the closeness or the nature of a relationship between works. If at all, one added a uniform title and a little, rather informal note and that was it - let the user figure out the usefulness of that. RDA, however, asks for a more detailed inspection because it is a cornerstone of the FRBR model that related works, expressions and manifestations be made transparent and meaningfully presented in a catalog to assist the users in their arduous tasks of finding and selecting the right thing. And this will mean a bit more work, sometimes bordering on literary criticism, delving much deeper into the content than cataloging rules used to require. /snip This is correct, but the amount of additional work remains to be seen, along with questions of maintaining consistency. I suspect training people to reach these levels will be exceptionally difficult based on my own experience of many of the catalog records produced today, where I have seen very little consistency in the use of 6xx$v (which can become very confusing) and with subject analysis in general. If this is the case now, how can we attempt to teach catalogers to achieve a decent level of consistent analysis in, e.g. isAdaptationOf or isTransformationOf or isImitationOf? This will be genuinely new and is probably more confusing than the $v. I am sure that the FRBR relationships are not exhaustive, and there will be campaigns for additional relationships such as isIllogicalConclusionOf or isBadJokeOf or isPlagiarismOf! :-) Again, I think it all comes down to what users need (i.e. the user tasks) and being realistic in what we can achieve. The library community must decide the best ways to allot their resources, and while explicating such relationships may be a nice thing to do and marginally useful for some of our patrons, is it what people want and is it the best use of our resources? (Obviously, I don't think so) Do people just want more reliable access to materials that have been selected by some disinterested experts? Certainly when someone is looking at one resource or metadata for that resource, they need to be aware of other resources in various other ways. But there are many ways to do this task using more informal (i.e. traditional) methods. We should also not forget the Web2.0 possibilities, which may go a long way toward linking records and resources. 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
Re: [RDA-L] Question about RDA relationships (App. J)
Benjamin A Abrahamse wrote: snip I raised this question at a FRBR pre-conference last summer in Chicago: Do we really expect catalogers to spend their time establishing works? Or is the question of workhood -- if indeed it needs to be answered -- something that is better left to literary and historical scholarship? The answer I was given was, Well that's what they've always been doing with uniform titles. But is it? To my mind, a uniform title is basically an instruction to collocate items under a fixed, but essentially arbitrary label. ... /snip This is correct but I think we can illustrate it more clearly using subjects (where the function is exactly the same) because we now have http://id.loc.gov/. Within a local relational database that uses an authorities module, the text for Aircraft accidents is replaced in each bibliographic record by a link to a separate table of subjects. Because of this relationship, the text for the subject Aircraft accidents is entered only one time and although the text appears to be in each bibliographic record, it is only a link for searching and display. The actual link in the bibliographic record may be SUB.34568 (totally made up) or whatever the internal mechanics of the database uses. Therefore, when someone clicks on Aircraft accidents in such a database, they are actually searching SUB.34568 while the textual display would also come from that record in the authorities module. This is why, if it changes to Airplane accidents it needs to change only once and through the links, the display would change everywhere. (I won't talk about subdivisions here) The idea is to replace the links within each separate relational database with a standardized URI, e.g. instead of SUB.34568 there would be http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85001323. From here it would work exactly the same as above, except web-enabled, i.e. so long as everywhere there is the concept of Aircraft accidents they would include http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85001323 in some way. This is the backbone of the Semantic Web, as I perceive it, and shows how important we could become. This method could probably work fairly well right now for subjects since there is supposed to be an authority record for every subject. (Ha!) The same goes for names, etc. once they are put online. The problem is that FRBR posits the existence of many things that do not exist, e.g. the work record, the expression record, which as Benjamin points out, with the exception of titles such as Hamlet, have mostly been only a collocation device without an authority record although the text is strictly determined by authorized forms. To enable the collocation/textual display for these parts to work in a similar fashion as the subjects mentioned above, means making lots and lots and lots(!) of URIs for currently non-existent works and expressions. This will drain a lot of our resources, even using automated means, and I fear that there will be far too much room for those tiresome, obscure theoretical disputes that will demand our time, but will be of practically no benefit to our users. So, I completely agree with Benjamin. Do we embark on such an epic journey to create all of these URIs because we need to shoehorn it into theoretical models that were figured out almost 20 years ago? (As some have pointed out, the WEMI model was actually figured out in the 19th century, if not before) Or do we do we say that there is something wrong with the WEMI model itself? I think we still have a choice. I'm a practical kind of guy. Open the data and link what can be linked. Just doing that would improve our status, and information retrieval, substantially. 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
Re: [RDA-L] Question about RDA relationships (App. J)
Daniel CannCasciato wrote: snip Hal Cain wrote: I wonder how far OCLC will let participants go in supplying these kinds of links: And I agree. I am not allowed to update the pcc records at this time. /snip I will throw a spanner in the works here and say that in the new world of shared data, it is impossible to predict where our records will show up, how they will look, how they function, and how they will be used, so it is vital that catalogers realize that it will not be catalogers and librarians who will be the ones deciding what will happen to their records. For example, if the records continue to go into Google Books as they are now, it will be Google who decides what kind of links will be allowed, not us and not OCLC. This is an example of what many are calling losing control. (The legal decision on opening up GBS could come this week, by the way! Hold on!) snip However, I do wonder how many catalogers would agree with Karen's assertion that the library concept is that metadata is a one-time creation rather than additive. I certainly don't and have advocated for the iterative process for bibliographic and authority data. As Hal identified later in his message, the core record is meant to be a dynamic one. The fact that the practice as yet isn't supported (logistically and administratively) is fundamental problem for users. Some library administrators, for example, tend to view the iterative process as tweaking and needless, rather than inherently required. David Bade's work (and the work of others) certainly gives a strong argument for exploiting language, scholarly, and subject expertise when we can. I hope the iterative process becomes more acceptable regardless of which environment one is working from or in. /snip But in this new world, other information will be included. Look at the popularity of LibraryThing, which works quite differently. Here is a random record: http://www.librarything.com/work/3798968/56086063 I think these views are some of what we need to be studying. This does not mean that we simply imitate LibraryThing or GBS, but we need to learn from their successes. The idea of a do it once, do it right, forget it vs. tweaking doesn't make a lot of sense in a world that mashes records together and are open to general collaboration with the world. We should remember that many more people are using LibraryThing than WorldCat, obviously because it fulfills their needs better. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/librarything.com (Librarything) http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/worldcat.org (WorldCat) Libraries and their metadata need to become a meaningful part of this bigger universe of metadata. But to do this, we need to rid ourselves of a lot of the old assumptions. 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
Re: [RDA-L] Question about RDA relationships (App. J)
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip About any particular book, there can be many statements out in the open world of the Web. Provided there is a stable, reliable, unique, universally used identifier, going with every suchj statement, you're very nearly there. The ISBN and ISSN are not quite that good, but the best we have, and they do already play the part of that identifier in many practical scenarios. /snip There is now the International Standard Text Code (ISTC) http://www.istc-international.org/ that could go some way to solving this problem. I would personally like to see some real world examples of this, since it states: Each ISTC is a unique number assigned by a centralised registration system to a textual work, when a unique set of information about that work, known as a metadata record, is entered into the system. If another, identical metadata record has already been registered (perhaps, in the case of an out of copyright work, by another publisher), the system will assume the new ISTC request refers to the same work and will output the ISTC of the identical (or nearly identical) metadata record already held on the system. ... The ISTC is not intended for identifying manifestations of a textual work, including any physical products (e.g. a printed article) or electronic formats (e.g. an electronic book). Manifestations of textual works are the subject of separate identification systems. I have a feeling that when they say work they mean something more like (in FRBR-speak) expression since I doubt there is much use in the world for a unique number for the entirety of Homer's Odyssey (except strictly for librarians) and they are thinking of specific translations or other versions of the Odyssey. Still, I may be wrong since the whole ISTC is confusing for me in the abstract and I would like to see something practical. In any case, it does seem as if people are addressing your concerns, and it's even an ISO standard. Concerning the recordless view, I see it as more moving away from the unit card, or the catalog card view (which we have today in our OPACs) and toward a type of a mashup: a dynamic view of various aspects of a resource with information drawn from a variety of sources: your own database, perhaps Amazon, H-Net, LibraryThing, perhaps you have a local Moodle implementation that people use to include information, and each user can customize the view to add or take away what he or she wants. An ISTC could go a long way in providing this type of display. Whether this is what people really want remains to be seen! 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
Re: [RDA-L] Question about RDA relationships (App. J) / Multiparts
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip John Attig wrote: I don't believe that FRBR deals explicitly with multiparts; Well, the section 5.3.6.1 Whole/Part Relationships at the Item Level explicitly addresses the issue. Without, admittedly, giving much guidance for dealing with it. in FRBR terms, the entire multivolume set would constitute one item belonging to the manifestation of the expression of the work representing the set as a whole. And how useful ist that? Shakespeare's As you like it as a part of a Collected Plays edition is not a manifestation of the work? Even if within this collection it is a separate volume with its own title page and perfectly citable? I believe we shouldn't like it that way. Alternatively, each volume would be an item belonging to the manifestation of the expression of the work embodied in that volume. It seems to me that FRBR lets you model the situation either way -- or both. For an isolated catalog, this used to be acceptable. For cooperative cataloging, it meant lots of duplicates in the database. For the RDA vision of a Bibliographic Universe of Everything, it is not even good enough. /snip In my experience, the one area of bibliographic control that has the least amount of agreement is in the analytics: each bibliographic agency has its own idea of precisely what belongs to precisely what and how to describe it. Therefore, we have major problems in even getting a basic understanding of series, serials, sets, and collections such as conference proceedings. I honestly do not think that we can ever hope to get anything even close to a general agreement on this, so we have to look to other solutions. This relates back to user needs. People want the work or expression, while most more or less don't care about the physical embodiment. I certainly agree with Bernhard that very few people know to search for Shakespeare selections or Shakespeare works to get a copy of As you like it. This is one of those searches that tended to work much better in a card catalog where people had no choice except to browse by author, than it does today with keyword searching. People normally want individual articles from Time Magazine, not the whole thing. I think this can be extended to all kinds of collections, especially conference proceedings where access can be woefully inadequate. Of course, while people want individual papers they *may* also want to know about the materials related to the one they are looking at. With online resources, these considerations will probably only get more and more tricky. I think we should rather explore ways of bringing all of these different views of works and expressions together instead of trying to mandate that everything fit to a Procrustean Bed. The power of computers is such that I have no doubt it can be done today, but the displays could be very strange. Or, it could turn out that bringing these differing views together may make the bibliographic record more understandable and useful than ever before. (Sorry for using such an obsolete term as bibliographic record!) Although I am certainly no fan of FRBR, I believe the model could accommodate this. 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
Re: [RDA-L] expressions and manifestations
Karen has delineated the problem very well, but we should all just admit that *any solution* on these analytic-type records will definitely *not* be followed by everyone. I don't think that lots of libraries outside the Anglo-American bibliographic world would ever agree to use a 505 (although I personally like them!). The best we can do is to decide to help one another as much as possible. This is why I think the solution lies much more in terms of open data. Someone on one of the lists suggested the TED talk of Berners-Lee (thank you, whoever you are!). I finally saw it last night available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_the_year_open_data_went_worldwide.html and I suggest that everyone watch this. (TED talks are very short. This one is less than 6 minutes, so it shouldn't take too much time) What he demonstrates is something absolutely amazing, and it happened only because some agencies put their data in a place for others to take and share in different ways! I found it quite inspiring. How could this work with our data? If there were an open way of sharing data, I can imagine that, e.g. Mac in Canada makes a record with a 505 note. It is placed into something like the Internet Archive. Bernhard in Germany is working, finds the record with the 505 and runs a very clever macro that he and his friends have made and turns the record into something more suitable for his purposes. Maybe it's not 100%, but even 70% will save a lot of manual editing. He places his version somewhere, so now there are two versions. We can probably see that there could be multiple versions rather quickly. Some other person, perhaps a non-librarian, wants to take all of these versions and merge them in another incredibly clever way and this person adds his/her own information. What would this be? Right off, I can think of a public, cooperative effort to input tables of contents, with links if possible. This would definitely be appreciated by everyone in the world. Now we are getting something absolutely new. At this stage, there will be a real desire for genuine cooperation since everyone can see how they can all benefit if they work together. Plus, it all happens while everyone is still helping one another in very concrete ways that everyone can point to. Is this pie-in-the-sky? Definitely not. It is happening *right now* in other information communities, as Berners-Lee shows. And it has happened very, very quickly. The problem is deciding to take the leap and let our information--now seen in proprietary terms--into the world. 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
Re: [RDA-L] RDA requirements in LMS
Hello Su Nee (I hope I got your name correct!), Koha 3.0 works with MARCXML now. This is where you can see it in action at the John C. Fremont Library District (below). Again, open source is free but this does not mean there are no associated costs. For example, someone could say that they will give you a free house, and you may be happy but if they are only giving you all the wood, bricks, mortar, and so on, it still needs to be built. Some open source projects are like this; others are more advanced. With Koha, it has advanced significantly to where you will have relatively little maintenance problems. Customizing it is actually the fun part and if you know basic web programming (HTML, Javascript, Style sheets) you can do a lot. If you don't have those skills, there is still a lot you can do, but these skills are easily and cheaply available everywhere now. Suffice it to say, that if you want to change something in Koha, it can be done without asking anyone's permission. With proprietary software, you must ask and wait, sometimes forever. But as an example of what you can do, look at my catalog (based on Koha 2.2.7) http://www.galileo.aur.it/cgi-bin/koha/opac-main.pl which I have modified a lot. I made my own display and it works in different ways from other catalogs. For instance, I have managed to embed tutorials, and one I will suggest you look at, which is an overview of my catalog: http://issuu.com/j.weinheimer/docs/aurcatalog?mode=embedviewMode=presentationlayout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fcolor%2Flayout.xmlbackgroundColor=61A900showFlipBtn=true and then look especially at the Extend Search which is used only in my catalog: http://issuu.com/j.weinheimer/docs/extendingthesearch?mode=embedviewMode=presentationlayout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fcolor%2Flayout.xmlbackgroundColor=61A900showFlipBtn=true Another example: I managed to work with the Worldcat API to provide automatic citations, e.g. see http://www.galileo.aur.it/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=25256 and click on Get a Citation It is only with open source that you can experiment in these ways. Otherwise, you can only wait and receive what the owners decide to give you. Try my Extend Search and let me know what you think. Hosting your own web server (on a local machine) can be quite an experience. I host mine locally, and sometimes you get hit with spammers and so on and you have to deal with it yourself. These are matters beyond my capabilities, but there is a professor here who enjoys playing with perl and linux, so between the two of us, we have been able to deal with it. But if you don't want to deal with these things, you can find someone else to host your site, for pay. I don't know how much something like that would cost, but probably not very much. There are some hosts that specialize in Koha, also. I want to convert to Koha3.0 but I have run into conversion problems and can't do it yet. If I could, I wouldn't waste a second! The Extensible Catalog also looks very, very nice but I have no experience with it. http://www.extensiblecatalog.org/ It can work with Drupal, but there are lots of possibilities using plug-ins and add-ons with browsers like Firefox (also open source). I hope this helps you. Ciao, Jim 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 -Original Message- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Goh Su Nee Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 11:46 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] RDA requirements in LMS Hi James, Thanks very much for your useful comments. I'm not a technical person and thus wouldn't know much about the implications of open-source software. I only know that it's free and that it normally requires a fair amount of programming expertise and effort for customization purposes. What do you think would be the advantages of an open-source software LMS besides the cost benefit? Would you know any non-open-source software LMS that would meet the demands of RDA, XML or MARCXML? Best regards, Su Nee, Goh -Original Message- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Weinheimer Jim Sent: Friday, 12 February, 2010 12:06 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] RDA requirements in LMS With modern databases, the same record can be exist in various ways. For example, the Koha catalog places the records in a relational database, plus the records exist also in MARCXML that drive the Zebra indexing. To demonstrate this rather vaporous statement, look at the Koha catalog at the John C. Fremont Library District http://jcfld.us.to/ (chosen at random). Do a search
Re: [RDA-L] RDA requirements in LMS - Apology
Pardons to all. I made a mistake. This message should have been sent privately since this is getting too far off-topic. Jim 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 -Original Message- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Weinheimer Jim Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 12:14 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] RDA requirements in LMS Hello Su Nee (I hope I got your name correct!), Koha 3.0 works with MARCXML now. This is where you can see it in action at the John C. Fremont Library District (below). Again, open source is free but this does not mean there are no associated costs. For example, someone could say that they will give you a free house, and you may be happy but if they are only giving you all the wood, bricks, mortar, and so on, it still needs to be built. Some open source projects are like this; others are more advanced. With Koha, it has advanced significantly to where you will have relatively little maintenance problems. Customizing it is actually the fun part and if you know basic web programming (HTML, Javascript, Style sheets) you can do a lot. If you don't have those skills, there is still a lot you can do, but these skills are easily and cheaply available everywhere now. Suffice it to say, that if you want to change something in Koha, it can be done without asking anyone's permission. With proprietary software, you must ask and wait, sometimes forever. But as an example of what you can do, look at my catalog (based on Koha 2.2.7) http://www.galileo.aur.it/cgi-bin/koha/opac-main.pl which I have modified a lot. I made my own display and it works in different ways from other catalogs. For instance, I have managed to embed tutorials, and one I will suggest you look at, which is an overview of my catalog: http://issuu.com/j.weinheimer/docs/aurcatalog?mode=embedviewMode=presentationlayout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fcolor%2Flayout.xmlbackgroundColor=61A900showFlipBtn=true and then look especially at the Extend Search which is used only in my catalog: http://issuu.com/j.weinheimer/docs/extendingthesearch?mode=embedviewMode=presentationlayout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fcolor%2Flayout.xmlbackgroundColor=61A900showFlipBtn=true Another example: I managed to work with the Worldcat API to provide automatic citations, e.g. see http://www.galileo.aur.it/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=25256 and click on Get a Citation It is only with open source that you can experiment in these ways. Otherwise, you can only wait and receive what the owners decide to give you. Try my Extend Search and let me know what you think. Hosting your own web server (on a local machine) can be quite an experience. I host mine locally, and sometimes you get hit with spammers and so on and you have to deal with it yourself. These are matters beyond my capabilities, but there is a professor here who enjoys playing with perl and linux, so between the two of us, we have been able to deal with it. But if you don't want to deal with these things, you can find someone else to host your site, for pay. I don't know how much something like that would cost, but probably not very much. There are some hosts that specialize in Koha, also. I want to convert to Koha3.0 but I have run into conversion problems and can't do it yet. If I could, I wouldn't waste a second! The Extensible Catalog also looks very, very nice but I have no experience with it. http://www.extensiblecatalog.org/ It can work with Drupal, but there are lots of possibilities using plug-ins and add-ons with browsers like Firefox (also open source). I hope this helps you. Ciao, Jim 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 -Original Message- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Goh Su Nee Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 11:46 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] RDA requirements in LMS Hi James, Thanks very much for your useful comments. I'm not a technical person and thus wouldn't know much about the implications of open-source software. I only know that it's free and that it normally requires a fair amount of programming expertise and effort for customization purposes. What do you think would be the advantages of an open-source software LMS besides the cost benefit? Would you know any non-open-source software LMS that would meet the demands of RDA, XML or MARCXML? Best regards, Su Nee, Goh -Original Message- From: Resource
Re: [RDA-L] expressions and manifestations
Karen Coyle wrote: snip Quoting Laurence Creider lcrei...@lib.nmsu.edu: Is their a technical reason for your statement MARC is not up to providing the appropriate subfields? MARC21 certainly allows for indication of the thesaurus from which subject terms are taken, and presumably that could be extended to other fields as well. There are a number of reasons. Here are a few: 1) there are only 36 possible subfields in every field. In many fields, there are none or at most one left to use /snip This assumes we are stuck forever with ISO2709 records transferred using Z39.50. The moment we change to almost any other format, we have an infinite number of fields and subfields. For example, here is part of a MARCXML record (totally made up): datafield tag=700 ind1=1 ind2= subfield code=aJones, John/subfield subfield code=t The tree frogs of Texas /subfield We can add a subfield: subfield code=relationb/subfield (b is a code defined as: Has part or earlier version or based on or whatever you want. If we want natural language text, we can do that too.) subfield code=relationHasPart/subfield /datafield We can't do this in our current MARC format since we are stuck with single digit subfield codes because of the limitations of ISO2709: 700 1\ $aJones, John$tThe tree frogs of Texas$relationHasPart [theoretically, today we could add the entire UNICODE character set, but I doubt if a lot of people would want to add a subfield lambda λ or shin ש! In any case, there is little sense to expand an obsolete format] In fact, once we move beyond ISO2709, we could even do things that can interoperate with other formats, e.g. Dublin Core (for an analytic): DC.Relation.hasPart datafield tag=100 ind1=1 ind2= subfield code=aJones, John/subfield /datafield datafield tag=245 ind1=1 ind2=4 subfield code=aThe tree frogs of Texas/subfield subfield code=cJohn Jones/subfield /datafield datafield tag=300 ind1= ind2= subfield code=ap. 34-85/subfield subfield code=bill./subfield /datafield ... /DC.Relation.hasPart This is just as easy with RDF or almost any other modern format. The number of codes and relationships will be endless and we can gain a lot of freedom once we dump that outmoded, obsolete ISO2709 format, which has fulfilled its function but is now holding us back. This does *not* mean that we must abandon MARC. Each bibliographic agency can add on its own sets of fields and subfields, so long as the XML is correctly defined. Whether we need an endless number of codes, fields and subfields I do not want to discuss here. But I think people can understand why non-librarians see that ISO2709 is a kind of straight-jacket in today's world. A lot of those same non-librarians also conclude that MARC format is just as obsolete, but I disagree and believe that MARC can survive so long as we rethink it. 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
Re: [RDA-L] Contents of Manifestations as Entities
BEER,Chris wrote: snip Of course - browse is simply a single view of data, using a single type of abstraction layer (human readable in this case) to generate that view. /snip I do think that browse is a bit more than that: it is the way people are *supposed* to search the system. It is the way the catalog was designed to function correctly. 99% of the control that librarians provide is based on headings. Browse searches make these headings much more comprehensible than simple keyword. For example, subject headings with their many subdivisions, make sense only in the aggregate, and are designed to be browsed alphabetically (mostly). Uniform titles are the same, along with corporate bodies. Personal names, less so, but with personal names, the variants (4xx, 5xx) are critical to browse. The problem is, the moment keyword became the dominant way for people to search (which was about 2 minutes after it was implemented), the traditional browse became stranger and stranger. Catalogers and other librarians caught on to this change very slowly, and some never at all. The undergraduates I work with now think browses are very, very weird. As a result, our catalogs, traditionally based on browsing cards, based in turn on printed catalogs, are becoming more and more distant from our patrons. Librarians never really reconsidered the function of the catalog--they just tacked on keyword and thought they were done. The task is not to expect everyone to use the browse search again and teach/force them to do it, since this is impossible and retrograde, but to adapt the power of our records to the new environment where traditional browsing does not occur and never will again. We must accept that those days are gone forever. At the same time, browsing the headings is very powerful and something you *cannot* do in a search engine. Tools such as Aquabrowser have tried some new methods to a point, but I don't know if any has succeeded. I like to think of these things in a different way: there were always big problems with browsing. It was never the greatest thing to do and it was always very complicated. How can we make it better? 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
Re: [RDA-L] Signatory to a treaty
If I may make an observation on this topic, which I have followed very carefully. This discussion has shown me that the determination of attribute vs. entity is a highly subtle one, loaded with lots of booby-traps and false paths along the way. Getting a competent understanding of this will require quite a bit of training and probably, a fair amount of consultation with colleagues to ensure everything is done correctly and accurately. Most probably, once it comes to everyday practice, we will find many other parts of RDA will be similar. While I have no doubt that library catalogers can eventually be trained to do this adequately, other library personnel will probably not be able to do it, and non-library metadata creators in general will have neither the time nor the patience to deal with such esoteric matters. Therefore, this will be for library use only. Perhaps other non-library project will be able to take our records (sorry for using such an outmoded term!), that is, if they would want to. But what was the final result of the discussion about treaties? The same access as we have today. Certainly we can get rid of LCRI 21.35A2 Treaties, etc., between four or more governments (http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/21-35a2-treaties-etc-between-four-or-more-governments) and say that we can add all signatories--so long as the resulting record isn't too terrifying, and a tool is made that lets me add them all quickly and not demand a couple of days to add every country! But even more, it seems to me that we should consider the future catalog not as a separate entity from the rest of the web, but as an integral part of it (I hope as an important part of it as well). The library catalog should not be something that duplicates the work of others, and sometimes their work is much better. We should also recognize that there are many places people can go, and even should prefer, for the kind of information found in a catalog record about a treaty, e.g. not only the major collection at the U.N. http://treaties.un.org/Pages/Home.aspx?lang=en with a fabulous database where you can find and search specific signatories in all kinds of ways, but there are many other sites as well, linked to so nicely e.g. at http://www.justlawlinks.com/GLOBAL/international/citreaty.htm. So, let me ask the terrible question which will most probably make some others angry: once somebody knows these sites, who will want to use our stuff, RDA or not RDA? These are the future directions of our users--they are going there; they *should* be going there, and libraries must follow or be left behind. Libraries could help build and maintain these types of sites in order to link to and through them in a whole number of interesting and innovative ways to save our time, and increase access for all. The catalog should no longer be seen as a separate entity but for efficiency's sake to use the power of the web to really cooperate with all kinds of partners out there. 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
Re: [RDA-L] Consolidated ISBD
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip ISBD, however, is not a code of cataloging rules. The introduction says: The International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) is intended to serve as a principal standard to promote universal bibliographic control, that is, to make universally and promptly available, in a form that is internationally acceptable, basic bibliographic data for all published resources in all countries. The main goal of the ISBD is, and has been since the beginning, to provide consistency when sharing bibliographic information. /snip I'm trying to understand how ISBD is *not* a code of cataloging rules, or as I prefer to think of it: standards for input of bibliographic information. snip The printed records were thus conceived, at that time, as a communication format for the transmission of structured information. No verbal or numeric tagging could be employed in printed bibliographies, as goes without saying, but the punctuation had to do double duty for that purpose. /snip While I can understand this idea that the primary goal was to communicate structured information, and the only way of doing that in a print world was through punctuation, I think that this obscures the fact that the focus was still on the information to be communicated, and the punctuation was less important. My evidence is to compare the ISBD with the user guide for Dublin Core (http://dublincore.org/documents/usageguide/elements.shtml) So for example, the DC guidelines for Title are (in their entirety) --- 4.1. Title Label: Title Element Description: The name given to the resource. Typically, a Title will be a name by which the resource is formally known. Guidelines for creation of content: If in doubt about what constitutes the title, repeat the Title element and include the variants in second and subsequent Title iterations. If the item is in HTML, view the source document and make sure that the title identified in the title header (if any) is also included as a Title. Examples: Title=A Pilot's Guide to Aircraft Insurance Title=The Sound of Music Title=Green on Greens Title=AOPA's Tips on Buying Used Aircraft --- Contrast this to the in-depth ISBD guidelines for title (available through http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/isbd-areas) and anybody can see immediately DC gives practically no guidance when compared with ISBD. This is not to criticise, but merely to point out that one has standards for input (cataloging rules) and the other does not. In many ways, I see the current discussions as very similar to those in the later 19th century when libraries wanted to exchange catalog cards. The problem was: each library had their own size card and cabinets, and a uniform size card was absolutely necessary if they were going to be exchanged. It was also one of those debates that you either won completely or lost completely, since if your size card was not accepted, you had to recatalog everything, which was a terrifying prospect even then. So, you were either a big winner or big loser but in the end, they discovered that all they had agreed upon was an empty card with a hole in the same place! While that was important, it paled in comparison with the need for and the complexity of sharing the information on the cards in some kind of coherent way--which was the entire purpose. It was *not* about just sharing cards, but sharing the information on those cards. Figuring out a standardized empty card was only the first, and relatively easiest step. (As an aside, at Princeton Univeristy the cards were too big and Ernest Richardson, then the librarian, tried having his catalogers cut down the cards and then write somewhere else on the card what was cut off. That one didn't succeed!) Certainly we should not have to enter punctuation by hand today. Not that it's so difficult to learn to do (pretty much the easiest part of ISBD) but it's a little bit like plowing a field with an ox and plough. There are better and more productive tools available. And concerning displays, we must emphasize the possibility of multiple displays. I think having a standardized one, primarily for use by librarians, is a good idea, but other displays are much more useful for our public, e.g. citations they can copy and paste, exportable records for personal reference databases, and others. I have also felt that multiple displays could be made far more useful for both users and catalogers than those I have seen. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy
Re: [RDA-L] Cataloging Podcast
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip Isn't this just as well, if in fact it doesn't live up to being groundbreaking kind of innovation that would be called for in this day and age? Instead, it draws out the lines sketched by Cutter already, but then little more. There's not a word about catalog enrichment, blank chapters about the integration of subject access, no guideline for indexing or the presentation of result lists, nothing about interoperability with other standards, even ISBD, - all of that is left to local decisions and vendors. And then it is a large grab bag of options that make it unusable unless accompanied by a long list of decisions and commentary. It remains to be seen how much of the relatively new aspects will be accepted by LC after The Test. For then, that will be what becomes reality, and not much beyond it. What can be hoped for, I think, is a slightly better AACR, not more. /snip Thanks for the encouragement! Of course, I think you're right, but I guess I would like to look in more positive directions. I think we need to take a step back even further than you have and ask what we want and what our patrons want from the records we are to make. The digital world is quite different from the printed world, and I think we all still coming to terms with that, including myself. (I am assuming here that there is no need to change substantially any ISBD/AACR2 rules *for physical items*. Perhaps a few little tweaks here and there, but nothing substantial) There is a significant problem carrying over our normal procedures from physical items, those that will be around more-or-less forever, to digital items, that we know will either disappear completely in a greater or lesser amount of time, or lacking that, will become completely different. This means that the description I make for a printed item will remain valid 200 years in the future, even though the rules may have changed, the description will still describe the item, but for digital/virtual items, it is different. For example, we must assume that *all* pdf files today will not be readable in 25 or 50 years or so. But, I believe we can assume that the *human-readable information* will be the same, i.e. although the pdf file may become a qdf or sdf or tdf or whatever they will have in 50 years and all pdfs will be converted into the new format(s). Therefore, we can assume that all of the pdfs in Google Books will be converted someday to the as yet unknown pdq format, which will be different in every way from the pdf format, *except* that the final result that people see will look exactly the same as it does today, and this new file will have exactly the same human-readable information. In this way, I believe that it is vital for a conversation to take place in the future about content vs. carrier. We must assume that any records we make for digital resources describing the carrier will eventually need major revision in the description area. Since our current standards for description are based so closely on describing the carrier, which works fairly well in the print world, it breaks down in the digital world, failing the test of practicality for catalogers and librarians because we are creating zillions of records that we know will need substantial revisions, while at the same time (at least, I think) failing the test of usefulness for our patrons (who many times don't need this kind of information, and it will be obsolete sooner or later anyway). Since content is becoming independent of carrier in many ways, bibliographic description is a major issue that will have to be addressed someday. Somehow, describing content will become of prime importance. I think there are several ways to address the issue, but in any case, dealing with descriptive cataloging of digital resources, which I think will still be needed, will nevertheless be quite different. It is one area that maybe, perhaps, the FRBR concept of expression may come in useful, but it will have to be reconsidered from its vary basis and become different from what, at least I, have understood it to mean. Again, I want to emphasize that I am not talking about physical items. We have had adequate methods to control those materials for a long time. This is one reason why I have been so disappointed with RDA: these are some of the issues we need to deal with, and you point out many others. While we need changes in cataloging quasi-ephemeral digital/virtual materials, that doesn't mean that I should have to relearn the cataloging rules for cataloging a book or serial! James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy
Re: [RDA-L] Cataloging Podcast
Diane I. Hillmann wrote: snip Jonathan, I think you're right about this, and I think the general habit of looking at RDA primarily as a set of cataloging rules leads to this mode of thinking. /snip On 8/4/10 10:00 AM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: snip I would not assume that. One way that the digital world is quite different than the printed world is that in the digital world, we present our metadata _in a digital environment_. Even our displays of records for printed materials are presented to users on computer screens. Most of our metadata control practices were created for generating printed cards. Personally, I think the changes required for metadata that will live in the digital world are even more difficult and a greater conceptual break than any changes required to describe digital items. /snip So I still do not understand why we have to have new rules (or new rule numbers) for determining and inputting the title of a book? What has changed? What was so bad about the previous rules that they needed complete refreshing? I don't think I can be accused of being a Luddite; but someone needs to see/understand the title of a book whether it is on a card or a computer display. That title, because it is on a physical item stored somewhere, will never change, therefore, the title recorded in the catalog record will never need to change. For digital/virtual items that change all the time, all these considerations must be thrown out the window. It would be fine to say that for these materials, we have completely different rules, practices and even approaches, just as there are for manuscripts. I could understand that. I think Diane's RDF work may be very useful in the future. But the way we catalog an electronic item should not impact how we catalog a physical item. That doesn't make sense, unless the idea is that we must shoehorn everything into an FRBR world where everything has all those extra records for works, expressions and so on. That is an unwarranted assumption, I believe. The model was never tested for conformance to reality, for practical considerations, or for value to our users. Bernhard pointed out the areas where changes are needed and I think that would be a great starting point. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy
Re: [RDA-L] OPAC displays for a digital environment
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip J. McRee Elrod wrote: We agree with Martha Yee (see below*) that the best display of descriptive information for electronic resources is the unlabeled ISBD choice and order of elements (including collation), as it is for all other library resources. For the display standard, I agree. /snip If I may engage in a bit of deconstruction, I would like to change the display standard to a display standard because I don't think it is possible today to achieve such a thing as *the* display standard. Semantic meaning, which is important, is achieved in another way in today's environment. Therefore, I see the ISBD display as, for instance, the expert's display, a standard display that the experts can rely on. But each database manager, and perhaps each user, will be able to determine the display he or she wants. snip The data model we need for today's environments needs to be an entirely different thing. First of all, it should not focus on physical entities and their complete description in one record, complete in itself and without actionable links to other entities. That's what the MARC record still is, in actual practice. As long as this does not change fundamentally, there is little RDA can effect. (The potential is all there in MARC, but practice must change. There's no need to kill it.) For RDA is based on a data model that breaks the self-contained description up into different kinds of entities, and ties them together by actionable links. /snip While I agree that we could probably use a new data model, I think that first it is necessary to find out what both we and the public need. The FRBR/RDA data model is certainly highly suspect. Perhaps the answer will be to separate our current resources into different entities--or not. Perhaps they will be different entities than what we envision now. All of this is impossible to know without testing. The easiest way to know what people would want is, as I have mentioned in previous messages, to follow what Tim Berners-Lee suggested and open up our data to the public, while linking what can be linked, and see what happens. I have a feeling that we would all be very surprised what people would want from our records and how they may utilize them. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy
Re: [RDA-L] OPAC displays for a digital environment
Jonathan Rochkind wrote:[rochk...@jhu.edu] snip Jim, I agree, but to _achieve_ data that can be displayed in flexible ways, you need to have it based on an explicit and rational, well-designed data model. We do not have this, and this is what keeps us from doing particularly flexible things with our data -- our data goes into a Marc record designed to store it for printing to a catalog card, and if you want to do something with it substantially different than a traditional catalog card print out, you run into trouble. ... So to my mind, your statement here (which I agree with) contradicts your earlier statement where you disagree with Karen suggesting we need to focus on the data model. You suggest that FRBR may not be the right data model, or may not be perfect -- indeed it may not be -- when it comes to FRAD, I agree heartily it's entirely insufficient, although when it comes to FRBR I think it's good enough to move forward with. The key thing is we _need_ to move forward. /snip Jonathan, I see where you are coming from and I certainly share your concern. I don't see exactly where I contradicted myself, but I'll look a little closer, thanks for pointing it out. I do agree completely that we desperately need a decent data model and we need to move forward. Still, you emphasize need while I emphasize forward. If implementing RDA could be done without the massive costs of retraining, retooling, rewriting, re-everything, I might not care so much. If libraries were swimming in dough, I also might not care so much. But as I wrote in some post somewhere, we are going through some of the hardest, most difficult economic situations of our lives. Implementing RDA will involve costs, and will cost so much that, for example, at many libraries, they can't even consider doing it or if they do it, it will be at the cost of jobs and/or acquisitions. Therefore, implementing RDA will split the library world at one of the worst possible times. It has to. I think it is absolutely necessary to stick together now, more than ever. At the same time, there is no proof that switching will improve matters in any way for either ourselves or our users. As a result, implementing RDA and FRBR will be merely a leap of faith on an untested product. I don't even think too many savvy business people would take that risk. I am very concerned that libraries will devote all these resources and nothing will change: people still won't want our records, we will be even less productive than now, our records will become less comprehensible and the quality will go down because of the added complexity, and so on. This would be devastating. What are some of the practical consequences? I think this table from LC is excellent Mapping of MARC Data Elements to FRBR: http://www.loc.gov/marc/marc-functional-analysis/source/table3.pdf Imagine the feeling of horror in the cataloger whose job it will be to populate something like that. There are lots of question marks and I may disagree with some mappings myself. Not that I am finding fault for those who did it. I always feel so sorry for people who take on mapping projects like this--everybody finds fault with it! Remember, this is easy compared to the cataloging. Let's create an RDF for AACR2. Is it impossible? I think not. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy
Re: [RDA-L] Cataloging Podcast
Karen, Thanks for your comments. My replies are included: snip The practical consideration is not FRBR but is linked data, which FRBR (or something like it) facilitates. And yes, it is being investigated in a number of instances, some being the XC project, Open Library, Freebase. It is also the topic of the World Wide Web Consortium's Incubator Group on Library Linked Data. /snip I understand linked data and have great hopes for it. Certainly, it is very important for libraries, but I do not see that in order to institute linked data, we must first embark on FRBR and RDA. If the experiments were focused on using linked data for what we already have, which would be the least disruptive and find out what parts of the record (sorry for using that term) are not conducive to it, we could change those parts as necessary. So much of this has to do with changing MARC in the sense of behind the scenes MARC. As I keep mentioning, so long as libraries use ISO2709 as their primary format for record exchange, we remain trapped inside its limitations. So long as the main XML version of our catalog records must remain round-trippable with ISO2709, we still remain trapped. Once we get rid of this baggage which is definitely, without-a-doubt holding us back, then we can focus on other areas. snip And RDA itself is being tested (albeit using MARC) by dozens of libraries in the US. http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/rda/test-partners.html http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/RDAtest/rdatraining.html This is hardly the untested vision that you allege. True, libraries are not yet cataloging in this environment, but I would be greatly surprised if we DON'T end up creating linked data in the future. This is a change that is on the way, that has real practical applications, and that is a benefit to libraries. The reason for making this change is NOT about cataloging, but about serving the users; serving the users where they live and work, on the Web. /snip I'm afraid we have a serious disagreement here. I cannot believe the changes proposed by RDA will serve the users in any way at all and this has yet to be demonstrated. RDA and FRBR are *not* about serving the users, they are about maintaining the traditional library catalog structure into the future of the web. And it does remain untested in many ways. Perhaps in theory it's been proven and many of our current records can be shoehorned into the RDA/FRBR world, but what remains to be tested are the practical consequences: what advantages will we achieve? will these changes improve matters for catalogers? Will they raise standards or quality? Will they raise their productivity? Will they give other metadata creators incentives to cooperate? Will they provide our users with anything that they want? I have seen no tests or studies in any of these areas. The most important of course, is customer testing, or, are we giving people what they want or are we building typewriters in the age of word processors and laser printers? In other words, will this be an advance, a lateral move, or a step backward? My own experience working with patrons says definitely that today, we are not giving people what they want. People simply do not understand the catalog and pretty much refuse to learn. Therefore, we must change, and that's OK. But we must change by giving our users something that they will want to use. I cannot see that RDA does this, but if it is demonstrated that by implementing RDA users will find our catalogs more comprehensible, easier to use, etc. I am willing to change my mind. I have not seen any such tests because I don't think they would should just the opposite result, and they wouldn't be published. In fact, when I have shown users the FRBR displays, they find them even more confusing than what we have now. Our users have changed. We must find out in what ways they have changed and provide them with what they want, but that will take time and research. In the meantime, I agree that linked data should be the goal, and can probably be achieved gradually, e.g. it could be done now with the headings, I still do not see why this would demand RDA. Why can't we try to do it now? So, for me, linked data and RDA/FRBR are not joined at all. You could do one without the other. Finally, enough with theory. We've had plenty of theory for a long time. What are the practical consequences of these tremendous changes? snip Jim, your vision of FRBR as extra records is a false impression, probably based on the diagrams in the FRBR document. FRBR is a conceptual model, not a data model. In fact, it has nothing to do with records and linked data doesn't really make use of the concept of records. Exactly how library data will be structured as we create it and exchange it is yet to be seen, but I think we can assume that there will be entities and relationships between those entities. /snip RDA attempts to bring the FRBR conceptual model
[RDA-L] Another Cataloging Matters podcastt
All, I just put up another Cataloging Matters podcast at: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/2010/08/cataloging-matters-podcast-2-skyriver.html This one is about some of my own thoughts concerning the Skyriver-OCLC lawsuit. Please share this with others you think may be interested. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy
Re: [RDA-L] Another Cataloging Matters podcastt
Thank you for the very kind words and the support. I am back from vacation and managed to fix the latest of my podcasts at any rate, the one about SkyRiver and OCLC at http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/2010/08/cataloging-matters-podcast-2-skyriver.html As I wrote earlier, I still have a lot to learn! I'll try not to let this happen again! The next one will be available in a week (or so). Remember, it's an irregular! James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Olivier Rousseaux [rousse...@abes.fr] Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 12:52 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Another Cataloging Matters podcastt Personal and friendly greetings from France. I am a french librarian quite concern about all the topics you deal with in your podcast, and far more... Thank you for telling all over the world that one may be at least puzzled about RDA, FRBR, what there are made for and so on.. I think that one only official thougt will never be enough about anything (and so RDA can't be) and that past is a necessary (and most of the time is a respectuf) thing for future to be... Every one can't speak or write as you do I don't always agreee with you about evrything you but my english is not so good... :-))) Yes, your thoughts may interest people... Go on... Sincerely yours, Olivier Rousseaux Agence bibliographique de l'enseignement Supérieur - Montpellier, France - Mail Original - De: Weinheimer Jim j.weinhei...@aur.edu À: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Envoyé: Mardi 17 Août 2010 21:36:37 Objet: Re: [RDA-L] Another Cataloging Matters podcastt To all who are interested: I have been on vacation for awhile and just discovered that, due to popular demand the audio of my podcasts are not available. Demand has made me go over my limit, and I can't fix it while I am on vacation. So, I was right: I have a lot to learn concerning these matters and I will find adequate solutions when I get back. Still, it's nice to know that people are interested in my thoughts! James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy
[RDA-L] Cataloging Matters Podcast: FRBR, a personal journey
All, Apologies for cross-posting. I have just added a new podcast about FRBR, which I have entitled: The Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, a personal journey. This is part 1. You can hear it and see the transcript at: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/2010/08/cataloging-matters-no-3-functional.html Please forward this to others who may be interested. James Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edumailto: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/
Re: [RDA-L] Time and effort
Miksa, Shawne wrote, concerning the initial steps of implementing AACR2: snip Again, all very interesting and I think pertinent to current discussions surrounding RDA development, testing, and possible implementation in the years to come. I would not suppose that any implementation is going to happen next year-mostly likely not for a few years-in which case it would prudent to start planning now on how to implement, or not. As I have said in previous postings (either here or on NGC4LIB), we don't yet have enough data to make such decisions. In looking back at the context surrounding AACR2 implementation we can see that we obviously enjoy a vast technology communications advantage and the ability to exchange information almost instantaneously. However, funding training and implementation and the amount and length of individual time and effort each of us has to put into studying and learning a new way of cataloging is, in my opinion, unchanged. /snip While this may be correct for that historical moment in the implementation of AACR2, the basic purpose of the recommendation of the Working Group (at least as I understand it) is that no arguments are made for actual improvements over what we have now (again quoting from their report): The business case for moving to RDA has not been made satisfactorily. The financial implications (both actual and opportunity) of RDA adoption and its consequent, potential impact on workflow and supporting systems may prove considerable. Meanwhile, the *promised benefits of RDA-such as better accommodation of electronic materials, easier navigation, and more straightforward application-have not been discernible in the drafts seen to date*. [my emphasis--JW] To state it yet one more time, if a case can be made that all these changes and disruptions are worth it for something better, I think there would be fewer problems. But I still have not seen how RDA or FRBR will make anything better for anyone: not for the users, not for reference, and certainly not for catalogers. Can someone please explain where we can expect to see the improvements and capabilities over what we have now? When the library world was moving to AACR2, although all knew there would be incredible disruptions, there were definite, concrete advantages that everyone could understand, although many still didn't think it was worth the change: if all of the English-speaking library world would accept the same rules and practices for description and for name headings, then the amount of copy cataloging could increase tremendously (as it in fact did), but nothing similar is planned with the implementation of RDA, at least so far as I know. For example, are publishers really ready to get on the bandwagon to create RDA records, even though they won't create AACR2 records? It would surprise me, but I am willing to be surprised. If not publishers, then are there other bibliographic agencies who will join in? Which ones? Are RDA/FRBR displays really what our public want and need? Will there be improvements in access? Will productivity increase? Where and why? Is all this really too much to ask? If there are no improvements going forward, why do it? (That was what my first podcast was about) Although such questions may be awkward to raise, we must nevertheless raise these sorts of questions, and answer them as well, since sooner or later, upper echelons will ask these sorts of questions and demand answers. I think it would be better to answer such highly predictable questions sooner rather than later. There could be many improvements made right now without major disruptions, first, by moving toward a more XML-type format that the public could utilize and making our records open. Participating in cooperative projects such as dbpedia could make our work more widely used and appreciated far more than it is now. I am sure others on this list would have many more ideas. Beyond all of these considerations, at least some efforts should be made toward understanding what are the needs of our users, and since these needs are obviously changing, to try to determine in what direction their needs are heading. Only then can we start to decide what to build and how we should change. But it must be accepted that catalogers are *most definitely NOT* the people to know what people need from information. That can only come from reference librarians and the public, the researchers, scholars, and students, themselves. While I am the first to declare that we need major changes--*real changes*--they must be changes that move us forward, and not simply toward another, more complicated way of doing what we do now. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Re: [RDA-L] Time and effort
Laurence S. Creider wrote: snip I agree that the testing process is being conducted with careful deliberation, and I have much respect for the way the Library of Congress is handling the process. Still, publishing, charging, and testing an incomplete product with a decision on implementation to come after the testing is finished sounds like rushing to me. /snip Although I don't think we can fault RDA for being rushed (many very good people have been spending a lot of valuable time on it for quite a number of years), I don't think being rushed or not is all that pertinent. It is still all based on the business case for RDA: if an adequate business case can be made (i.e. we will be able to provide x number of services that we cannot currently, or that our productivity will rise y number of times, etc.), then we could perhaps consider rushing into it and pick up the pieces later. But if a convincing business case cannot be made, then it doesn't matter to me if the implementation date is only after 10 or 20 years--it shouldn't be implemented if no practical advantages will be gained. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Re: [RDA-L] Time and effort
Brenndorfer, Thomas wrote: snip Why wouldn't people in a library want to find/identify/select/obtain the resources they want? /snip It is interesting that whenever I question the FRBR user tasks of (here we go one more time!) find/identify/select/obtain: works/expressions/manifestations/items by their authors/titles/subjects people tend to believe that I am maintaining that *nobody ever* wants this traditional type of access. This is not at all what I think, but what I do maintain is that it is not the only way to find information as it was in the card catalog (and it was!), and that the traditional way is not even of primary concern with our patrons today; in fact, even the very concepts of the traditional methods are becoming more and more removed from the experience of younger patrons. My evidence for this is that people genuinely like Google-type searching and databases, and it is *impossible* to do anything like the FRBR tasks in those databases. They prefer these methods to ours. Therefore, to maintain that the public wants and needs the FRBR tasks is illogical and untenable. Also, analysis of the FRBR user tasks often stops after the find/identify/select/obtain part, which really is almost totally speculative since those are the things people do completely on their own, and what they *really and genuinely* do is extremely difficult to know. In any case, what should be of primary concern for catalogers right now are the rest of the tasks, since that is what we are proposing to build and spend our resources on, i.e. creating the works/expressions/manifestations/items finding them by their authors/titles/subjects. We need to ensure that what we make is what people want before we spend huge amounts on changes, which could all be pointed in the wrong directions. All this seems very non-controversial and obvious from a managerial point of view, and in fact, even to disagree would be very strange. How in the world could anyone say that something no one wants should be built? Yet, if there is evidence that there is a genuine movement among our patrons that they say they need FRBR displays so badly, to the detriment of productivity and so on, then I would agree that it needs to be implemented. To me, maintaining that FRBR is what people want and need is obviously indicative of when your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The error is assuming that the tool we have made for such a long, long, long time; a tool that our patrons have had no choice except to use or go without, is therefore what people want and need. This is not progressive thinking and we need to be humble. The undeniable fact is people flocked to other tools the moment they had a chance. I want to emphasize that while I also believe that people really do *need* the access that the traditional library catalog provides, my experience shows they may not *want* it. There are many reasons for this, along with consequences, which I will not enter into here. Once again, I shall state that *I do not know* how people search information and how they use it. I have noticed tremendous changes in my own patterns, and what I have witnessed from people I work with, it is also very different. Since I understand how traditional access methods work, I can also see that these new methods are lacking in many ways (e.g. not even any decent author searches??), and in the hands of people less trained, these new patterns can lead to incredible confusion and frustration. I confess I am not really sure exactly what it is that I do that is different in my patterns of discovery, use and expectations of information from what I did many years ago, but I only know that it's a lot different. I also know that I like these new methods. A lot. These are the attitudes that I think we need. For a couple of specific points: snip RDA makes WEMI explict, finally, so we can get started fixing the problems of the past, and start thinking about new catalog designs built on a stronger foundation. /snip Of course, this assumes that our patrons want this so badly that we must retrain, retool, and redo practically everything to achieve it. It also assumes that WEMI displays cannot be created automatically with what we have now. I have seen absolutely no evidence to support any of this. snip Our circulation and reference desk statistics attest to that shifting dynamic as usage has climbed, and the sheer number and diversity of information sources hinders people as much as it helps them, leaving a tremendous ongoing need for reference service (and now training needs for all the new technology). /snip I guess you are saying that your library statistics, e.g. numbers of reference questions, etc. have climbed. I'm happy for you, but the statistics I have seen out there show completely different trends. Here are just a few that I have noted. The initial ARL statistics are particularly pertinent (still the
Re: [RDA-L] Time and effort
Kelleher, Martin wrote: snip People like Google searches, but only when they work well [and] But the Google effect, myth or no myth, continues to be used as an excuse to, well, not bother, at the end of the day, based on the dream that keyword is king - whereas a better way of looking at it would probably be it's a particularly popular fruit, even if people get sick of all the pips But still end up buying because it's the only one that's sold in all the shops, or even because they don't know there are so many other fruits.. /snip I completely agree with this, but I don't know if most non-librarians and/or non-catalogers do. People *really do* like Google, and they even *trust* Google! I also have run across the idea among many people who believe that even if Google isn't perfect today, everyone will see significant improvements tomorrow (and this is undeniable), and it is far more worthwhile to devote resources toward improving full-text retrieval than jazzing up our horses and buggies. Naturally, we need is change, but more importantly, we need change for the better, and one way of changing for the better is to figure out how to merge the best of what we do with the best of the new tools so as to make something that truly is far more powerful than ever before. There is no reason not to acknowledge, understand and take advantage of the power of all the tools out there. If something like this were the goal, I would have much less against big changes in cataloging rules and procedures. In this vein I ask: is the power of the traditional tools we make *really* in the FRBR tasks? Or is it something else? 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/
Re: [RDA-L] Time and effort
Abbas, June M. wrote: snip But, in light of all of these insightful discussions, is linked data even going far enough? Is it really providing users with useful representations of the objects in our collections? Is MARC + FRBR (encoded by whichever standard the community settles for) BUT released from relational database structure constraints = Enough? Are we yet capturing attributes that our users search for? that they naturally use to organize their own collections (see Flickr, YouTube, LibraryThing Common Knowledge project)? I humbly submit, NO. Throw in years of user behavior research with an emphasis on the newer research on Web 2.0 and libraries and user-centered design with these users in mind, and what do we have? /snip These are some excellent and forward-looking questions. I completely agree with Karen Coyle about the primary importance of linked data. For a nice overview of at least a lot of my own views, you can see the blog posting of a long thread at NGC4LIB at http://celeripedean.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/ngc4lib-on-tim-berners-lee-and-the-semantic-web/, but it is more important for everyone to watch the interview with Tim Berners-Lee at http://fora.tv/2009/10/08/Next_Decade_Technologies_Changing_the_World-Tim-Berners-Lee, which I found inspiring and demonstrates some of the areas where I believe we could participate as very important players. For some other, very good ideas, see Eric Morgan's post on NGC4LIB at https://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=NGC4LIB;mvatdw;20100831080151-0400 and the thread (which does get technical in some places). It is my own opinion that whatever we produce cannot ever be Enough for what people want and need from information. (Thanks for putting it that way, June!) Those ways of thinking about the catalog are over, and I think, forever. While this may be sad and regrettable, I think it is part of growing up and it is just as well if those ideas are buried. Once that is accepted, then we can figure out the best ways of fitting into the new structures, and provide the very best that we can, and then link into the best of the other things that others out there are producing, and will continue to produce; then the synergisms produced *cooperatively* can be something completely and totally new. When the idea of linked data is really understood, you realize that the sky really is the limit, and while some things produced may not be so positive in some people's opinion, other things will pop up that will be beyond anything we can imagine right now, and can quite literally blow everyone's minds, as Berners-Lee described so well. This is an idea of the future that I would be proud to be a part of. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Re: [RDA-L] Time and effort
Jonathan, That looks really handy and saves a lot of time. It looks like you are doing this with OpenURL, and it's a great example of how powerful it can be. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/ From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind [rochk...@jhu.edu] Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2010 7:20 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Time and effort That's pretty neat stuff Jim. My Umlaut software approaches from a different direction, taking known items (rather than searches) and trying to find supplementary in other specific databases; for now mostly focusing on finding electronic full-text or searching (which is useful even without full text), but also including some actual supplementary info like 'cited by' information for journal articles. More sources of supplementary info could be found later. Here are some examples. Oh, it's also worth noting that what makes it more feasible to do this kind of thing is the numeric identifiers in our records: ISBN, ISSN, LCCN, OCLCnum. And supplementary databases that use those same identifiers -- Google Books even has LCCN and OCLCnum in it, for matching. Every time somebody cataloging workflow removes useful identifiers like this from the record because we don't need them, or 'our system can't handle them', it saddens me. Likewise, when actual offiial cataloging 'standards' put such useful identifiers in uselessly ambiguous places (like sticking valid alternate-version ISBNs or ISSNs in a $z subfield!). http://findit.library.jhu.edu/go/2133277 http://findit.library.jhu.edu/go/2133279 http://findit.library.jhu.edu/go/2133280 From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Weinheimer Jim [j.weinhei...@aur.edu] Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2010 8:58 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Time and effort Hal Cain wrote: snip Meanwhile the most vexing problem I encounter is not the structure of the data and how it's encoded, it's the endless duplicate records in the databases -- and in OCLC's case the non-AACR2 foreign records which often are the only ones for materials I'm dealing with -- and I can assure Jim, that those I've already entered are beginning to attract requests from users. We must be doing something right. [and] I wonder how documents figure in the economy of Jim's library? Not every information need can be met from documentary resources, but if the documents don't any longer matter then what's the purpose of the library to make it different from any other kind of instructional support? /snip I guess I am coming off as anti-book, or at least anti-physical resource and wildly pro-virtual anything. Actually, I like to think that I am pro-everything, or at least, that I do not want to prefer one format over any other. Anybody who comes to my apartment, filled to bursting with books of all sorts, with print outs, etc. immediately sees that I am anything except anti-book, and I openly declare myself to be an addict. But, when I, or one of my patrons, or anyone, is reading a book, they need to be aware of all sorts of other information around that book. There has always been this information, and some of it has been organized, but much more has not been, or at least it has been so difficult to find and access that it hasn't been worth the trouble. Here is a concrete example of what I mean: Here is a record for a book A war like no other : how the Athenians and Spartans fought the Peloponnesian War / Victor Davis Hanson. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/57211303. In this record, we can see links from his heading and the subject to other records that are *only within the OCLC database*. That is useful to *those who understand,* but it turns out that this fact, which seems very simple, is not understood by many people. But avoiding this difficulty for the moment, these links are far from what is out there that people want or need. One very important resource is a video of a lecture he gave about his book that can be watched at http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/189156-1. But there are book reviews, blog entries by academics, and it goes on and on and on. The moment someone enters into this microcosm of materials surrounding this book, the interested reader (for lack of any other word) suddenly steps into a far different world of debates, differences of opinion, differences of interpretation, subtleties etc., which is incomparably more interesting than the single book he or she happens to be holding, where everything is more or less cut and dried. The part that goes beyond the book itself
Re: [RDA-L] New ed. of Chicago Manual of Style
Hal Cain wrote: snip Quoting Adam L. Schiff asch...@u.washington.edu: I was sitting at lunch today, reading our weekly alternative newspaper The Stranger, and lo and behold they have a book review of the new (16th) edition of The Chicago Manual of Style: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/hyphenate-this/Content?oid=4830760 The are a number of changes to the style manual mentioned in the review that have implications for RDA instructions and examples. RDA A.10: The guidelines for English-language capitalization basically follow those of the Chicago Manual of Style.(1) Certain guidelines that differ have been modified to conform to the requirements of bibliographic records and long-standing cataloguing practice. [snip] Why should cataloguers (as evidenced and prescribed by RDA) follow styles which differ from the leading English style guides in the various English-language countries? We're constantly being told that the data we craft may be employed not only in bibliographic catalogues of the kind we're used to but elsewhere, in as many different contexts as people can imagine. While I doubt some of those claims, I think some of the difference of style we're used to are retained for no good reason. /snip Of course, every style guide is different, and champions of each format think that *their* form is best and will fight to the very end to keep what they have. One of the new needs the users have from our bibliographic records that they didn't need back in Cutter's day is to be able to get automatic citations. People want them badly, and the reference librarian part of me wants them badly too, because people always mess up citations. It would be great if there were only a single citation format (or, by the way, a single way of cataloging!) but there isn't and won't be for a long, long time, if ever. Fortunately, modern tools are powerful enough to make everybody more or less happy, and OCLC is doing a fine job of it. For example, take a record from my catalog, http://www.galileo.aur.it/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=7144, and click in the right-hand column Get a Citation. A box will open up with citations ready to copy paste. This is made available through OCLC and some very innovative RSS feeds (not MARC format!), and where OCLC does some additional filtering behind the scenes, e.g. take a look at the forms of author's names in each of the formats. The problem is, there are lots of duplicate records in OCLC, and multiple possibilities result, as we see here. I could easily limit this to the first five, but the first five do not necessarily seem to be the best choices, so I am letting it all hang out. Still, this is a great tool that has helped my patrons immensely and I applaud OCLC for this! It should also help catalogers understand how text in a database can be reworked for different display; e.g. we see the first names reformatted (capitalized, only initials, etc.). There are many ways of accomplishing these transformations and all of this allows for many possibilities. I would like to point out that although automatic citations are a new need in library terms, in absolute terms, they are pretty old. According to Wikipedia, the first citation management software came out in 1984 (Reference Manager), Endnote came out in 1988, which has been some time ago, so in many ways, we are catching up here, too. 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/
Re: [RDA-L] Interesting conversations about RDA and FRBR ...
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip It also goes well with the paradigm of all known retrieval systems, based as it is on the idea of the result set, resulting from a query that uses attributes of various kinds, and all of them can be viewed as attributes of items. Certain combinations of attributes define subsets of items - some of these subsets can be called manifestations, expressions, or works. The identification of the work, however, remains the open question. It has to be done somewhere. Traditionally, it was pinned down by the uniform title, and many of our records have this as a distinctive attribute. Add to it the language, date, form, medium, numeric designation, key, coordinates, etc. - and you single out the crucial subsets that FRBR views from the top down. /snip I don't know if I agree that the identification of the work has to be done somewhere. Perhaps in some formats (I am thinking primarily of music), it is more important than others, but even then I don't know if people are able to find what they want using the newer tools, e.g. ITunes and Youtube. But in library catalogs (both OPAC and cards), very few people I have met even understand what a uniform title is, much less be able to work with it. This is not to say that searching by work is unimportant, but people must first be made aware that it is even possible, while the very concept of controlled vocabulary (even personal name control) is being forgotten among the general population. What I like from those comments, and especially the thread of Karen Coyle's, is that people there seem to be approaching the problem in a fresh, new way, instead of saying that first of all anything must fit into this WEMI pattern. At least from my understanding of the thread, what is especially forward-looking is the focus on the individual attributes without grouping them into a prearranged structure. Each community should be able to group them as they wish; which they will anyway! Free the attributes! 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/
Re: [RDA-L] Interesting conversations about RDA and FRBR ...
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip For classical music, it is indispensable. Apart from this, I think, one must certainly retain it for prolific authors, difficult though they are to define. LibraryThing, from the outset, had no such notion. Later, however, they realized that some kind of grouping was badly needed, and they came up with the Canonical title! They invented the notion of the Series as well, after realizing that this kind of grouping can be very useful, and their understanding of it is even wider than ours. So, they uncannily re-invented the bibliographic wheel. Can we go ahead and abolish or even neglect it, make it square or something? /snip But who are the ones doing the reinventing? As only one example in music, there is the Classical Archives at http://www.classicalarchives.com/ and their searching module is quite interesting. Play with their advanced search and see what you get--something that would be difficult to get out of traditional library catalogs that I think the public most probably likes. The Internet Movie Database is very useful too. When (and if) libraries put their records online in a more accessible manner, they will be the last ones, and it will be very difficult to know precisely who will be doing the reinventing. snip But we cannot base decisions solely on what average or even above-average patrons know or instinctively want or what we believe they want. As soon as they start thinking and consciously working with bibliographic data, the LT lesson teaches us, they start re-discovering and re-inventing. /snip I also believe it is difficult to know, but FRBR/RDA make precisely those same assumptions. Still, when things are reconsidered independently, there may be a rediscovery, but it is rarely the same as the original knowledge--there is more often than not several new and important twists provided for the new people. But instead of pitting it as us vs. them, (Us vs. Classical Archives IMDB) another way of looking at it is that we are all in it together, and we are doing the same work over and over and over. This is the sort of thing that I think could be improved by working together and sharing this kind of information (OK, the Classical Archives is a paid service, but they aren't the only ones out there) so that everyone can benefit. If there were different choices as to the clicks selected in the Classical Archives, with some of the choices coming to our materials, that would help us and our patrons, too. snip But first of all, liberate works that are now incarcerated inside all sorts of collections or multiparts (whose workness is somewhat dubious). Here, the notion of the (physical) item is really not the best of concepts, in terms of usability of the catalog, to base a description and a record on. /snip A terrifying possibility, but one that I agree is probably necessary, although libraries do not, and will not, have the resources to do it. I remember working on single volume conference publications that could take days because each one had dozens of individual papers, and instead of one item, the single volume became 40 or 60 or more records. I think the only way it could be done practically would be through some kind of crowdsourcing. Also in this regard, with the recent, and very positive, DMCA changes and the possibilities to remix, the very notion of implementing FRBR-type structures for these materials is staggering. See: http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26 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/
Re: [RDA-L] Interesting conversations about RDA and FRBR ...
J. McRee Elrod wrote: snip Jim said: I remember working on single volume conference publications that could take days because each one had dozens of individual papers, and instead of one item, the single volume became 40 or 60 or more records. Picture a work/expression/manifestation record for each paper, and you have 180 records. /snip Wow! You're right. I hadn't thought of that. Somehow, it seems to be going the wrong way. It reminds me of inputting Russian diacritics, and to input some of the Cyrillic characters, e.g. a Russian ia, with the ligatures, in RLIN, I had to push (I think I remember) a total of 8 keys. Then we went to Notis and it went to something like (again, I think) 10. Then came Voyager, and I couldn't believe we had to press even more keys! I thought, Who's figuring this out, anyway? Some sadist? That's when I started learning how to make macros. 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/
[RDA-L] Cataloging Matters Podcast No. 4: The Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, a personal journey, part 2
All, Apologies for cross-posting. I have just made another podcast of Cataloging Matters, which is part 2 of my personal journey with FRBR. It is available on my blog at: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/2010/09/cataloging-matters-podcast-no-4.html, along with the transcript. Please forward this to any others who may be interested. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Re: [RDA-L] Recording Extent, Other Physical Characteristics, and Dimensions for incomplete serials
John Hostage wrote: snip The v. is a specific material designation that tells you the serial is held in the form of volumes, rather than some kind of discs, microfiches, postcards, or bits and bytes. But it's true that this kind of information is probably lost on the user. /snip John is correct here, and while the information may be lost on the user, it still provides information to the experts who actually manage the collection and are the closest users of the records, themselves. Catalog records exist for two groups: the public and the librarians. I don't believe one is more important than the other, since if a collection is to function correctly, which I am pretty sure our patrons want, the managers need additional tools and information beyond what the public may need. There is so much on web pages that I do not understand, e.g. on Google, I have no idea what the Wonder Wheel does; in Microsoft Word and Excel, I probably understand about 30-40% of what I see there. It doesn't bother me, though. I think regular patrons are the same thing: they don't spend that much time or even care that much about the metadata record, since what they really want is the book, serial, article, film, etc. that the record describes. I question whether it is such a serious thing that the public does not understand everything they see, and that they may not understand little bits and pieces of a record. We can see it on lots of sites out there every day, and nobody seems to care very much. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
[RDA-L] Podcast: The Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records: a personal journey. Pt. 3
Apologies for cross-posting. All, This is to let everyone know that I have added a new podcast of Cataloging Matters, which is pt. 3 of my personal journey with FRBR at http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/2010/10/functional-requirements-for.html Please share this with others as you find appropriate. James Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edumailto: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] FRBRized data available for bulk download
Karen Coyle wrote: snip If you look at the simple Group1 diagram: http://archive.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/fig3-1.jpg you see that a manifestation can manifest more than one expression. So there are two (at least) ways to go: 1) consider the aggregate a manifestation and an expression and a work; but that doesn't explain why manifestation and expression are many-to-many 2) consider an aggregate a manifestation of more than one expression, and each expression expresses a single work (note the arrows between expression and work -- each expression can express only one work). It seems to me that the aggregate form (#1 here) completely negates the separation between work, expression and manifestation -- we get back to traditional cataloging where we've only got one thing -- which is defined by the manifestation. It also means that once again just about every publication becomes a separate thing and we are back to showing our users long lists of bibliographic records for the same text. If that's the goal, why did we bother with FRBR in the first place? What does it gain us? /snip If I understand this correctly, this is what Bernhard has been mentioned several times, but in one of my replies, I mentioned how I would *index* a single volume of conference proceedings, and one volume with a single record could easily turn into 40 or 50 separate items--a trend that is unsustainable in a practical sense, in my opinion, but who knows? It seems to me there are many possible ways to go on this. I guess that when I considered aggregate works, I was thinking of mashups (e.g. what is the Youtube main page with dozens of videos), otherwise isn't it just the same as any other compilations, series treatments, and various types of multipart items, as Karen mentions? Still, it seems as if there should be some idea somewhere of standardization. For example, what is the difference between cataloging and indexing, or does FRBR view the two tasks as merging? James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Re: [RDA-L] 300 Punctuation
Myers, John F. wrote: snip This is what happens when we continue to coopt a communication standard developed to print cards for use as a vehicle to convey data in electronic interfaces. Nearly every quirk in MARC can be traced back to its foundation as a card printing mechanism (and the lack of programming sophistication when it was originally developed). /snip One thing I think needs to be kept in mind is the purpose of the ISBD punctuation, which is language-independent. Here is a record I took at random from the catalog of the Russian National Library. Even though not everybody reads Russian, any cataloger in the world can immediate understand what the various parts are because of the punctuation. (I switched my email format to HTML, so I hope it works for everybody) Достоевский, Федор Михайлович (1821-1881). Село Степанчиково и его обитатели : Из записок неизвест. / Ф.М.Достоевский. - Изд. для слабовидящих. - М. : ИПТК Логос, 1997. - 550 с. ; 20 см. - (Круг чтения). I think this important function can be retained in a non-ISBD punctuation atmosphere-at least kind of. We can have different interfaces so that each person can decide upon the language he or she wants to view the catalog in, but even then, it seems as if there will be some kind of a limit on the number of languages offered, and the idea of above, where any cataloger can understand that record will not be possible. Of course, we need to consider the possibility of various types of automatic translations a la Google Translate, and/or automatic transliteration as well. Retaining the international comprehension would be very nice but maybe it can't be done. 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/
[RDA-L] New Cataloging Matters podcast
All, Apologies for cross-posting. This is to announce that I just added the latest Cataloging Matters podcast to my blog at http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/2010/11/cataloging-matters-no.html. This one continues my personal journey with FRBR. Please feel free to forward this to anyone who may be interested. James Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edumailto: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] All our eggs in one basket?
Karen Coyle wrote: snip We do not have a single source of data today. We have publisher web sites, Books in Print, publisher ONIX data, online booksellers, Wikipedia, LC's catalog, WorldCat, thousands of library databases, a millions of citations in documents. There is the question of is this data authoritative?... /snip Also, if the informational world were amenable, a lot of this information *could* come from the item itself. For example, metadata could be harvested from the meta fields of a web page. See as an example, the metadata in the Slavic Cataloging Manual, now at Indiana University http://www.indiana.edu/~libslav/slavcatman/. Look at the Page Source mostly found under View in most browsers and you will see some metadata for this item. Spiders could be configured to harvest this data. Or, in an XML document, a lot of this could come from the information itself, e.g. a title of a book could be encoded as 245a or dc.title (although I would like some way to distinguish a title proper). The ISBD principle of exact transcription would fit in perfectly. Also, as information is updated, the updates could be reflected everywhere immediately. The mechanics of much of this exists right now. The main problem is that there is very little agreement over coding or how data is input. For example, see almost any NY Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/world/asia/15prexy.html, and look at the meta fields there. This can give an idea of the possibilities, as well as the challenges in getting control of all of this. 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] More granulalrity if imprint year coding?
Hal Cain wrote: snip Quoting Deborah Fritz debo...@marcofquality.com: I think that what John actually said was and *not just* with regard to the 260 field, my emphasis added, i.e., plans are afoot for adding granularity to the 260 *and* other fields. Which is certainly good news-for however long we are going to continue to use MARC for RDA. Which for some will be a long time, I think, seeing how many smaller libraries I know that have little or no prospect of getting funding for replacing their existing MARC systems. On the other hand, some will need specialist help to rejig their MARC mapping to accomodate RDA records, but that will come rather cheaper than system replacement. It would be a service to us all to be able to incorporate new MARC subfielding (such as in 260) in one operation. /snip I agree with Hal on this: any changes will take an awful long time to percolate through the system. The purpose of my original post on this topic was to point out the difficulties of everyone agreeing that this particular item I am looking at is the same as this other particular item I am looking at. In other words, I was trying to point out the real difficulty of determining what is a manifestation. It is only a matter of *definition*, and different bibliographic universes will define their equivalent of a manifestation in different ways, and not only that, each individual cataloger/metadata creator who works within a separate bibliographic universe--all of whom may be highly experienced and knowledgeable--will also interpret things in their own ways. I cannot imagine that another bibliographic universe (e.g. publishers, rare book dealers, etc.) will change everything they do simply because our bibliographic universe changes our definition of what is a manifestation. After all, we wouldn't change for them. If something that should be one of the simplest aspects of cataloging turns out to be so difficult to reconcile in practice (This is--or is not--a copy of that), then how in the world does that leave us with any hope at all to reach agreement on expression and work, which I don't think anyone maintains are simpler in any way at all? Finally, our records can no longer be considered separately from other records in different bibliographic universes out there, and they *will* (not must) interoperate all together somehow! Understand my despair? So, my concern is not so much that we need additional subfields (although Jonathan is absolutely right about systems needing them), because additional subfields necessarily increase complexity. Greater complexity should be avoided because it takes more time to do and catalogers need to be trained to input information consistently, otherwise we get hash. Just adding a bunch of subfields that are misused serves no purpose. Nevertheless, in certain *rare* cases however, adding subfields may actually *simplify* cataloger's work and in my experience, 260$c may be an example of one of those cases. Or maybe not. I think it should be considered, but practical considerations (i.e. simplification) need to take precedence. 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] Statement Naming More Than One Person, Etc.: Mark of omission before supplied information
J. McRee Elrod wrote: snip Mark Ehlert said: (Something to fall back on when the RDA text is wishy-washy--which says something about the RDA text as is stands now.) The end result will be increased variation in practice among those creating bibliographic records. /snip Although I am a fervent believer in consistency, I believe that the future of bibliographic standards will come to resemble other standards, e.g. standards for food. As an example, you can look at the standards of the Codex Alimentarius and how they work: http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/standard_list.jsp If you look at almost any standard, for example, the following is taken from the one for honey, we see standards such as: 3.4 MOISTURE CONTENT (a)Honeys not listed below - not more than 20% (b) Heather honey (Calluna) - not more than 23% or 3.5.2Sucrose Content (a)Honey not listed below - not more than 5 g/100g (b) Alfalfa (Medicago sativa), Citrus spp., False - not more than 10 g/100g Acacia (Robinia pseudoacacia), French Honeysuckle (Hedysarum), Menzies Banksia (Banksia menziesii),Red Gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), Leatherwood (Eucryphia lucida), Eucryphia milligani (c)Lavender (Lavandula spp),Borage (Borago- not more than 15 g/100g officinalis) I freely confess that I do not understand the first thing about making honey, so all of this means nothing to me, but I accept that to experts it means something very specific and is very important. And as a consequence, everybody who cares about honey actually cares about these standards, although the vast majority of people who eat honey don't even know these standards exist and even fewer have read them. We can also see from just these little examples that food standards are almost always minimums and not maximums, i.e. they allow plenty of room for additional quality but certain minimums are guaranteed. I think there is a lot we can all learn from such standards. So, I think that as future bibliographic standards evolve, they will become guidelines for minimums, and not how they are now: thou shalt transcribe the statement of responsibility from precisely these sources of information using precisely these methods. Exactly how these new types of standards will work in practice, I cannot very well imagine at this point, but it seems something like this may be the only way to ensure some level of reliability that different bibliographic agencies can achieve. We have to face facts: it is becoming ever more essential that libraries and library catalogers get all the help they can. This will mean real and true cooperation with other relevant bibliographic agencies. This was never possible before but today, using modern technology, the possibility for cooperation on a previously unimaginable level is available. This will mean however, fundamental changes for absolutely *everyone* involved, not least of all, libraries. Based on the development of standards in other areas, perhaps determining minimal levels is a more profitable way to go than the traditional library method of: everyone will do *this* in precisely *these ways*. This has a possible consequence of lack of consistency, and this must be dealt with in some way. Right now, I don't know how it could be done. Incredible changes are happening now anyway, and apparently more will come very soon. Here is a recent article from the Guardian that describes a bit of what our British colleagues may be seeing. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/22/library-cuts-leading-authors-condemn “Writers Philip Pullman, Kate Mosse and Will Self have criticised government cuts that could see up to a quarter of librarians lose their jobs over the next year. Widespread library closures are expected as councils cut their services and look to volunteers in an attempt to balance budgets hit by the coalition's spending review.” Profound changes are happening to the profession right now and practical methods must be taken to deal with them. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Re: [RDA-L] Seeking a Web-based FRBR Catalog (catalogue)
The problem with finding a genuine FRBR catalog is that it exists only in theory: for a true FRBR catalog to exist, you need another structure underlying the edifice, one based on the FRBR entity/attribute model, and nothing like that exists yet (that I know of anyway). For that to happen, we need a complete change in MARC format (which was created to exchange information on separate cards, i.e. complete information for each manifestation or edition), plus we would need changes in rules, to ensure that the information required in each entity is there, e.g. that the work record has the required information for all the relevant authors and subjects, that the expression record has the information for editors and versions, etc. etc. To create such a structure will require quite literally a sea change in how every cataloger works, and more importantly, how they think. Naturally, there would be tremendous concerns over retrospective conversion; otherwise we risk making everything we have now more or less obsolete. In the meantime there are some projects that attempt to replicate the experience of an FRBR catalog, and the others have suggested several excellent ones. I personally like the example at http://zoeken.bibliotheek.be. Such projects are incredibly useful since they demonstrate that there is a lot we can do with the records we have right now, and these projects by no means exhaust the possibilities. I think it would be wise to take a step back and, using these projects which simulate a genuine FRBR tool, to ask seriously: would building a genuine FRBR sort of tool really provide our patrons with what they want or need? Does an FRBR tool answer the real-life questions our public brings to the catalog? Is it best, in these exceedingly trying financial conditions, to redo everything to build a tool that people *may not* find particularly useful? I am as yet unaware of any user studies along these lines in relation to FRBR/RDA, but there are many studies of users, how they search for information and what they expect from it, from other viewpoints. Two of the latest are at: http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/communityacademiclibraries/887740-419/discovery_face-off_draws_a_crowd.html.csp (the Charleston Conference. I only read the LJ account, but I just discovered that some of the presentations are up at http://www.slideshare.net/event/2010-charleston-conference) and Project Information Literacy's report at: http://projectinfolit.org/pdfs/PIL_Fall2010_Survey_FullReport1.pdf There are many other highly useful studies however, some of the most interesting coming from library anthropologists(!). James Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edumailto: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/ From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Rosa Matthys Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 10:04 PM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Seeking a Web-based FRBR Catalog (catalogue) Another example is http://zoeken.bibliotheek.be Some queries with a good grouping result are: http://zoeken.bibliotheek.be/?q=jane austen http://zoeken.bibliotheek.be/?q=bach cello suites Regards Rosa Matthys Coördinatie centraal catalogiseren Coordination Central Cataloguing rosa.matt...@bibnet.bemailto:rosa.matt...@bibnet.be +32 (0)9 223 42 11 +32 (0)486 85 79 27 Bibnet vzw www.bibnet.behttp://www.bibnet.be/ Priemstraat 51 B-1000 Brussel Van: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] Namens Mike McReynolds Verzonden: maandag 29 november 2010 21:39 Aan: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Onderwerp: Re: [RDA-L] Seeking a Web-based FRBR Catalog (catalogue) Thank you very much! On 11/29/2010 2:22 PM, Andrew Hankinson wrote: Here are a couple: Australian Music Centre catalogue: http://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/about/websitedevelopment Scherzo, Variations/FRBR test catalogue: http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/scherzo/ There are a number of projects at OCLC on FRBR, although their main one, FictionFinder, seems to be down for maintenance: http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/past/orprojects/frbr/default.htm And then there's the FRBR blog, which has a ton of links to other FRBR projects: http://www.frbr.org/ Cheers, -Andrew On 2010-11-29, at 3:00 PM, Mike McReynolds wrote: Good Day: I've been seeking examples of FRBR catalogs on the Web to point to as examples. Despite searching the RDA-L archives, library literature, the IFLA Web site and Google, I've not been able to locate a single example of a FRBR catalog. This would be helpful
[RDA-L] Imagining different types of standards (Was: Statement Naming More Than One Person, Etc.: Mark of omission before supplied information)
Brenndorfer, Thomas wrote: snip Perhaps it would have been better to use an example from Codex Alimentarius that resembled the textual properties displayed on bibliographic resources which catalogers must take into account in assisting people in identifying those resources. The General Standard for the Labelling of Prepackaged Foods (http://www.codexalimentarius.net/download/standards/32/CXS_001e.pdf) prescribes a series of instructions for recording the the name of the food that is no less onerous than the rules for bibliographic description in libraries: 4.1 The name of the food 4.1.1 The name shall indicate the true nature of the food and normally be specific and not generic: 4.1.1.1 Where a name or names have been established for a food in a Codex standard, at least one of these names shall be used. 4.1.1.2 In other cases, the name prescribed by national legislation shall be used. 4.1.1.3 In the absence of any such name, either a common or usual name existing by common usage as an appropriate descriptive term which was not misleading or confusing to the consumer shall be used. ... /snip Thanks for pointing that out. This is a much better example of what I have in mind. For example, I can imagine that determining a *precise form* of a named entity may become less important as URIs begin to be implemented and displays of names become more fluid. Still, I can imagine a highly predictable type of form that would, in a sense, guarantee access to the name for librarians; in other words, an expert form of the name and that could continue current AACR2-type practices more or less. Of course, the same methods could work for subjects as well, and perhaps better. So, if we have a form of subject that really no one would ever think of, e.g. Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824--Homes and haunts--England--London, this would not necessarily be the first thing displayed and it could be something more like Lord Byron and British pubs! :) 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] Protesting RDA
I am sending this to both Autocat and RDA-L Deborah Tomaras wrote, through J. McRee Elrod snip I believe that time is running out for any organized opposition to RDA, from those who either want it altered or abolished; certainly, by April of next year, if not earlier, it will be a fait accompli. So I am now proposing that the opposition organize, and influence RDA while we possibly still can. Here are some things that I believe we might need: /snip also, in another message on Autocat, Ms Tomaras wrote: snip If, in the course of the many years developing RDA, any studies were conducted showing that this change were truly better for users, and desired by them, I might be more convinced. If cost mockups had been done, and discussion made about how to help smaller or cash-strapped organizations switch, I might be more convinced. /snip While it probably comes as no surprise that I fully support these efforts, at the same time I realize that whenever major changes are proposed, it means that major disruptions will be inevitable. Therefore, disruptions in and of themselves are not necessarily bad during moments of change. The question is and will be: are these disruptions manageable, and are they worth the cost, as she pointed out in her message? I want to repeat: I have nothing but deep respect for everyone working so diligently on RDA, and I mean it sincerely. I respect their abilities and knowledge and I realize that theirs is a thankless task in many ways. Nevertheless, when a person truly believes the field is endangered, they are ethically compelled to speak out. This is how I felt when retraining costs became a practical impossibility for my institution in the current environment, and as I slowly realized and accepted how little FRBR/RDA really change anything. (I have tried to demonstrate this in my series of podcasts) In my opinion, one of the major problems I see with RDA is that it doesn't go far enough. As an example, we should not pretend to ourselves that changing Elvis Presley's or Richard Wagner's authorized form, in other words, changing one *textual string* into any other *textual string*, is any kind of a change at all. This is the sort of change that allows others to make fun of us and that gives cataloging and catalogers a bad name. We must face facts: can anyone maintain with a straight face that the form Presley, Elvis (Elvis Aron), 1935-1977 instead of Presley, Elvis, 1935-1977 will make any kind of substantial and meaningful difference for our patrons, instead of... If we are really aiming to change matters, we should replace the textual string with a URI and then lots of people will gain multiple options that we can only imagine at this point. So, if the textual string for Elvis actually changed to http://dbpedia.org/page/Category:Elvis_Presley or http://viaf.org/viaf/23404836/#Presley,_Elvis,_1935-1977 or something in this vein, it would be a genuine gain for our patrons that *every single person* could point to--from searchers to catalogers to budget administrators. I have no doubt that this would change libraries and catalogers far more than the elementary addition of a $q. Switching over to URLs would signal that the traditional library cataloging community were ready for genuine cooperation with other communities, and it would mean taking advantage of the power that modern technology gives us. To me, the RDA changes to Elvis' and Richard Wagner's headings are just more convincing evidence that the problems facing cataloging are absolutely not related to cataloging rules, but to all kinds of other areas. Additionally, if the URIs were implemented correctly, such a major change could be done more or less automatically by computer technicians instead of every single cataloger changing everything they do. So, which would involve greater changes and possibly, greater disruptions, along with promises of greater possibilities: changing the text of Elvis' heading or embracing the power of the web? If these were some of the directions the changes were going, I would be all for them. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Re: [RDA-L] Protesting RDA
Brenndorfer, Thomas wrote: snip Throughout the RDA text, the first choice listed for identifying entities or showing relationships is to use an identifier (such as a URI). This is followed by an authorized access point, and then in some areas, by textual descriptions. The reason for this is RDA's objective in supporting three scenarios: catalog card production, MARC catalogs that rely on linked headings, and object-oriented databases (http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/5editor2.pdf). What is clear though is that access points are a permanent feature of the cataloging landscape-- they will always exist and are part of all three scenarios. The main difference is that relating entities in the future won't be dependent on the form of access points, which is a good idea considering how often they can change. For example, headings change with the addition of death dates, or when authors request that elements be removed (as I discovered recently for an author whose name was attached to many series headings and subject headings). In addition, the arrangement of RDA into elements that support attributes and relationships for entities is the basis of interest in the Linked Data community. There is a W3C Incubator Group discussing such issues now, and RDA is the game in town in support of these efforts (http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/). In addition to promoting the use of identifiers for specific entities, all RDA elements (and a lot of controlled vocabulary) have registered URIs (http://metadataregistry.org/schema/list.html). 100 $q or Fuller Form of Name is a registered element http://RDVocab.info/ElementsGr2/fullerFormOfNamePerson /snip Thanks for pointing this out, but it still doesn't address the point I was trying to make: we should not pretend to ourselves that changing Elvis Presley's or Richard Wagner's authorized form, [or] in other words, changing one *textual string* into any other *textual string*, is any kind of a change at all. This is the sort of change that allows others to make fun of us and that gives cataloging and catalogers a bad name can anyone maintain with a straight face that the form Presley, Elvis (Elvis Aron), 1935-1977 instead of Presley, Elvis, 1935-1977 will make any kind of substantial and meaningful difference for our patrons If the purpose of RDA is to utilize URIs (which at the current rate may happen by the year 2050 if we are lucky), what is the purpose of going through the *huge task* of changing one textual string to another textual string? This makes absolutely no difference to our users (unless somebody out there can point to some fairly convincing research), while making an incredible amount of completely useless work for catalogers, when we could be doing work that is more productive. This is an example of what I have been mentioning of changes for theoretical purposes instead of practical purposes. Libraries and catalogs are facing some of the most serious challenges they have faced in a long, long time, and none of these challenges have anything to do with the *text of a heading* or in problems of *cataloging rules*. In other regards, such as how people are able to find those headings; what happens after they do find a heading, and so on, innovating in these areas would be the types of changes that could matter to our users, but yet we concentrate on the forms themselves. Even if we were to change the forms, we should aim in the directions that our users would like. I think we have some excellent evidence for their preferences in the disambiguation pages of Wikipedia--built by the users themselves, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Johnson or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_%28disambiguation%29 or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_%28disambiguation%29, where the distinguishing factor isn't so reliant on dates, but on descriptive terms, e.g. for war: ... Write after read, a data hazard WAR (Sun file format) (Web application ARchive), a file format used to package Java applications KDE WAR (file format) (Web ARchive), a file format for storing a web page early versions of Decwar, a pioneering multi-user computer game ... I also prefer these types of forms, but they are not the directions RDA is leading us. I think it's time (and has been for quite awhile) for libraries and the catalogs to make some kind of big splash; to do something that will make people (i.e. our users) sit up and take notice. We have to do something that will make a difference to them. Many other organizations out there are focusing on making these big splashes right now, as we discuss. RDA has a few distant, theoretical, vague goals that are disputed in themselves, but we still should not delude ourselves that any of the changes they posit will make any difference to our users. If, by some miracle, URIs were actually implemented in our records within a mere 10 years or so (which would be the equivalent of light speed), I am
Re: [RDA-L] Protesting RDA, utilize URIs in RDA
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip URIs, just like textual strings, are subject to change although not meant to be. Bare IdNumbers are a little better (and much shorter). In most cases, URIs are all alike, and the only difference is an IdNumber contained in them. So, why the trouble to store the entire URI with every record affected, when the number is all that is actually needed, and a changed URI most often differs not in the number but in some other part. For example: We might have 650 $u http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85090739 for the subject heading Neo-Kantianism. /snip A URI does not have to be a number--it is *any character string* that identifies a resource uniquely, and this includes textual strings as well. This coincides precisely with what our authority headings have been designed to do and I see no reason why we should not try to take advantage of this huge amount of work right now. So, for libraries that follow LCSH, the URI could just as easily be http://id.loc.gov/authorities/Neo-Kantianism; since sh85090739 is *supposed* to equal Neo-Kantianism (that is, if the catalogers have been doing their jobs competently) and consequently, there is no need for the nightmarish change of all our headings to numbers. This is how it works now in dbpedia with the URI using a textual string: http://dbpedia.org/resource/Neo-Kantianism. (Looks like the English abstract should be added to this record) If this is the case, your suggestion for adding the http://id.loc.gov/authorities/; as a separate function could work right now, today. The problem is that changes would have to be made at id.loc.gov to make it work as a real web service, so as to provide the XML that local catalogs could work with. As a simple illustration of how something similar works, see how I have implemented OCLC's web service see, e.g. http://www.galileo.aur.it/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=26352 and click on Get a citation in the right-hand column. There could be much better and cooler possibilities than this, however, for example, bringing in related information for the subjects. What about those libraries that do not use LCSH but another controlled vocabulary? They could provide the same service for their headings and their catalogs, and then at the higher LCSH-Other controlled vocabulary level, related terms could be linked in some way similar to VIAF, or I am sure there are other ways as well. In dbpedia, you can see it in the Neo-Kantianism record (above) using the owl:sameAs. This is how linked data can work, there could be owl:sameAs for all kinds of authority files, including dbpedia. Imagine the power of something like that. Would this work 100%? Anything you decide to undertake will have problems, but it could provide at least 75-80% if not more, and could be done right now, with a minimum of cost and no disruption to cataloging productivity. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Re: [RDA-L] Web catalog
Karen Coyle wrote: snip Actually, I don't think that the cataloger has to think about the resulting page, especially because the resulting page could differ greatly using the same catalog data. That's the big change that I see: that the catalog record is no longer the display form of the data, but is the underlying data that could result in any number of different displays. I think the cataloger needs to understand what data is needed/desired to describe and identify the thing being cataloged. I don't think this is terribly different from your intended meaning, Jim, but I did want to remove the page structure from the discussion. /snip Thanks for clarifying that Karen. Yes, the record of the manifestation/edition no longer has to be the same as the display of the data. Different catalogs and organizations can display the same information in vastly different ways. This amount of, I'll call it freedom, although it makes me very nervous, can be liberating at the same time. For me, playing around with the displays is actually one of the fun parts! 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] Protesting RDA, utilize URIs in RDA
Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip Compromise: Let machines do the work, ok, but think hard where and in what way to involve them. What I was suggesting is not really a different approach: Don't store http://www.something.xyz/abc/IdNumber but just IdNumber and have presentation/service software add the rest according to current fashion. /snip Yes. In my own opinion, implementing linked data does not necessarily mean redoing everything in your database to create new links, along the lines of adding all of the LCSH numbers to our records (blah!). That would be an incredible amount of work, and would ensure that all of that work would relate only to the library community, since nobody else will ever change to our LCSH numbers. I see linked data rather as taking the *data you already have* and repurposing it to interoperate in innovative ways with other resources. I think there is room for a lot of creativity along these lines. The final products may be quite surprising. I think we all agree here 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] Recording Relationships in MARC
Concerning abbreviations, there are an entire range of options today instead of the rather atavistic method of retyping everything. I personally think automated methods, plus using our MARC fields and language of the item would solve at least 90% of all of the abbreviation problem. Many abbreviations are only valid in certain fields, e.g. see Yale's list of (uh-oh!) AACR2 abbreviations for a nice overview: http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/abbrev.htm. Other ideas come from sites such as http://www.abbreviations.com/, which has different methods for finding out the meaning of an abbreviation from widgets to iPhone apps. They also have an API that can work as a web service. If the library world did something like this, it could solve the abbreviation problem not only for English-speaking people, but for everyone everywhere, no matter what language they speak. This is, of course, assuming that there actually is an abbreviations problem and that it is of sufficient import that we must take major efforts to solve it. Whether this is true or not is another matter, but it only makes sense to at least try some automated methods before embarking on a major task of manual retyping. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Re: [RDA-L] Recording Relationships in MARC
Jonathan Rochkind wrote: snip I don't think anyone is realistically suggesting that existing legacy records be manually changed to not have abbreviations. RDA is just suggesting that going forward they are not used. For all the carping from catalogers that love abbreviations, I do not understand what the benefit is supposed to be. [For what it's worth, it would actually be _easier_ for software to take fully spelled out words and abbreviate them in display, then it is to expand abbreviations. Although not neccesarily a walk in the park either way.] /snip Why shouldn't we change? In a word, to maintain consistency. Isn't it the systems people who complain all the time that our data is lousy because data is entered in all kinds of different ways? So, if we don't redo the old stuff (which I agree certainly isn't worth it) but we change going forward, we break consistency and make automated solutions even more difficult, as has been pointed out in different ways by many programmers on various lists. If we change without touching the legacy data, the argument that we are doing it for the utility of our patrons falls apart since they will still have to face the onerous task of figuring out what p. means for a long, long time. (And as an aside, I realize that there is some inconsistency now, with older records having illus. for instance, but there are relatively few of these) When it comes to abbreviations, we must see the real problem: our users have to face records in our catalogs that have all kinds of abbreviations: IBM, etc., p., et al., Oxfam, AIDS, FAO, UN, GOP, and on and on and on. If we were serious about dealing with the abbreviations problem from our *patron's point of view*, we should not expect our patrons to be able to distinguish library-controlled abbreviations from all of the others, and then deal only with that part of the problem, which is the part of the least interest to our users, and ignore the huge number of other abbreviations they see all the time that they may not understand. Therefore, if we consider that there is an abbreviations problem, then it should be discussed and the parameters should be delineated; then we should determine the relative importance of abbreviations vs. other issues facing us, and then take steps to deal with it if it is decided it is important enough. But we should realize that breaking consistent practice has major consequences in a computerized environment. James L. Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome Rome, Italy First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
