Kevin M. Randall wrote:
We who are blessed with most of the latest technology money can buy need to remember to think outside of our own immediate surroundings and experience.
Although the idea of RDA in PDF may sound good, there are some problems: 1) if it were produced as a full document looking like the drafts we have seen, it would be about 1200-1500 pages in length. Without some serious navigation tools (which is what the online system is providing) it would be very difficult to use on a screen, and would be clearly unusable printed out on individual sheets of paper 2) there is not a full draft in PDF -- the latter part of the document is being created directly in the online system. So it's not just a matter of putting together the PDFs that exist and putting them online. An entire new document would have to be created (thus incurring costs for the publisher) Now that RDA is a machine-readable document, I can imagine many useful products based on RDA -- there could be an RDA core document, simplified RDA, RDA for music catalogers, RDA for video catalogers, RDA for manuscripts. Online they could integrate with cataloging interfaces, in print they could be used for reference by anyone interested in cataloging. I can imagine a slice 'n dice print on demand customization. All of this should be technically possible, and I believe that the technology should allow these to be produced at a low cost. However, there is the bigger picture of ALA publishing, and the economics of the whole RDA process. I think that ends up being the deciding factor. kc -- ----------------------------------- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234 ------------------------------------
