Philip: There are no silly questions, just silly ranters (like me) who don't explain themselves very well!
I guess, to answer your question, I'd have to go back a bit to why we have (up til now) relied on transcription as a basis for what we do. If you think about it, one of the goals of shared cataloging was to be able to create one (and only one) description per resource, and to share that description with everyone who needed it. In order to achieve this important efficiency, it was necessary that the rules for creating that description achieve as consistent a result as possible. Consistency ensured that catalogers could search easily for work already done, and not duplicate effort or records, and that a whole range of libraries could re-use the information without (too much) editing or fussing. Consistent transcription also served to identify the resource, particularly when there was not another identification available (like an ISBN or other standard number), and or when a bibliographic citation was needed, for instance when a related item note was created. It was also important to users that there be as little ambiguity as possible in the description because actually obtaining the book was often not a simple matter. (We're really talking about books and other printed things here--I'll mention why this has never worked for other things a bit further along). The book could be offsite, be in another library requiring an ILL request, be in some backlog, etc., so it was important that the user have sufficient information up front to make good decisions about what was worth looking for. When you're talking about books and other textual objects, transcription isn't a big deal--we can all do it in our sleep, for sure. These things either had title pages or covers or caption titles, not a particular challenge for a transcriber, and relatively unambiguous. When the rules were extended to non-text things, we started seeing more choices for possible titles, leading to lists of chief (and other) sources of information for each format and a proliferation of notes about variations. When we start looking at digital resources, some of the reasons for transcription start breaking down. In general, digital resources have identifiers, which tend to be more persistent than any of the "presentation" level information, which can change willy-nilly. There's not a clear hierarchy of sources of information to support consistent transcriptions, nor even much agreement on what the parts of these things are called. It also seems that users aren't as interested in rich description when they can click a link and look at the thing itself, and make their decision not based on a surrogate, but instead on the actual resource. Then, you start looking around, and see that there are folks working on various kinds of strategies that include metadata, but are not necessarily as human-mediated as traditional cataloging: * automated metadata generation (using various methods, none of them based on any notion of transcription) * combining metadata with full-text indexing (when available) to better support search and retrieval * disaggregating metadata records into statements, then combining those statements into a fuller view of a resource (if anyone wants a citation for a paper describing this in more detail, let me know) So, looking at the world that's hurtling towards us at an increasing rate, it seems to me that continuing to insist on transcription as the basis for all descriptive metadata is a distinctly quixotic position. Yes, for textual materials without a digital analog, transcription is still useful, but it seems clear that these materials will claim a decreasing proportion of our attention. I would suggest that, to fit into this new world and to contribute our experience to it, we'll need to jettison a bit of our traditional baggage, and I submit that transcription is just one of those that needs to go over the side. Does this help? Regards, and thanks for the question ... Diane
I have read Diane I. Hillmann's presentation which she kindly made available on 23/10/06. I am going to ask a naive question and want to make it clear that I do this in a spirit of co-operation and with a view to obtaining a better understanding of the approach of the DC and other communities. I also hope that it does not make me look too silly! If transcription is not to be the basis of the description, then what is? Philip Davis Redditch England [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
-- *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Diane I. Hillmann Research Librarian Cornell University Library Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Voice: (607) 387-9207 *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
