On 11/23/2013 12:53 AM, J. McRee Elrod wrote:
<snip>
James said:
Of course, when the time comes for retrospective conversion of the
millions of records in that awful, terrible "legacy data" ...
Surely you jest. Most of our library clients prefer the "awful
terrible 'legacy data'" to the strange (to them) RDA records. Our
AACR2 compatible export is very popular.
Most of our e-publisher and aggregator clients feel they must be "with
it", and go with the new standard.
</snip>
Yes, I am joking. But if we are to make all of these relators and
relationships useful for the public, the simple undeniable fact is:
incredible retrospective conversions will have to be done and I have
never heard of estimates of how much those will cost. The RDA
subscriptions are peanuts by comparison. Was any of that discussed
during the decision making for RDA? Maybe it wasn't discussed then, but
it sure will be in the future! You can only ignore it for so long.
Catalogers, of all people, should know that if you decide to make a new
index, e.g. "actor" or "editor", it is not enough to say that all new
records will now have that coding because the search *cannot* find it in
the earlier records of your database. That is why I keep saying that the
misnamed "legacy data" is so awful and terrible. Nobody wants to talk
about it so: it's off the agenda. It's more fun to come up with new
relator terms than to figure out if they of any real use and what the
consequences will be for that "legacy data" (that we don't discuss).
--
James Weinheimer weinheimer.ji...@gmail.com
First Thus http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
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