On 11/23/2013 5:55 PM, Melissa Powell wrote:
<snip>
This cataloging consultant/trainer who works with small libraries is piping
in. I am grateful for the price reduction for the rest of us--with the new
pricing structure I can actually get RDA access to these small and rural
libraries.
On the other hand: makes it tough for us on the consortial level because the
costs have changed for larger places..
As far as the comment early in this discussion about how hard it was to
convince administrators, here is where we as catalogers need to be better
about communicating what we do. There is no 'choice', the rules have
changed. This is the first step to compliance with the rest of the
information industry.
When I tell directors that, they are shocked. Duh. Then they comply.
</snip>
You tell them that they have no choice and they follow what the
consultant says. Do you tell them about Mac's cheat sheets? I wonder
what those libraries decide to give up (and will continue to give up)
for RDA? Fewer staff hours? Buying fewer materials? Maybe the staff will
be expected to pay for it out of their own pockets. Of course, most
small libraries do very little original cataloging unless they have
local materials or something unique so the utility of actually
subscribing may be nominal.
The unavoidable costs come from dealing with the changes to the
headings, as we have seen with changing the cataloging abbrevations that
has already proven to be too much for many, and there is absolutely zero
discussion as to any actual advantages to the users for the purposes of
access. We only know that there are suddenly two forms of name that the
public must search under until the retrospective conversion happens. And
that costs even more money. Who is going to pay for that? In the
meantime, the only people being hurt are the searchers who are supposed
to search under two forms. Either they never find out and make lousy
searches, or they discover that their searches miss a lot (most?) and
conclude that the library's tools just don't work.
Other changes have been with the new 33x fields in MARC format (will
they ever be implemented in a coherent way?), and then the really big
change that will come from Bibframe, but at least that is still years
away. We are seeing only the very beginnings of the costs.
There are *always* choices and many choose to cope with RDA however they
can. Not everybody is able to squirrel money away and many are stretched
as thin as they can now. You just cannot get away from making the
business case, sooner or later.
--
James Weinheimer weinheimer.ji...@gmail.com First Thus
http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/ First Thus Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/FirstThus Cooperative Cataloging Rules
http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/ Cataloging Matters
Podcasts http://blog.jweinheimer.net/p/cataloging-matters-podcasts.html
