Re: [CODE4LIB] RDA - a standard that nobody will notice?
My first question would be: Why? Why invent a new element for title (etc.) rather than using Dublin Core? Wouldn't it have been easier to do this building from SWAP? http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Eprints_Application_Profile And my second question would be: Really? 251 elements!! Man... At least they're not just numbers, but ... do you expect anyone to actually use it? Rob
Re: [CODE4LIB] [Fwd: Re: [CODE4LIB] RDA - a standard that nobody will notice?]
On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 10:13 AM, Diane I. Hillmann metadata.ma...@gmail.com wrote: I'd suggest that some specific use cases for what would be gained by open access and how that would provide value for libraries as well as the web communities might be the most useful thing right now. I guess I'd be interested in the specific use cases where closed-access would provide value for libraries. -Bill-
[CODE4LIB] RDA - a standard that nobody will notice?
Hi, As you may already noticed the Resource Description and Access (RDA) cataloguing instructions will be published 2009. You can submit final comments on the full draft until February 2nd: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rda.html http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rdafulldraft.html Although there are several details you can argue about (and despite the questions whether detailed cataloguing rules have a future at all when people do cataloguing in LibraryThing, BibSonomy etc. without rules) I think that RDA is a step in the right direction. But there are some serious problems with the publication of RDA that should be of your interest: 1.) the standard is scattered in a set of PDF files instead of clean web based HTML (compare with the W3C recommendations). You cannot easily browse and search in RDA with your browser and a public search engine of your choice. You cannot link to a specific paragraph to cite RDA in a weblog positing etc. This shows me that the authors are still bound in physical world of dusty books instead of the digital age. 2.) RDA is not going to be published freely available on the web at all! See http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rdafaq.html#7 Another reason why you won't be able to refer to specific sections of RDA. Defining a standard without putting in on Open Access (ideally under a specific CC-license) is retrogressive practise and a good strategy to make people ignored, misinterprete and violated it (you could also argue ethically that its a shame for every librarian not putting his publications under Open Access but the argument of quality should be enough). 3.) There are no official URIs for the elements of RDA. It looks like there has been no progress compared to FRBR (IFLA failed to publish an official RDF encoding of FRBR so several people created their own vocabularies). To encode bibliographic data on the Semantic web you need URIs for classes and properties. I don't expect RDA to get published as a full ontology but at least you could determine the basic concepts and elements and provide common URIs that people can build on. There are several attempts to create ontologies for bibliographic data but most of them come from outside the professional library community. Without connection to the Semantic Web RDA will be irrelevant outside the library world. With official URIs people can build on RDA and create a common ontology of it. Deirdre Kiorgaard did a good job in collecting elements [1] and Eversberg provides a database to start with. What do you think about my concerns? We should try to get the JSC to make RDA Open Access, prepared for use in the Web and even prepared for the Semantic Web. This should not be too difficult - the main work is convincing people (ok, it may be difficult to convince people ;-). I'd be glad if you send your comments to the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA until February 2nd: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rdadraftcomments.html It would be a pitty if RDA is an irrelevant anachronism from the beginning just because it is not published the way standards need to be published on the Web. Greetings Jakob Voss [1] http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/docs/5rda-elementanalysisrev.pdf [2] A helpful tool for structured temporary access to RDA is provided by Bernhard Eversberg at http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/wtr/detail.php - this is what should be provided officially! -- 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
Re: [CODE4LIB] RDA - a standard that nobody will notice?
Rob Sanderson wrote: My first question would be: Why? Why invent a new element for title (etc.) rather than using Dublin Core? Wouldn't it have been easier to do this building from SWAP? http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Eprints_Application_Profile And my second question would be: Really? 251 elements!! Man... At least they're not just numbers, but ... do you expect anyone to actually use it? Rob There are very few elements in RDA that have a real DC equivalent (although you'll find somewhere in the RDA documentation an RDA-to-DC crosswalk). Title may be the only one that could use the DC term, but I also have to confess that title as an element is not actually used in RDA -- only specific types of title (title proper, parallel title, etc.). The list we were working from had 'headers' like title, followed by specific elements, and we haven't yet decided if these headers become classes. So the element title is an anomaly, and there are a small number of others in the list that will require more study. That said, if the RDA 'title' has sub-elements for types of title, then I don't think we can use dcterms:title as it is defined.See the note under http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#terms-title. 251 elements -- well, have you looked at RDA? That's why we want to develop application profiles -- so that people can select only the elements they actually need. RDA attempts to cover all possible cataloging situations (as did AACR) so it's full of instructions that will be used only by very specialized libraries. (Note that MARC has 175 fields and 1711 subfields -- and many of those subfields are what we would call 'elements'. RDA does not cover everything that is in MARC, so an actually data format that includes RDA will need many more than the RDA 251.) kc -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [CODE4LIB] RDA - a standard that nobody will notice?
Jakob Voss wrote: 1.) the standard is scattered in a set of PDF files instead of clean web based HTML (compare with the W3C recommendations). You cannot easily browse and search in RDA with your browser and a public search engine of your choice. You cannot link to a specific paragraph to cite RDA in a weblog positing etc. This shows me that the authors are still bound in physical world of dusty books instead of the digital age. These files are an output from the underlying XML that will fuel the online system. As you may know, no print output is anticipated -- this was done because the online system wasn't ready for the review period. (Thus: hang on to these files; they may be the only version of RDA you ever see!) 2.) RDA is not going to be published freely available on the web at all! See http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rdafaq.html#7 Another reason why you won't be able to refer to specific sections of RDA. Defining a standard without putting in on Open Access (ideally under a specific CC-license) is retrogressive practise and a good strategy to make people ignored, misinterprete and violated it (you could also argue ethically that its a shame for every librarian not putting his publications under Open Access but the argument of quality should be enough). Right, there's nothing like making standards unavailable as a way to promote their use :-) 3.) There are no official URIs for the elements of RDA. It looks like there has been no progress compared to FRBR (IFLA failed to publish an official RDF encoding of FRBR so several people created their own vocabularies). To encode bibliographic data on the Semantic web you need URIs for classes and properties. I don't expect RDA to get published as a full ontology but at least you could determine the basic concepts and elements and provide common URIs that people can build on. This IS being done at the NSDL metadata registry. General URL: http://metadataregistry.org RDA elements: http://metadataregistry.org/schema/show/id/1.html RDA agent roles: http://metadataregistry.org/schema/show/id/4.html We are also working on discovering and coding the various value vocabularies in RDA. Click on the Vocabularies link on the Metadata Registry home page. You'll find some RDA vocabularies, like: RDA base material: http://metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/show/id/35.html It's been hard developing these because, as you can see, RDA has been created as a document and the information is buried within it. We are not yet in sync with the latest version of the text. But in any case, these properties and vocabularies all have URIs. There are no classes defined as yet, since RDA itself does not define anything in the RDF sense of things, but eventually we may be able to add those. FRBR will also be included in the registry. It is currently in the registry 'sandbox' awaiting a decision by IFLA on the domain to use in the URI. But you can see tests of it here: FRBR entities: http://sandbox.metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/show/id/49.html FRBR relationships: http://sandbox.metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/show/id/90.html FRBR relationships as concepts: http://sandbox.metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/show/id/64.html user tasks: http://sandbox.metadataregistry.org/vocabulary/show/id/69.html In addition, there are some attempts to code RDA-based cataloging on the DC/RDA site, using the cataloging use cases that various folks have contributed (and there are more coming): http://dublincore.org/dcmirdataskgroup/Scenarios Click on the link to the right of the scenario (e.g. Scenarios/1) and you'll see a turtle representation of the cataloging scenario using the URIs from the registry. kc p.s. And Please Feel Free to participate in this project with us. We are doing it all in 'spare time' What do you think about my concerns? We should try to get the JSC to make RDA Open Access, prepared for use in the Web and even prepared for the Semantic Web. This should not be too difficult - the main work is convincing people (ok, it may be difficult to convince people ;-). I'd be glad if you send your comments to the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA until February 2nd: -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kco...@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
[CODE4LIB] [Fwd: Re: [CODE4LIB] RDA - a standard that nobody will notice?]
Jakob: I'm glad you're interested in RDA and think it's a step in the right direction. I'd like to update you on a few issues you mention in your post, however, which I hope will reassure you a bit. Jakob Voss wrote: Hi, As you may already noticed the Resource Description and Access (RDA) cataloguing instructions will be published 2009. You can submit final comments on the full draft until February 2nd: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rda.html http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rdafulldraft.html Although there are several details you can argue about (and despite the questions whether detailed cataloguing rules have a future at all when people do cataloguing in LibraryThing, BibSonomy etc. without rules) I think that RDA is a step in the right direction. But there are some serious problems with the publication of RDA that should be of your interest: 1.) the standard is scattered in a set of PDF files instead of clean web based HTML (compare with the W3C recommendations). You cannot easily browse and search in RDA with your browser and a public search engine of your choice. You cannot link to a specific paragraph to cite RDA in a weblog positing etc. This shows me that the authors are still bound in physical world of dusty books instead of the digital age. The PDF is output from XML files built and maintained for the purpose of providing a web-based product based on RDA, providing cataloging users with some of the functionality they're looking for. It's not clear whether the kind of linking you mention will be possible, but the impediments to it are not technical. 2.) RDA is not going to be published freely available on the web at all! See http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rdafaq.html#7 Another reason why you won't be able to refer to specific sections of RDA. Defining a standard without putting in on Open Access (ideally under a specific CC-license) is retrogressive practise and a good strategy to make people ignored, misinterprete and violated it (you could also argue ethically that its a shame for every librarian not putting his publications under Open Access but the argument of quality should be enough). There's still a lot of discussion about how RDA will be made available. There's a great deal of concern about whether the licensing regime proposed by the RDA publishers will be affordable by small users, but also how the goal of making RDA usable beyond the traditional library community will be accomplished under such a regime. Many of us have been concerned that an already hard sell for RDA implementation will be made even harder by lack of open access for at least the most general portions of the guidance text. I think that there's still room to argue for more openness, but I'd suggest that some specific use cases for what would be gained by open access and how that would provide value for libraries as well as the web communities might be the most useful thing right now. 3.) There are no official URIs for the elements of RDA. It looks like there has been no progress compared to FRBR (IFLA failed to publish an official RDF encoding of FRBR so several people created their own vocabularies). To encode bibliographic data on the Semantic web you need URIs for classes and properties. I don't expect RDA to get published as a full ontology but at least you could determine the basic concepts and elements and provide common URIs that people can build on. There are several attempts to create ontologies for bibliographic data but most of them come from outside the professional library community. Without connection to the Semantic Web RDA will be irrelevant outside the library world. With official URIs people can build on RDA and create a common ontology of it. Deirdre Kiorgaard did a good job in collecting elements [1] and Eversberg provides a database to start with. There are indeed URIs for the RDA Elements, as well as for the RDA Role vocabulary and increasingly, the value vocabularies. These are registered with the NSDL Registry (http://metadataregistry.org). They have URIs, vocabulary descriptions, definitions (when available), RDF encodings and XML schemas (at the vocabulary level). Unfortunately, this activity is not linked from the official RDA pages, but in fact the activity is going on under the aegis of the DCMI/RDA Task Group, working with the JSC and CoP to build this essential piece of infrastructure needed for RDA. The work is being funded by the British Library and Siderean Software, and also represents a great deal of volunteer effort by librarians and web professionals. You can take a look at the Task Group's wiki at http://dublincore.org/dcmirdataskgroup/FrontPage, where you can see the extensive work that has been done with specific cataloger (and developer) scenarios based on the registered vocabularies. The intent is to have this work completed and reviewed in parallel to the
