Diane,
Thank you. The ppts and the session notes are really helpful. I
think the work being done on RDA in the DC communities is really
important. You, Robina, Mikael, and many others deserve a lot of
credit for making conversations like these happen. I include you all,
when I say "thank you."
I have three comments to make now, and I think the final paragraph in
the session notes highlights each point.
"Corey Harper emphasized that newer models re-using entity
descriptions via referencing is far more efficient than our former
text-based approach. Robina concurred and felt that another theme of
our consensus would be support of a machine friendly, machine
processable approach. Mikael agreed that machine oriented should be
emphasized, to get away from stenography!"
First, it is really easy to get confused as people from two different
contexts begin to talk with each other. The first sentence here is
completely mysterious to me, for instance. I have no clear idea of
what could be meant by the contrast between "re-using entity
descriptions via referencing " and " our former text-based approach."
I don't meant to suggest that I think there is not a meaningful
distinction being made here, just that from this wording (and I'm not
blaming the note taker!) I can't tell what it is. This situation is
common when we get out of our familiar conceptual and practical
experiences. I just wanted to remind us all about this aspect of communicating.
Second, the rest of the paragraph begins to help me understand what
may be the distinction in the first sentence: the newer models are
better aligned with the needs of machine processing than the older
model, which is aligned with the needs of a human reader navigating
analog information systems, e.g. card catalogs, libraries, book
stores, guides to periodical literature, archives, etc. This is
exactly right, and it is hugely important. One of the things RDA is
aiming to do is make rules that lead to records and catalogs
(entity-descriptions and databases?) that are better suited to
machine processing than our current rules. (So you can see why I
think our conversations with the DC community (and I'm including
IEEE/LOM and similar groups here) Your example (in your
presentation) of the citation note is a good one. A note works well
in an analog information system, but in a more automated system it
needs to be more explicitly designated as reference to another
information entity that has a particular type of relationship to the
one being described. Then we can program our machines to act on the
data and provide services for that human reader (or information user)
that assist or enable that person to do whatever it might be the he
or she is trying to do.
Third, re: "stenography!" This one, for me, points to some of the
hardest issues we face in making RDA. What is the right mix of
human-orientation and machine-orientation? Can we provide rules for
both in one set of rules? I think at one level the rules for an
individual describing a resource and relating it to others are the
same as those needed for facilitating a machine-processable approach.
But is a simple, easily used, single presentation of those rules
possible? That is what RDA is trying to be.
Again, thank you.
Matthew
At 10/23/2006 08:13 PM, Diane I. Hillmann wrote:
Oops, apologies to all, as I neglected to add the attachment. End of
day error, for sure.
Diane
Matthew:
I've attached the report of the meeting, which was very well
attended. The two presentations mentioned in the report are available
as well:
Mine: http://dc2006.ucol.mx/papers/miercoles/16.30/RDA_and_DC.ppt
Mikael's:
http://dc2006.ucol.mx/papers/miercoles/17.0/2006-10-04-Manzanillo-RDA.ppt
I hope if people have comments that they feel free to post them on
the list, and I'd be happy to convey them to DC if that seems useful.
Diane
Diane, please do distribute the document that comes from DC. It
would be great
to see that here.
Matthew
[snip]
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