Janet Swann Hill has been asked to create questions about RDA for an
ALA Council meeting with JSC representatives. These are my
suggestions:
Why should the Anglo American bibliographic community abandon the
selection and order of elements of ISBD, the most successful library
related international standard of all time?
Why should we abandon ISBD's brief and internationally understood
abbreviations for long often ambiguous words and phrases in a
particular language, making RD bibliographic records less acceptable
internationally, and requiring more editing of records found in
international catalogues?
Why should we attempt to solve with a cataloguing code problems
associated with poor design of library systems in general, and
electronic catalogues in particular?
Why promote the creation of a bewildering variety of records for a
single bibliographic item, by creating differences among catalogues
with differing languages of cataloguing, and among libraries which
choose different options among the many offered by RD(e.g., statement
of responsibility, place of publication)*?
What makes the editors think changes are required to describe
electronic resources? AACR2's earlier abandonment of collation for
remote electronic resources proved unpopular with library patrons, who
need specific material designation and extent of all material (along
with other elements of ISBD(G)).
ISBD/AACR2/MARC21 has proved adept at describing a great variety of
library resources internationally in a generally consistent manner.
Why endanger this?
Why abandon generally understood terms, for words used with meanings
which differ from their generally accepted meanings?
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
*I suspect any who have not been keeping up would be shocked to hear
that something as basic as place of publication is to be optional in
RDA.
