[RDA-L] [Fwd: Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?]
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? Maybe instead of an extension of the CIP program, we need to imagine something new--a program that would distribute unique LCCNs without cataloging to content providers or operations like Quality Books and SLC. The LCCNs could then be embedded in the content providers' productions with or without accompanying metadata (following certain guidelines, of course). The LCCN identifier and the document itself, in whatever form, would then become the kernel of information from which various kinds of surrogate records could be developed and authorized at different levels. That might actually be affordable at an organizational level, at least until we run out of LCCNs. Stephen Original Message Subject:Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page? Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2009 18:21:27 +0100 From: Weinheimer Jim j.weinhei...@aur.edu Reply-To: j.weinhei...@aur.edu To: RDA-L@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA 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 -- Stephen Hearn Authority Control Coordinator/Head, Database Management Section Technical Services, University Libraries, University of Minnesota 160 Wilson Library 309 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 Ph: 612-625-2328 / Fax: 612-625-3428
[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?]
Weinheimer Jim wrote: 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. 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. kc -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [RDA-L] [Fwd: Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?]
I agree that pushing out cataloging doesn't result in consistent data records, but that's not really what I was suggesting. My suggestion was that it might be possible to push out the assigning of unique identifiers to be used in description and access records, if the process of doing so could be well automated and the agency doing so had the necessary credibility. If all I got from a website's metadata was the LCCN that the creator had received and assigned to it, that could be used to aggregate all the available efforts to describe or catalog the website in more formal ways. The level and authority of any record found would be reflected in the record; the LCCN would promise nothing except uniqueness. Guidelines would be needed only to ensure uniqueness--to advise against using the same one for different productions, etc. Kind of a URI, only more universal. Of course, experience teaches that no voluntary system is perfect. There are publishers which re-use their ISBNs. But the threshhold for success in assigning a unique identifier correctly is a bit lower than that for creating good cataloging, so the rate of success would hopefully be higher. Stephen Karen Coyle wrote: Weinheimer Jim wrote: 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. 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. kc -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234 -- Stephen Hearn Authority Control Coordinator/Head, Database Management Section Technical Services, University Libraries, University of Minnesota 160 Wilson Library 309 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 Ph: 612-625-2328 / Fax: 612-625-3428
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] 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?
Jim said:
It has been my feeling that website creators would willingly do this*
*accept cataloguer created imbedded descriptive data.
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. For those website creators outside the scope of national
cataloguing agencies, outsource cataloguing agencies could provide the
data. No super library is required. In both Brazil and Canada, CIP
began as distributed programs, rather than being centrally assigned.
Just as in the old days we made a distinction between material of
lasting informational value (which received full cataloguing), and
more ephemeral material (which went into a pamphlet file with perhaps
the folder being catalogued), not all electronic resources are created
equal. Some deserve on the briefest of descriptions. Others deserve
full description. In addition, not all electronic resources are
integrating. Some are reproductions of static material, or are
created as static material. Fortunately ISBD/AACR2/MARC21 copes with
this variety quite well. I'm less confident about RDA being able to
do so. MARC records (converted into XMLMARC if preferred) is a real
possibility for inclusion in websites.
Electronic resources are not the only information resources excluded
from CIP programs. DVDs, CDs, CD-ROMs, etc. need this feature as
well. Information resources have more in common than they differ.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
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
Re: [RDA-L] FW: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?
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
do repeating 300, one for each (which we do rather than omitting 300
as OLAC would have one do for videorecordings in two formats), and two
urls. But then we discovered that there is an url for an abstract,
which in turn has links to each electronic form. We use a generalized
300***, and the abstract's url**. A little imagination and creative
rule interpretation can go a long way to meeting patron needs.
... the problem arises when we try to insist that the same rules must
operate in the virtual world. They don't make sense.
They make great sense to us. As I said, information is information.
Print documents can be digitalized, and digital documents can be
printed. It is a porous membrane. Each of these research paper
electronic documents has a version for printing, and many libraries do
print them out. Many of the electronic document MARC records we
prepare are for electronic versions of printed books.
... simply consider virtual materials to be fundamentally different--
which is true.
Not in our experience. Textual information is textual information.
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.
We transcribe exactly in 245 with [sic]. and the corrected form in
246. Doesn't everyone?
How should virtual materials be handled?
As information resources, which we have done for centuries.
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.
We find (as in the cases described above) vital to do this accurate
transcription, either using 245/247 as an integrating resource, or as
successive monograph records for preserved successive iterations.
Unless the title is accurately transcribed, seeking a known resource
on Google leads to false hits.
What is the solution? Again, that can come only with trial and error.
Our several trials and errors have led us to appreciate the work of
Panizzi, Cutter, and Gorman; not to mention the utility of ISBD,
AACR2, and MARC21.
We are not optimistic about RDA serving us as well.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
P.S. Selected MARC fields used for research papers in electronic form:
245 10 $aTitle$h[electronic resource] :$bsubtitle /$cStatement of
reponsibility.
246 30 $aDistinctive part of title.
250$aEdition,
***300$a1 electronic text ( p. : ill.) :$bdigital file.
*500$aTitle from PDF t.p. (viewed on date).
505 0 $aContents; cut pasted from pdf
506$aAbstract freely available; full-text restricted to subscribers
or individual document purchasers.
510 0 $aCompendex.
510 0 aINSPEC.
510 0 $aGoogle scholar.
510 0 $aGoogle book search.
520$aAbstract; cut and pasted from pdf.
538
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?
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! Weinheimer Jim wrote: 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 -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
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] Slave to the title page?
I also think it's perfectly reasonable to transcribe a title of a printed resource. I even think it is reasonable to transcribe the title as it appears on the title frames of a film or video. These things tend to be stable and citable and i think we need to have that encoded in the bibliographic record. What i object to is being required to transcribe everything on the title page or title frames. I am aghast that RDA is continuing to require this in this day and age (particularly as CONSER has already walked away from this). If it's because we need to know exactly how a title page looks and how names appear, we don't even transcribe it completely anyway (leaving off honorifics, affiliations, etc., people peforming minor roles) There is even the matter of determining what order to transcribe things in many cases such as conference proceedings with logos, sponsor names, conference names (spelled out and abbreviated) and special titles in a jumble all over the page. We! encounter these frequently when trying to copy catalog electronic conferences and finding that the scanned page of the electronic version we are looking at doesn't exactly match the 245 of the catalog record, which was allegedly the print version. Is it a different thing? Did someone interpret the order of titles differently? Are there typos or other mistakes? (we find a lot of these). If the purpose is identification, a scan of the title page would have served this purpose much more efficiently and accurately than transcription. THe technology exists to get frame grabs for video credits, but they would be numerous and somewhat cumbersome to get at this point (or we could record the credits as an mpeg file but there might be legal issues involved). So this one isn't as easy as for text. But the transcription issue is way more difficult and time consuming for text as well, so it still might be a gain in time an accuracy (the folks on the JSC have obviously never tried to transcribe film credits!) greta de groat Stanford University Libraries - Original Message - From: Weinheimer Jim j.weinhei...@aur.edu To: RDA-L@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 2:50:12 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: 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
Re: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?
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. Who advances the argument to which Jim refers above? Am I experiencing a sporadic inability to receive all postings from this list? Seems like a straw man to say the least. 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. Isn't this also a problem with other materials, especially film and various forms of ephemera? Mike Tribby Senior Cataloger Quality Books Inc. The Best of America's Independent Presses mailto:mike.tri...@quality-books.com
Re: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?
I don't think our rules work very well as they are now, not even for cataloging printed resources, and have tried to explain why repeatedly. Jonathan Mike Tribby wrote: 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. Who advances the argument to which Jim refers above? Am I experiencing a sporadic inability to receive all postings from this list? Seems like a straw man to say the least. 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. Isn't this also a problem with other materials, especially film and various forms of ephemera? Mike Tribby Senior Cataloger Quality Books Inc. The Best of America's Independent Presses mailto:mike.tri...@quality-books.com -- Jonathan Rochkind Digital Services Software Engineer The Sheridan Libraries Johns Hopkins University 410.516.8886 rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Re: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?
Greta said:
I also think it's perfectly reasonable to transcribe a title of a
printed resource. ... What i object to is being required to
transcribe everything on the title page or title frames.
Absolutely. To speak in terms of MARC fields (because it is a handy
shorthand), not everything in the prime source belongs in 245,
particularly for videorecordings and electronic resources.
Even Margaret Mann allowed ellipses for long involved subtitles which
in her day were more like abstracts or summaries, now better in 520.
Contributors to a motion picture need not be divided between 245/$c,
and 508, regardless of where they are in the item. All should be in
508. Those lengthy 245 /$c's force other needed information out of
brief OPAC displays. Considering them statements of responsibility,
makes having statement of responsibility as a required element more
difficult. Those persons, individual and corporate, belong in 508,
just as performers belong in 511.
... conference proceedings with logos, sponsor names, conference names
(spelled out and abbreviated) and special titles in a jumble all over
the page.
Again, more use of notes as opposed to 245 works better in OPAC
displays, e.g., speakers in 511, place and time of conference in 518,
sponsors in 536. Granted the MARC21 order of 5XX is ridiculous, but
few records have a large number of notes. Having the information in
specific notes, allows quick reference to see that the information has
been recorded. All this information does not need to be forced into
245 creating hard to use OPAC displays.
More cataloguers should go out to the OPAC, and see how their work
shows up there.
RDA needs to allow provision in square brackets of lacking
information, e.g., jurisdiction in 260$a, and removal of information
to notes, e.g., complex and lengthy information concerning
responsibility which does not relate to 1XX.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
Re: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?
Hal quoted a quote:
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.
James message came though empty for me, and I missed this as well.
Too long posts perhaps?
I do not agree with Johathan that the rules do not work at present,
for either print or electronic resources. I find them equally
suitable for both print and nonprint. (About 75% of our original
records are for electronic resources now.)
What is required is a move away from literalism and an application of
common sense, and with regard for results in the OPAC.
As I said in a post which has not yet appeared, the fault often lies
in our interpretation of rules. For example, considering some (but
not all) of those persons responsible for a motion picture as
belonging in a statement of responsibility, even though none of those
persons or corporate bodies are related to the prime entry, and would
be better combined in 508; or forcing into 245 statements of who spoke
at a conference (better in 511); where and when a conference was held
(better if 518); or who funded it (better in 536). With format
integration, we have all those nifty specific notes which can be used
more widely than their original purpose. Those ridiculously long 245
display poorly, and are not good service to patrons.
Margaret Mann advised replacing long comples subtitles with elipses,
and if desired, quoting them in a note. Some in her day were like
abstracts or summaries, and today would be better in 520.
Dear old Margaret is as applicable today as ever, and to nonprint as
well as print material.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
Re: [RDA-L] Slave to the title page?
Mac Elrod wrote: What is required is a move away from literalism and an application of common sense, and with regard for results in the OPAC. I heartily agree! And while (as I seem to recall) cataloger judgment is something that the JSC (or at least LC) wanted to leave more room for, the number of rules and the wording of them in RDA do not point in that direction. Or, rather, cataloger judgment will be determining which specific rules are to be followed, which alternatives to use when they are offered, and/or which of two or more apparently conflicting rules should be applied. During this whole AACR3/RDA process, I have increasingly felt that a much more useful tool would be one that had a drastically smaller number of rules, stated much more clearly and succintly; think of Michael Gorman's Concise AACR2 (even his Most Concise AACR2). These rules would then be supplemented by longer statements giving principles, suggestions for variant practices for different kinds of situations, etc.; think something sort of akin to the CONSER Cataloging Manual. The actual rules would be much easier to use and navigate. And links (or references, if using a print product) to the supplementary material would not only be an aid to the cataloger working in an unfamiliar situation, but would also serve well as a textbook or training manual. Alas, it doesn't look like the RDA we'll be getting will be anything at all like my dream. It seems instead to be turning into a nightmare that I never imagined when this all started. Kevin M. Randall Principal Serials Cataloger Bibliographic Services Dept. Northwestern University Library 1970 Campus Drive Evanston, IL 60208-2300 email: k...@northwestern.edu phone: (847) 491-2939 fax: (847) 491-4345
[RDA-L] Slave to the title page?
Coyle quoted Cutter:
Bibliographers have established a cult of the title-page; its slighted
peculiarities are noted; it is followed religiously, with dots for
omissions, brackets for insertions, and uprights to make the end of
lines ...
Granted we can do without the uprights to mark the ends of lines
(apart perhaps from rare book cataloguing), but what is to replace
exact (apart from punctuation and capitalization) transcription of the
title page?
What is to be gained by abandoning ellipses and square brackets when
portions of the title are omitted or supplied? While links to an
image of the title page would be very nice for exact identification,
that would not assist exact title nor title key word searching. At
present at least, only digitalized text can be searched, not text as
image.
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,
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__
