Jim Weinheimer wrote:
This reminds me of that moment: how hundreds of years worth of
experience is on this list? And there is no agreement on something
like *what is a work*?! How can we ever hope for any kind of
consistency? Of course it goes without saying that with no
consistency, everyone will be fated to stay on that merry-go-round
> of "fixing" everybody else's records.
Sure, why not? The two large authority files of works that I trust most
are LibraryThing and Wikipedia. Both value benefit for the user more
than consistency and both can be edited to merge and split records about
single works [*]. There is no precise definition of a work because a
work is what people perceive as work. So better listen to the people!
Sure there are some general guidelines and rules. Also in LibraryThing
and Wikipedia. But these guidelines and rules are fluid as well.
Sometimes continuous democracy in contrast to rigid control is also good
for cataloging.
Jakob
[*] This requires a version control system to track all changes. I
wonder why version control for cataloging records is not standard yet.
Having version control is the kind of requirement that should have been
introduced with RDA instead of yet another set of fixed rules and
specifications.
--
Jakob Voß <jakob.v...@gbv.de>, skype: nichtich
Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network
Platz der Goettinger Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
+49 (0)551 39-10242, http://www.gbv.de
