Both Karen and John are correct, and the divergence of their
viewpoints highlights very well the challenges the library community
faces as we look towards the future.
Karen's suggestions are very much in keeping with the way the 'open
world' is looking at data (including library data), and how that world
manages ontologies/vocabularies, etc. I suspect (hope, actually), that
this strategy will be the way many or most of us start to work, as we
make our way in the world of data outside of libraries.
John's instructions for continuing to look at library data from the 'top
down' reflects the traditional view that there must be a rigid consensus
on how libraries build data in order to maintain common understanding.
This view may or may not survive very long--it's expensive,
time-consuming, and requires processes that take years to come to
decisions.
I suspect that both these strategies will operate for a while, and we
will see lots of sturm und drang going on before we have a winner. I'm
betting on Karen's strategy myself.
Diane
On 2/24/11 5:48 PM, John Attig wrote:
On 2/24/2011 5:07 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
Quoting "J. McRee Elrod"<[email protected]>:
For starters, how about consulting others and adding "equipment" to
unmediated carriers? With the increase of hand held electronic
devices, this is the major library acquisition with which neither
AACR2 nor RDA copes well. While there are other lacuna, this is the
one we most often encounter.
Mac, there is no reason why such a term could not be added, but today
it could NOT be an RDA term because there is no mechanism in place to
add terms to RDA. This is something that _really_ needs to be addressed.
With apologies to Karen, there is in fact a well-documented procedure
for adding terms to RDA. It is documented on the page "Submitting
Proposals to Revise RDA" on the JSC website
<http://www.rda-jsc.org/revision.html>. The JSC welcomes proposals for
revising RDA.
Creating terms is not difficult, but does require following a few rules.
Among the "rules" for the RDA ContentType, MediaType and CarrierType
vocabularies is that each term must be defined as a distinct category
within the RDA/ONIX Framework for Resource Categorization. The
framework is described in the document 5JSC/Chair/10
<http://www.rda-jsc.org/working2.html#chair-10> on the JSC website; the
RDA application of the framework is described in "Categorization of
content and carrier"<http://www.rda-jsc.org/working2.html#rda-pta-cat>
also on the JSC website.
John Attig
ALA Representative to the JSC
[email protected]
