On 12/5/2013 4:30 PM, Dan Matei wrote:
<snip>
... who is thinking that FRBR is the "ultimate solution". I did not meet anyone
from that sect !
My impression is that you could save some effort on your crusade against FRBR
:-) It is not the main enemy !
Please, do me a favor: search "Hamlet" in Google. What do you see right on top
? And what is that ? The wikipedians are doing FRBR without even knowing
it ? As M. Jourdain with his prose.
BTW. Please search also "M. Jourdain" :-)
</snip>
Friend Dan, (and friends can always disagree!)
I do believe that FRBR is "the main enemy" (to use your term). Why?
Because everything, including RDA and the new formats, etc. all state
explicitly that this is what they are aiming for, even though the model
has never been proven to be what people want. Why should we assume that
people want it? On the contrary, is there any evidence that people *do
not* want FRBR? Yes, and it is highly significant.
The structure of the card catalog allowed people to do the FRBR user
tasks (where--for those who understood--people really and truly could
find/identify/select/obtain works/expressions/manifestation/items by
their authors/titles/subjects (or at least they could if the catalogers
had done their jobs correctly). All of that was codified in Cutter's
Rules. As a result, people really and truly could do all of that in the
card catalogs and that can be demonstrated. I have done so myself. And
yet, the moment that keyword was implemented in online catalogs, all of
that vanished. What was the result? I never heard anyone
complain--except a few catalogers (such as myself) and a few reference
librarians once in awhile. Everyone else was only happy. Many times I
would point out to people, "But you are missing this, and this, and
this" and the reply was, "So what? This is such a great improvement!" My
efforts were not appreciated. And that was it. As time went on, the few
who complained stopped complaining (including myself) and moved on to
other structures that people obviously preferred.
There has been a major change since that time. The fact is *right now*
faceted catalogs allow the FRBR user tasks again, and they do it far
more than the Hamlet example in Google shows. For instance, we can see
it with the search in Worldcat for au:"Shakespeare William" and
ti:Hamlet
http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3A%22shakespeare+william%22+ti%3Ahamlet&qt=results_page
which shows the entire work of Shakespeare's Hamlet (once again, this
statement is true *only if* catalogers are doing their jobs correctly),
and once you have done this search, by using the facets in the left
menu, we can navigate by language, by dates of publication, by other
authors etc. Of course, we could implement more facets like these if we
wanted.
I admit the current user interface isn't very clear for the
non-initiated, but that can be improved too. (I've given a paper on
that, by the way) So, if the FRBR user tasks really and truly are so
important and so necessary, the unavoidable fact is: they have already
been achieved. We can do it all right now. And all it took was some
brilliant programming. No records need be harmed in the making of FRBR. :-)
But the overwhelming silence that has greeted this development (which I
think is one of the greatest advances in the history of the catalog)
makes me more skeptical than ever that FRBR is what people want. So then
the argument morphs into: now we need *new relationships* to be entered
into the records, so that searchers can see when something is an
adaptation, as opposed to a parody or a summary, or whatever. Of course,
to get those relationships to work *as access*, those relationships need
to be added to the "legacy data".
What does that actually mean? Well, I checked in the latest MARC usage
in Worldcat (I sent this discussion to Autocat but it's also in my blog)
and discovered that for 700$t (which I assume will need to be reviewed
for possible relationship information) there are 6,617,885 instances.
240$a has 9,137,082 and I would assume at least some of these would need
some level of review. The number of 730$a is 4,877,321, and at least
some of these I assume would need a review also. There are also 710$t
but those are less than a million. Still, all of those numbers add up to
quite a lot of records and even if some of it could be automated, such
that perhaps as much as 30% could be done automatically, that still
leaves rather a lot. I haven't had the courage to look at what the
100/700$e would entail.
So, what is supposed to happen with these millions of records? Are we
supposed to hire thousands of catalogers to do them? Who will pay for
them? Do we think we can crowdsource it? Adding those relationships is
not simple, as questions on this list and other lists have shown. Are we
praying that no one will notice? Nobody has said anything about this.
There is still a lingering suspicion in my mind that the normal IT
solution will be implemented: just throw those records in a .zip file
and put them when people can download them if they want.(!)
These developments are driven by FRBR, even though it has never been
proven to be what people want (and as the paper by Amanda Cossham shows,
I am far from alone saying this). FRBR has certainly not been taken up
by other institutions. One of the main purposes of RDA was to implement
FRBR.
Shouldn't the pro-FRBR people have to demonstrate how important all of
this is to the users? Or has the argument morphed again into "linked
data"--although this comes up against yet another uncomfortable fact:
linked data does not need FRBR either.
So yes, FRBR is certainly a major problem. It is a discussion that
should have taken place quite a few years ago. But, better late than
never....
--
James Weinheimer weinheimer.ji...@gmail.com
First Thus http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
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