21.01.2011 21:43, Karen Coyle:
I have posted on my blog a short notice about my first pass at defining data elements for MARC.
... http://kcoyle.net/rda/007_008_values_output.txt
An interesting list, thanks for this effort. The formal relationships between MARC Leader'06 and fields 007 and 008 must belong to the stuff that appears most arcane to the non-initiated. Important question: How best to record these values (code or represent these properties) in the RDA context? And are there new properties/values not yet present or derivable in MARC? (Important things not included in the test records?)
This is kind of a slam-dunk because I started with the fixed fields which are made up of, by definition, individual data elements. From here on it gets much more difficult.
About the variable fields, and looking at their descriptions in the metadata registry, I'm wondering how many levels of subproperties there are now, and how many will be needed for RDA? In MARC, there are just two levels: field and subfield. In some cases, or even many, there are subfields that have internal structure and should therefore be refined on a 3rd level, or broken up, on the 2nd level, into their separate data parts. (Considering that we need repeatable fields, RDA records can of course not consist of a flat string of data elements on one level. XML permits nesting of elements, down to arbitrary complexity, but do we want that? This complexity would propagate into all software that will have to deal with the data, and don't overlook the input and editing interface and its demands on the cataloger.) B.Eversberg
