Re: [RDA-L] Some more examples of qualified conventional collective titles
Am 20.12.2013 13:37, schrieb Heidrun Wiesenmüller: I think the interesting point to note is that not everything which consists of several works by the same person is in fact a compilation of works. Rather, in the case of... This is the sort of casuistry we've never envied AACR users for. Let's get serious about the A aspect in RDA and treat titles as such, as titles, always, because end-users will always search for those titles because they find them cited as such, and noch concocted and perturbed in ways they'd never imagine. Add conventional collected titles at leisure (if you find any), or rather use machine-actionable codes wherever possible, but leave the titles alone. If we can't get away from the old spirit of cataloging that was based on unit descriptions on 3x5 cards and on filing rules that were not even part of AACR, then RDA is really a waste of time and will create more nuisance than usefulness. B.Eversberg To unsubscribe from RDA-L send an e-mail to the following address from the address you are subscribed under to: lists...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca In the body of the message: SIGNOFF RDA-L
Re: [RDA-L] Some more examples of qualified conventional collective titles
Am 20.12.2013 14:32, schrieb Heidrun Wiesenmüller: We are talking about the level of the work here. The title of the manifestation is, of course, always recorded in the respective manifestation element. But you know that we had non of that casuistry in our rules? And for reasons that had been discussed thoroughly for quite some time. Did we or our users suffer from that or were they pestering us for qualified contentional collective titles? Isn't it just the very prolific authors where those can sometimes be of some use for some people? Or perhaps it is just Shakespeare ... B.E. To unsubscribe from RDA-L send an e-mail to the following address from the address you are subscribed under to: lists...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca In the body of the message: SIGNOFF RDA-L
Re: [RDA-L] 6.2.2.10 and 6.27.1.9
16.12.2013 23:39, John Hostage: We need to be able to enter data in MARC fields without punctuation and let the punctuation be generated as necessary on output. The punctuation could even differ in different contexts. (We can dream, can't we?) This dream has long since been reality in non-MARC systems. In MARC, it is nothing but an anachronistic leftover from card production, the original primary task fulfilled by MARC. The current movement away from MARC, as LC has finally initiated it, needs to clearly separate field content from labeling and punctuation. However, MARC without labeling and punctuation is very well possible since presentation software can supply all of it, as systems outside MARCistan, and even MARC-based systems, have proven over and again. I agree with Kevin Randall that a compilation, like any other work, is best identified by the title it is published with (or rather an AAP based on same). Even if by some misfortune it fails to become known by that title, it's hard to see that the solution is to catalogue it with a title no ordinary user would know it by. There can be no excuse for not recording a title in the title element. This is what even MARC is in fact doing. All that's needed for collections, and this is from long-time experience outside MARCistan again, is not a made-up uniform title but an indicator or flag saying the thing is a collection. This is language-independent. Presentation software again can turn that into Collection or Sammlung or whatever the context requires, placed conveniently where it doesn't irritate but still add to the information displayed. More distinctive collection type information can be left to subject indexing which, intentionally, is to become an integral part of RDA anyway. B.Eversberg To unsubscribe from RDA-L send an e-mail to the following address from the address you are subscribed under to: lists...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca In the body of the message: SIGNOFF RDA-L
Re: [RDA-L] Access to the knowledge of cataloging
06.12.2013 09:12, James Weinheimer: 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. We might briefly say, I think, that FRBR, even if we had all the legacy upgraded and FRBRIzed to the ultimate extent, this would cover only a small amount of use cases. The FRBR idea originated from the necessities of library houskeeping, not from an analysis of end-user requirements and expectations. Libraries need(ed) to be able to check their collections for the presence of other editions or translations before they ordered a copy of a new book, for instance. And such checks had to be efficient. This was and is everyday experience. This makes librarians think in a different way from end-users. They think in terms of large chunks of recorded knowledge, also called books. End-users think in terms of much smaller chunks: facts and figures, very specific questions mostly, and larger questions occasionally, and to some of these cases a book may be the answer. Such cases cases may profit from subject access to the opac (up to now no business of RDA's), the former - nowadays - only from search engines. And many more larger questions than ever before have now become answerable by online access, so that the former default, the library, has slipped from the public mind as a provider of answers. The default, for ever more searchers, is the activity now called googling. Only for questions and problems beyond that, libraries may remain a place of last resort, but RDA can certainly not be the life saver or the most important develeopment to keep libraries interesting. Thus, considering that much of what FRBR promises is reality already, as Jim has pointed out, the migration to RDA appears to be a waste of resources. Not only, but also because we are supposed to shell out hundreds of dollars per year just for the privilege to *read* those rules. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Access to the knowledge of cataloging
04.12.2013 21:07, Laurence S. Creider: If I were a business or business group thinking about adopting a new standard and had a choice between the costs of RDA and a community standard that was largely open, I probably would not choose RDA even if it were markedly superior to the other standard. I think that the most we can hope for is for other content standards that we can make compatible to RDA so that data can be exchanged in the other format. We have to realize that schema.org, mentioned by Jim, is not a content standard but a markup standard. What you put under a microdata tag is up to you! There are no mentionable content rules for names or titles or just about anything you can record in microdata. So, there is actually no choice between RDA and microdata. Not even, I'd add, between MARC and microdata, for the latter is just much less granular, and certainly too much so for RDA stuff. OTOH, Jim's view about what standards we really need seems to be more radical... One might ask a very different question: Is it at all necessary that every catalog worker has full access to RDA? Just those, I suppose, who do sizeable amounts of original cataloging. And how many of those are there these days, anyway. And even then, the approach that Mac calls monkey see, monkey do should in many cases be good enough, considering there *are* already examples for just about everything in OCLC or other databases, and they are not too difficult to find. It might be a good idea to invent some special subject headings that could be added to fine examples to make them easily findable. And then copy-and-pasteable. Much faster than an RDA lookup, and no cost. Is this not what many have been doing for a long time already? When did you last look something up in AACR, and might that issue not have been settled with some help from proven examples, if only you found them? And for basics, Mac's cheat sheets will always do fine, plus some transliteration tables and stuff like that which is not under lock and key in the Toolkit. That should make access to RDA Toolkit a nice to have, not more. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] RDA Toolkit Price Change
Am 23.11.2013 17:55, schrieb Melissa Powell: ... There is no 'choice', the rules have changed. They *got* changed. This is the first step to compliance with the rest of the information industry. Really? Has anyone out there in the industry even noticed? What *might* get noticed is a change in communication formats, but not in rules. As Mac and James indicated, there *are* choices. These will likely be taken, to varying degrees, by those who see no choice but to avoid compliance. And the result will be more variety in the local systems and, very likely, in OCLC data as well. How does that bode for interoperability? This could have been avoided if access to the rules were free or not much more expensive than with AACR. RDA *might* become a success, but not in the way the access to it is now prohibitively expensive for too many libraries. Not to speek of other communities. Or are there many registered and paying users now who are not libraries? RDA will not be a success for reasons James has listed, but certainly not because of the text being monopolized. This is incompatible with the ideals of libraries. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Corporate body main entry
28.10.2013 20:02, J. McRee Elrod: OTOH, this sort of issue may have long since become a non-issue when it comes to searching. The main entry idea is obsolete ... The main entry concept is not obsolete (despite the name change) so long as we are Cuttering, creating subject and added entries for works, single entry bibliographies, and assisting scholars with citations and footnotes. Granted a searcher may not care whether the searched corporate body is 110 or 710; all it affects is Cutter. But Cutter is not of any genuine concern to cataloging rules. In fact neither AACR2 nor RDA mention anything remotely resembling a call number. Motivations for rules should not be based on a hidden agenda that is not part of the theory of the catalog. For the other functions you mention, would it not be sufficient and more plausible to have a much simpler decision process? Which might then be easier to make plausible even to scholars for their footnotes? Like, 1. Creator's name + preferred title Only in the absence of a creator: 2. Preferred title [ + Preferred name of corporate body] with [ + ... ] if and only if a corporate body is responsible AND mentioned on the primary source AND necessary to make the title unambiguous (i.e., not contained in the title) That's more or less what we have in the latest version of our rules, and it just works. (Of course, current MARC data can not generate a main entry like this in all cases.) B. Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Corporate bodies as creators: festschrift, corporate brochure a.s.o.
28.10.2013 09:11, Heidrun Wiesenmüller: RAK has a rule which is similar (yet not identical) to RDA's idea of corporate bodies which are responsible for originating, issuing, or causing to be issued. The definition in RAK is: a corporate body which has either prepared *or* initiated and edited an anonymous work. So, there is a precondition here (unknown to the Anglo-American world) that there is no personal author. Such a corporate body is called the Urheber (a possible translation might be originator). If this corporate body is named in the title proper,... ... or if the name would need to be added to the title proper in order to individualize the title [in the case of a generic title] ... ... it gets main entry (with an added entry under the title proper). If it's not named in the title proper, main entry will be under the title proper, and the corporate body gets an added entry. I must say that I find this a beautifully simple rule (unfortunately, quite incompatible with RDA). Its beauty is that it is a purely *formalistic* rule that does not require cataloger's judgement of the content. (In German, we have the term Formalkatalogisierung as opposed to Sachkatalogisierung (subject cataloging) The casuistic AACR2 rule was maybe the biggest objection that had been voiced many times against adopting AACR2. It turned out to be impossible to get our American partners to accept this point of view, although some of them did understand its virtue. With RDA, the opportunity seems to be forever lost now and we will be stuck with said casuistry. OTOH, this sort of issue may have long since become a non-issue when it comes to searching. The main entry idea is obsolete, though what remains is the necessity to form useful short descriptions for search result displays. There, it is an advantage to have an indication that a title is in need of an addition by the name of the issuing body. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Corporate bodies as creators: festschrift, corporate brochure a.s.o.
28.10.2013 10:08, Heidrun Wiesenmüller: The German community will need to learn to cope with this new freedom. It won't be easy ;-) But worse, it won't be better than what we used to have. Freedom has a misleading positive connotation about it for these matters. We have a conflict with equality here like between Liberté and Egalité after the French Revolution. But here, other than there, Egalité is by far the more preferable ideal, and it is not inachievable either, as our historic example of RAK has clearly shown. It might be useful if the LC and the DNB conducted a test: Let both prepare some 20 or more records for selected resources, half German titles and half English language titles, to see what the differences and consequences might eventually be. But also, think very hard about the relevance for the usability of a catalog, esp, when not thinking exclusively in FRBR terms but in terms of real user expectations and how a catalog might satisfy them. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] RDA 6.2.2.10
08.10.2013 15:20, Adger Williams: snip For collocation purposes, there should eventually be other methods than text strings anyway. Namely, and ideally, a link to a work record. Then, it would become immaterial what kind of verbal designation we add to it to become intelligible for the human reader. Only just don't display that in a space where anyone expects a title. snip Actually, since these are collective titles for collections of works, I am not quite sure to what kind of entity Bernard's link would point. It wouldn't be to a single work record; it could be to some kind of collective entity or to a position in a genre/form index or to something else probably. Right. And it is questionable if we are in need of an entity at all. The only non-question is that a title field is for titles only and not for artifacts no one except catalogers would expect and accept in the place of a title. If a physical volume contains more than one piece that might be cited by or even published under its own title, then each of these pieces represents a work and merits a record of its own and a correct recording of its title so as to make it findable as such just as it will likely be cited as such. But FRBR is one among many concepts that are fine in theory but don't work in practice. If we follow Immanuel Kant on this, we'll have to use practical judgment where the general rules of a theory fail to tell us how to put them into practice. With regard to collections, we have always been practitioners who have judged this way or that not by pure principles *alone* but by economic concerns as well. With cards, we were not able to cope with too many titles in one physical item, so we used judgment that somehow made sense with cards amd their arrangement in the filing cabinets. To carry this over 1:1 into the database world seems to fall short of a technical potential that runs far beyond the economic constraints of yesteryear. Time for revised judgment. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] WEMI and Bibframe
Am 02.10.2013 01:55, schrieb J. McRee Elrod: ISBD is the most successful international library standard ever, and a major component of the hoped for UBC. It is sad to see it sidetracked. We don't know if the last word on that has been spoken yet. Right now, lacking any proof-of-concept and reality check on large-scale levels, as well as assessments of affordability and technical viability we just have to wait and see. About linked data, all we have now is assumptions). OTOH, input systems with promptings in ISBD order as well as ISBD displays, should not be outside the scope of the doable even with RDA. The rules themselves are silent about display as well as indexing! The latter, as it is about the A aspect, is more troubling than the former. Convincing reasons should nonetheless be given for any new concepts. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Uniform titles in RDA
25.09.2013 17:44, Jack Wu: ... after some length of time, will the rule become the alternative again, and the alternative again become the rule? Will East and West, in this case, English and German, ever meet? No wonder there are endless change proposals and endless updating. Try as I might, I fail to see how the whole endeavor can possibly lead to anything but endless confusion in an inflation of inconsistencies. And a large part of these results from inadequacies of systems that cannot keep up with changes nor have ever been able to implement features that had been around in AACR2 and MARC for a long while. I mean, if even am annoying detail like this, criticized time and again long before RDA, is beyond repair, then what can we hope for? Even if we had all the qualified staff it would take... B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Uniform titles in RDA
24.09.2013 13:01, Danskin, Alan: ... JSC recognised that the omission of the article is not good practice because the resulting title does not accurately represent the resource and (more importantly) may render the title ungrammatical in inflected languages. That antiquated omission rule was a mistake from the start and could easily have been avoided. The omission posed a significant barrier to adoption of RDA by German speaking communities. In 2011 the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek put forward a change proposal (6JSC/Chair/3) to designate the (existing) instructions (to omit the initial article) as alternative instructions and to introduce new instructions to enable the initial article to be retained. The proposal was agreed by JSC and was implemented in RDA in April 2012. A noble move, but as things are, the inflected language nations will abolish their inflections earlier than communities raised on AACR+MARC will implement any such change. B.Eversberg
[RDA-L] Business case and evaluation
21.08.2013 12:30, James L Weinheimer: When I have mentioned that it was necessary to make sense of the RDA project in practical terms, or in other words, make a business case, it was obviously deemed unnecessary. What's necessary, nonetheless and all the more, will be evaluations, done by third parties with no shares in this enterprise. All components of the migration to RDA should be looked at: -- education -- workflow -- per unit costs -- changes in legacy data; bib records and authority -- changes in software -- changes in services and their costs (utilities and such) -- effects on users: find, identify, select tasks (specifically looking at effects of inconsistencies) -- overall costs to name some of the more important items. Only, who's going to commission those evaluations? Or who's going to be responsible for not doing that? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Illustration terms in 7.15.1.3
20.08.2013 15:07, Mitchell, Michael: The fact that RDA rules create a conundrum like this regarding what should be a simple line of description has got to be one of the most ridiculous examples of why this whole set of rules will be just another (big) nail in our professional coffins. The public doesn't want to be confused with all this nit-picking. Exactly. And another example of a long-winding and nitpicking debate about over-regulated 'D' minutiae when what matters much more is the 'A' issues. Illustrations used to be a noteworthy feature until some time in the 19th century before they became more common. These days, a book, or resource, without adequate illustrations is the exception. So, a note like no ill. should do, and no note in the normal case. ... This is a rant against the folly of RDA,... I just don't understand how the profession can embrace such folly though. High time to figure this out indeed. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Difference between Introduction and Preface
05.08.2013 16:04, JSC Secretary: You can choose the higher-level designator writer of supplementary textual content if you don't want to or cannot identify a more specific relationship. This leaves me wondering whether or not the relationship designators are a D aspect or (also) an A aspect. To qualify as the latter, the rules should make that clear AND specify a hierarchy which would, for instance, make it algorithmically clear that writer of supplementary textual content covers Introduction, Preface, Forword, and Afterword. (And wouldn't it be useful indeed to be able to search for Noam Chomsky as a writer of supplementary textual content but specifically not prefaces? ) Alas, zillions of our records exist and will remain without designators, which casts some doubt on the usefulness of this element. If however, the designator is regarded as solely a D aspect, then why bother? Wouldn't the Statement of responsibility do the job nicely enough? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] ] The A in RDA
31.07.2013 00:04, James Weinheimer: ... The refusal to accept that 99% of people do not fit into these little pre-conceived FRBR user tasks is why I think that perhaps librarianship may be destined for extinction. We must free our minds from these pre-conceptions! Visions of doom for libraries are nothing new, but their frequency seems to increase, and doomsaying for the catalog along with them. (And for MARC, not to forget.) Now that will most probably all be premature as long as physical resources of no small relevance continue to be produced in no small numbers, many of which can soon thereafter be obtained only in libraries and with a little help from their catalogs. Not, though, exclusively by using those catalogs, as it used to be. So, most resources, and most books among them, can now be found or serendipitously stumbled over in novel ways not imagined even 20 years ago. Books are therefore now perceived as items in the universe of accessible resources, among which you navigate with tools and methods that feel ever more as how things should be to many users, young and old. Among these tools and methods, library catalogs have lost a lot of their former significance. Need catalogs acquire new significance? And if yes, how can that be achieved? By perfectioning, electronically, a functional model that satisfied the needs of some people some of the time but could only ever respond to some specific types of user needs and in some very specific ways? Only subject access by controlled vocabularies, as has been mentioned many times, is where catalogs might regain significance in new ways. RDA, up until now, contributes nothing to this. Things RDA doesn't even touch on are already being done with pre-RDA data. And BIBFRAME cannot become better than the inconsistent input it gets. We might see two roads diverging from where we are, if indeed we gather up the resolve to escape extinction (for a while): A. Focus on the library as a place to be for work and talk and leisure. Reduce catalogs to their inventory function and only make sure that books found elsewhere, by ever improving search technologies the library community has no resources to develop or even keep up with, can be quickly located using their universal identifiers. (As happens now via GBS - WorldCat - Library) Libraries becoming mere storehouses for physical resources, but these storehouses will be needed for some while. B. A revolution. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] The A in RDA
29.07.2013 00:10, Karen Coyle: This may be out of date, because I found it on a 2010 license [1], but it says: GRANT OF LICENSE ... Such bibliographic records and metadata may display DDC numbers, but shall not display DDC captions; This is from WebDewey, and I don't have any information about any restrictions coming from DDC in print. You may, or so I think, hand-copy a caption from the DDC printed edition and insert it into a record display. You may not, by some ingenious scheme, machine-copy a caption from DDC online for display in your catalog. To everybody, apart from lawyers, this must appear ridiculous as well as hugely annoying. For the library profession, the DDC case should habe been a warning to not ever again trust a basic tool of the profession to the exclusive care of free enterprise for exploitation as they find fit. Esp. this should not have happened with RDA. But then, as Jim Weinheimer made it clear, the profession is discussing only the D aspects of RDA, not the A in it although the A is much more important. OTOH, RDA doesn't even touch on many of the access criteria actually being used in library catalog databases but it deals with not much more than the very traditional access points that were already familiar in the 19th century. Further, if we hear that Google is doing a better job than library catalogs, then such ratings do not refer to the descriptions that G. presents but they refer to Access, nothing but Access. The ways G is presenting results are well thought-out, make no mistake about that, but they are 100% algorithmic, not based on rules to be observed by human inputters, and what you get to see is excerpts from the data, not augmented by artificial labels or by supplied data or modified by abbreviations or de-abbreviations or punctuation - nothing but raw data from the source, with search terms highlighted wherever possible. Are searchers confused or unhappy with this? Not as long as they can go on from that and Access something relevant or good enough straight away. Or in fewer words: With catalogs and cataloging, the journey is not the destination nor its own reward or half the fun, as Confucian thinking may have it, but there's no desire for a journey, or no interest in a catalog as such, nor in its use. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] The A in RDA
29.07.2013 13:51, James L Weinheimer On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Bernhard Eversberg wrote: snip With catalogs and cataloging, the journey is not the destination nor its own reward or half the fun, as Confucian thinking may have it, but there's no desire for a journey, or no interest in a catalog as such, nor in its use. /snip I hesitate to give up on catalogs so easily. Yes, I have spent a good deal of my life with them, but it is not just a matter of nostalgia. I honestly believe that catalogs could provide something vital for the public that the Googles cannot and will not provide. The latest NSA revelations should not be ignored in this regard. Fully agreed, with all the rest you are saying about advertising! We only have to see that not just the general public but members of our profession are contemplating the catalog as being in a contest with advertisers' tools, instead of realizing that catalogs are meant and made to do different things for different reasons. The fact is, it is important to keep in mind that the Googles are *not* really finding/discovery tools similar to library catalogs and I think it is a mistake to look at them that way: the Googles are advertising agencies ... Fully agreed. To improve what catalogs are doing should be the motivation for new rules. On top of which should be the aspect of bringing together what belongs together, and this in more ways than RDA has in mind. Briefly: Augmeted and improved Access. Improved Description can be in the service of this, of course, but only in secondary ways. ... That is, if it actually *worked* for people who used it. I just see no real attempts to get the catalog to work in practical ways for the mass of the public. It does so in one rather indirect way though: to locate what users want, routed via WorldCat after they find a reference to a book in G. Booksearch. This may end up in the user's local library. The WorldCat out of itself and on its own, for all its retrieval power, might not have achieved that level of awareness and visibility in the public. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] ] The A in RDA
29.07.2013 8:53, Tillett, Barbara: RDA is about describing bibliographic resources and their relationships and enabling access to those resources to meet our users needs. It is intended to be used as an online tool that can be consulted as needed once a cataloger has learned the basics. That is not different from earlier cataloging codes. One cannot help but interject: Except for the price. What is different, is that now we can access those instructions online and we can build on the expertise of thousands of people to help improve those instructions and vocabularies... Here, one wonders how many thousands are actually participating in this way. What statistics are there? How many subscriptions, how many searches and rule accesses per day? How many participants in discussions inside the Toolkit environment, having tackled how many issues? And how many are staying out because of the costs or for other reasons? Is the latter figure very low or, if not, a matter of concern for the JSC? I understand that the online aspect, with all it entails, is something radically new that will take its time to fully evolve. But still, making those statistics, and the growth of those figures, available might create more confidence in this endeavor. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Transcription and spacing
28.05.2013 08:28, Heidrun Wiesenmüller: The other day, we were discussing the rules for transcription in 1.7. We wondered how exact an exact transcription has to be according to the standard rule of RDA. When it says as it appears on the source, does this also refer to spacing? There is one explicit rule for spacing (1.7.6), but this only covers initials and acronyms. Consider the following examples: Resource 1 has (somewhere in the title proper or other title information): 1925 - 1988 Resource 2 has (somewhere in the title proper or other title information): 1745-1910 Would you transcribe first year space hyphen space second year in the first case, and first year hyphen second year in the second? Or would you rather regularize this according to ordinary writing conventions and give both time intervals in the same way? Well, I see the only importance of this in indexing: a) 1745-1910 is one (hyphenated) title word, 1939 - 1945 makes two. (Does RDA say anything about observing a difference between hyphen and dash?) b) If you have a title string index for browsing or left-anchored searching (agreed, no one wants that any more), then there will likely be a chaos at points like 1914 or 1939. If the consensus is that these matters don't matter, then it is a non-issue. (For de-duplication matching, you will mostly strip all apaces out before you compare titles.) It is, by the way, unfortunate that RDA says absolutely nothing about the requirements and issues of indexing. Or does it? The result will be, as with AACR2, that local specifications will diversify and throw a spanner into the works of federated searching and webservices for accessing other catalogs. (German RAK, by the way, had ordering rules. These were beneficial for the problems mentioned in that they resulted in more harmonious specifications in that regard.) But as said above, as nobody wants these indexes any more, forget about all this and avoid counterproductive pedanticism where it has no impact on Access. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Bibframe
28.05.2013 23:45, J. McRee Elrod: Angelina Joseph asked: Every now and then I see the word Bibframe in emails. Is it replacing MAR= C? How is that going to be? You will have answers from those more in the loop than I, but there is my *very* biased answer. Bibframe is a work in progress, so no one knows if/when it will replace MARC. ... LC's Sally McCallum on May 24 informed the VBIBFRAME community thus: http://listserv.loc.gov/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1305L=bibframeT=0P=43920
Re: [RDA-L] Cambridge University RDA materials
15.05.2013 14:44, C.J. Carty: The Cambridge RDA Steering Group is pleased to announce that it is making available all of its RDA documentation and training materials under a Creative Commons CC-BY licence for anyone to reuse or adapt. Our intranet is not publicly accessible so we have created a separate website for this documentation: http://cambridgerda.wordpress.com/ Thank you very much for making this material available, and at no cost! It is all excellently done and can certainly be usefully employed in many places. I'd like to draw attention first to the two-part presentation for non-catalogers: http://cambridgerda.wordpress.com/misc/#noncat This raises a few thoughts, however: -- The non-cataloger will be interested a lot more in the A aspects than in the D aspects of the new records. How, in other words, does RDA improve the find tasks of the catalog user? The only relevant point in the presentation is the disappearance of the rule of three. The rest does little more than assist in the identify task, and not really enormously much. The non-cataloger might thus wonder if all this requires a new cataloging code. -- While, at the end, part 2 points out that RDA will increase visibility and usability of catalogs on the Web, the non-cataloger is left wondering how this can happen when at the same time it is also stressed that RDA records are compatible with AACR2 and can co-exist with older MARC21 records. On the whole, I'm not sure many non-catalogers will go away from this presentation mightily impressed and eager to experience the new benefits in their day-to-day work. Among the non-catalogers, there might well be administrative staff. I just wonder how they come away from it when thinking about the expenditures for this revolution. The presentations on Authorised Access Points : http://cambridgerda.wordpress.com/misc/#aap do state, early on, that there is a change in terminology from Headings to Authorised Access Points (AAP). No reason is given. Although it is here that the A, the by far most important aspect of RDA, is coming into its own. A large number of detail is being dealt with in these presentations, but it is all based on the outdated technology of having headings (by whatever name) as textual strings in the bib records. This, above all, should change in the course of an RDA transition that would be worthwile. But of course, Cambridge or anyone else using Voyager could not do that on their own. It should, however, be good to point out that there is an international collaboration effort, VIAF, that is supposed to greatly improve across- the-border searching and opac Access. But well, it has been doing so all the while with no RDA records to this date ... B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Cataloging Matters no. 19: Library Catalogs and Information Architecture
Am 05.04.2013 11:21, schrieb James Weinheimer: Unfortunately, the cataloging community has its hands full trying to deal with the changes of RDA. And most of the time, it is about the D in RDA, whereas it is the A that matters by far the most. Only the A relates to, literally as well as metaphorically, the Architecture aspect of our metadata. Which should have been taken on and taken seriously ever since Dublin Core came along and never really got off the ground. But wasn't Bibframe conceived to change it all? Up until now, I don't see how it is going to: http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/news/faq.html There's no talk about Information Architecture, though what is being said there under Transition is certainly relevant. Then, however, you find a puzzling statement: But one factor that brings the data together is the new library cataloging rule set, Resource Description Framework (RDF) that makes you wonder how much they have understood. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] FW: RDA Implementation at the British Library
Am 02.04.2013 14:00, schrieb Danskin, Alan: From the 1^st April 2013/, RDA : Resource Description and Access http://www.rdatoolkit.org//, replaced the /Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules/, 2^nd edition, as the British Library’s official descriptive cataloguing standard, for records added to the British National Bibliography and British Library MARC Exchange files. Does the BL have an application profile document specifying the options and alternatives to be applied? And if yes, is this document freely accessible or only as part of the toolkit? (The latter to be considered, in my opinion, as suboptimal.) Ideally, one would like to have a synopsis of application profiles of the major bibliographic data suppliers. Thanks, B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Most appropriate language (RDA 1.4)
Am 25.03.2013 13:30, schrieb Paul Davey: ... I do apologise to be mentioning a MARC subfield, which I don't think purists like, but it's useful shorthand; also not to give the RDA rule number, but I don't have access to the Toolkit, but I'm sure readers will know what I mean) ... no access to the toolkit? One cannot help but deplore the fact that we encounter this far too often. Esp. in the present situation of much-needed discussion, it is conterproductive, and a woeful disgrace for us as a profession, that not everyone with an interest in the matter and an understanding of the issues can make informed contributions because of a lack of access. Libraries are there to make recorded knowledge universally accessible and useful. If the new rules are to unfold their usefulness to support this mission, the rule text ought to be universally accessible. How credible is that mission if not even this can be achieved? And under such constraints, how realistic is it to get other communities interested? It is a weak excuse to say that out of economic concerns there is no alternative to a global monopoly on all versions and translations of the text. This would hold for MARC as well and also for BibFrame, which no one ever questioned for being open standards in the sense of freely available text, despite high costs of development and maintenance. Anyone should be welcome to provide added value by constructing all sorts of tools to make the text useful in other ways than other tools do, and they might well be allowed to derive a profit from such activities. But the text as such has to be open, and in this day and age, not just as plain text but open in a structured format that lends itself to formatted arrangements and exploitation by software to enhance its potential usefulness. For instance, out of any editing system for bibliographic data, conext-sensitive links should be enactable to display pertinent rules, free of charge. I confess to have no access to the Toolkit either. But out of principle, not lack of resources. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] a rather than t for ETD
20.03.2013 15:49, Laurence S. Creider: Second, I agree that the notion of publication needs reconsideration in light of a longer consideration of the history of the book from ancient times until now. I do not think that anything fit for public reception is a workable definition. For our purposes, I think, the question is, Does it matter?. We simply need a word for the stuff we catalog, and it better be a word that is understood and taken for granted right away. If you think resource is the word, and every catalog user is comfortable with it, then fine. But is this the case? Is it not considered catalogese jargon? (Even if considering just the English speaking community.) You see, we *do* catalog lots of stuff these days that is not published in the conventional sense. All of it is, however, made available to the public, in some way or other, or else we wouldn't include it in the first place. So, is not this fact of being made available to the public a criterion that we might now simply turn around to mean published? Or, in other words, who would be helped if we made a sophisticated distinction, in the catalog, between stuff that is published and other stuff that is not, though being available or accessible just as well? For us, I think, a workable definition is one that causes us the minimum of work, and esp. so if the effect of it is minimal. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] a rather than t for ETD
Am 21.03.2013 12:01, schrieb Elizabeth O'Keefe: Is part of the problem that we use published versus unpublished as a dividing line for textual material but not for other types of material? Well, apart from the difficulty of drawing it, the Lubetzkian question has to be asked: Is this dividing line necessary? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] a rather than t for ETD
19.03.2013 21:58, J. McRee Elrod: Theses are produced in one or a very few number of copies, without editorial review or peer review in the same way that published monographs are made. .. For consistency we should consider electronic theses as published. That print ones are not is a fiction, considering printouts from the online version. More generally, we might reconsider the concept of publication and define it as anything fit for public reception. And then, why not get rid of the rather pompous yet less than intuitive term resource in favor of the newly extended version of publication? (Or is it commonplace now that resource is correctly understood and taken for granted by the catalog-using public?) B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Terminology
04.03.2013 13:40, schrieb Rita Albrecht: Question 1 == Is there a difference between record and transcribe and if so, which one? Examples: RDA 1.4: Record the elements ... RDA 1.7.3: Transcribe punctuation as ... To record is a very general term and says no more than erfassen in German, which means that in itself it doesn't say anything about the form or convention or rule to use for the purpose. To transcribe is the same as transkribieren in German, or as RAK would have it, in Vorlageform übernehmen, i.e., transporting it, faithfully observing spelling and punctuation and everything including typos, from the item in hand, not changing anything for the sake of standardization, as recording an Ansetzungsform would demand it. Question 2 == What is a supplied element? Something supplied, i.e. added, by the cataloguer, not found in the item or in any source used for the purpose of cataloguing the item. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] ISBD Area 0 content terms
Am 27.02.2013 07:49, schrieb J. McRee Elrod: MARC recently added $2isbdmeda as a source code, allow the use of electronic rather than computer as a media term. MARC also added $2isbdcontent as a source code. You might like to take a look at ISBD Area 0 content terms. They are shoter, easier to understand, and better for display, than the RDA ones: http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/cataloguing/isbd/area-0_2009.pdf It is confusing as well as annoying that RDA practice will not care for conformance with the most successful international standard of bibliographic description. Obviously, the varying and inconsistent use of codes and English or vernacular verbal terms makes data exchange and machine actionability much more tricky and cumbersome and insecure and inefficient, not to speak of backward incompatibilities. Best practice can only be to use ISBD codes mandatorily and nothing else. If those are found wanting, turn to IFLA and ask for urgent improvements. Meanwhile, use procisional codes where IFLA has none, and change them later if needed. Then, let software care for displays as found fit, but let data be as clean and consistent as possible. Or we can impress nobody out there with our messy stuff. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] German cataloging rules RAK
Am 05.02.2013 09:49, schrieb Armin Stephan: In my view it's a tragedy for the development of cataloging, that the makers of RDA are forced to consider the possibility of scenario 1 because of the existence of a huge number of flat bibliographic records and systems. This kind of cataloging is not adequate to the structures described in FRBR. Right, except that you mean scenario 3 (1 is the most complex, 3 the simplest) So there is an unbelievable mismatch between the complex theoretical and terminological structure of FRBR, which is the most important basis for RDA, and the need of conservating the simple structures of AACR, the AACR records and the old library systems. That dilemma is what the BIBFRAME project was called into being to solve. The consequence is, I suppose, that nobody can say what RDA is. Maybe that the most libraries all over the world will use RDA in near future, but they can and will do that in very different ways. This can be evaluated as soon as we get to see the various application profiles or policy statements and the first batches of records based on them. An honest evaluation ought to follow. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] AW: [RDA-L] German cataloging rules RAK
Am 04.02.2013 13:27, schrieb Frodl, Christine: ... However, the Committee for Library Standards, a consortium of large academic libraries and regional networks of the Federal Republic and of one representative from each of the Austrian and Swiss library systems, the German public libraries, the Ständige Konferenz der Kultusminister der Länder der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ekz Bibliotheksservice GmbH, as well as the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://www.dnb.de/EN/Standardisierung/AFS/afsOrganisation.html, decided to apply the RDA standard instead of developing RAK further. Truly impressive. RAK has not been developed since the early days of the millennium. A ship was abandoned before a new one had been tested. After 10 years, it still hasn't been. And just for the record: They decided to apply international standards, which at that time meant AACR2 and MARC21. RDA and BIBFRAME weren't even on the horizon then. Instead of this, we are focusing on the development and implementation of RDA. As this is now drawing close, we should patiently await the first batches of RDA records released. And we would be even more pleased if German policy statements could be made public by then. Someone might be interested to check how much or how little the actual embodiment of RDA will then resemble the LC version. After all, the goal was more international uniformity. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] German cataloging rules RAK
04.02.2013 18:42, Charles Croissant: One caveat: I learned after publication via a German review that the example I gave of a Stuecktitelaufnahme was flawed. If I recollect correctly, the problem was that in the situation I described, the presence of a common title would have led under RAK to the construction of Bandaufnahmen rather than Stuecktitelaufnahmen. Still, the rest of the article is accurate, so far as I recall. German rules give/gave more attention to the parts of a whole, and in particular, parts of a multipart monograph each got their own records, linked to the separate record for the work-as-a-whole. (The latter mostly being the only object cataloged according to AACR, with part titles locked up in a contents note, not retrievable as such. (How DNB are going to handle multiparts under RDA is currently not known or has escaped me) I was part of the team that translated AACR2 into German, back in 1998 to 2002 -- Anglo-Amerikanische Katalogisierungsregeln. Muenchen : K.G. Saur, 2002. It was a huge investment of time and effort. Translating RAK into English would be at least as laborious, probably more so. But a comparison of the two codes is certainly a fascinating exercise and there would certainly be room for any number of scholarly essays there. The late Monika Münnich of Heidelberg headed that team and handled the entire project admirably. She was also advocating more conformity with AACR without abandoning RAK. More about M.M. and her views on RAK and AACR: http://www.humanismus.com/_/Publications_files/muennichinterview.pdf One large area of differences were the rules for corporate entities and their headings. There's a German-English summary of investigations done in the ReUse project (jointly carried out by German and American partners) in 1995-1998: http://webdoc.gwdg.de/ebook/aw/reuse/ Corporate rules are treated in this chapter: http://webdoc.gwdg.de/ebook/aw/reuse/comparison.htm and multiparts here: http://www.allegro-c.de/formate/reusep.htm And here's a glossary of the 50 most important terms in German and English, with annotations : http://www.allegro-c.de/formate/aacr-it.htm B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] BIBFRAME model document announced
26.11.2012 12:17, James Weinheimer: Let's face it: the FRBR structure is bizarre and difficult even for trained catalogers to grasp. ... and to apply consistently end efficiently. The FRBR user tasks are from an earlier time, and in any case, the public hasn't been able to do them since keyword searching was introduced--even in our library catalogs. That has been quite awhile now and I have never seen or heard of anyone complaining. Those original tasks have been long forgotten and have now been superceded in a multitude of ways. You are turning more and more radical. Honest analysis - once it were done - might well confirm you, however. Besides, if somebody wants to navigate WEMI, it can be done now with the right catalog software. Once it were proved necessary. LT and GBS have both found some demand for it, and come up with their own solutions, not exactly along our lines of thinking and not exactly with much success (in the case of GBS at least). The first steps in the new format should be to make it in the simplest ways possible so that web creators can use our records as soon as possible. Wasn't that part of the motivation behind Dublin Core? I think it failed miserably because it did not create a format but left that to implementers. Foreseeably, each and every one of them came up with their own schemes and their own idiosyncratic syntaxes. The schema.org people are doing a somewhat better job in that they do not leave much to implementers. But then, their approach is very different from the idea of records as self-contained entities, and so it is difficult to see how to apply it in a library catalog context. Anyway, I really don't like this speculating around in this list with no input from those who should know more and might easily resolve errors in our wild guesses. Can this be called a discussion list? It is rather another Speakers' Corner, inconsequential at the end of the day. Not the first time though that I encounter this phenomenon. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] BIBFRAME model document announced
24.11.2012 11:37, Heidrun Wiesenmüller: ... BIBFRAME simply _must_ be able to model RDA data in the necessary granularity and specificity. That should indeed go without saying. And besides, it ought to be integrated with RDA documentation as well, so as to enable linking in both directions. When using the BIBFRAME documentation, as soon as it will replace MARC, it must be possible to find pertinent rules for any data element, and the other way. That means, BIBFRAME will have to become integrated into the Toolkit. As well as with other rules it will be employed to support. Data entry and editing have long since been in need of enhancements in these regards. Now, finally, the chances should be realized. And I mean, what chances does RDA stand for optimal implementation if there is suboptimal support at the input and editing stage. Or only unaffordable support! And that raises another question: Before engaging in heated debates about all sorts of big issues as well as detail, we need to know who will eventually be the owner of BIBFRAME and in what form and under what conditions it will be made available: liberally like MARC, or under a global monopoly licensing scheme like RDA. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Editor as main entry
Am 08.10.2012 09:38, schrieb Keith Trickey: The cataloguer's arrogance is part of the main entry concept. The searcher approaches with catalogue with whatever information they have - could be author or title or words from title etc. For the searcher the information they use to access the item identifies their main entry which may be at variance with what erudite cataloguers with a head full of RDA thinks! OK, it is arrogance if we try to organize stuff in a meaningful way, and arrogance is a grievous fault. Thus speaks a current school of thinking, and honorable persons are they all who say it, nothing less, and so, they say, what better can we do than bury all those antiquated rules? Let us be humble then and use the searcher's information and not the predilections of our own as points of entry, and let's go forth and change all rules accordingly. And then who were we here, to even think we had to alter names and titles and their spellings, so as to fit our awkward mental model of the catalog? Exactly as the searchers speak, so speak the catalog, all else is arrogance, and that's what mighty Google thinks as well as that new school, and they are honorable persons all, or not? Imposing order where the user does perceive it not, nor value it, is pure ambition, and ask our patrons that they think, is arrogance, which not befits a library for sure! Nor judgement, as we used to deal it out by iron rules, is our part to exercise, for judgement is ambitious, and cannot be the cure. Let not our heart be in the coffin there with RDA, and let all searchers find resources, searching as they may. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Cataloging Matters No. 16
Am 25.09.2012 18:16, schrieb Brenndorfer, Thomas: There is nothing simpler or more modular than: * Entity -- has several attributes (which can be used for display, naming, description, filtering, searching) * Entity can have relationship to other entities (which assists in exploring similar resources-- by same author, on same subject, derived from work, part of set, etc.) Yes. But besides the language, this doesn't really differ that much from AACR2+MARC21. The potential of which had been extensible all the time and was never used to its fullest in the industry standard. However, what will actually emerge is now depending a lot on several big issues: a) The actual implementation at LC, and how much or how little of RDA's potential will be unleashed, and in what ways b) The outcome of the BIBFRAME project and if and how it will pervade common practice, esp. at the utilities c) The extent to which the community will be able, and willing, to follow suit in their day-to-day cataloging practice. Not the least of the issues is the accessibility, or lack thereof, of RDA text d) How vendors will react with implementation of new requirements, and this depends, of course, on demand and acceptance in the marketplace. One might add the burden of the legacy here, but let's assume that software and procedures will be found to alleviate it and then make search results more acceptable and relevant than ever. There are quite a few unknowns, and big ones, in all of these, so to think that a brave new world is now round the corner is a bit bold. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Cataloging Matters No. 16
26.09.2012 14:46, Brenndorfer, Thomas: The status quo assumes we have to get main and added entries correct, and punctuation and order of elements correct, and so on, as the primary baseline to measure compliance with standards-- but this approach doesn't address what's possible with newer technologies, and how best to support the data as data using industry conventions for managing data. Agreed, but this cannot be blamed on AAXR2+MARC21 and will not go away once these go out the window. MARC21 can well describe the very same entities RDA has in mind, and can encode just the same relationships. The mental image of cards, enshrined and embodied though is in MARC's rough outline, is what has to go. Punctuation becomes ever a minor issue as more subfields are introduced to make more elements addressable, order of elements is not maintained by all systems and mostly not reflecxted in OPACs anyway. Those are fringe issues. I've never been an ardent supporter of MARC, but it is often criticized for all the wrong reasons. Wondering, btw, why there's no input here from the BIBFRAME people. Not that much traffic on their own list to keep them from everything else. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Cataloging Matters No. 16
On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 11:25 PM, Brenndorfer, Thomas tbrenndor...@library.guelph.on.ca wrote: The qualities one would look for in finding ways to expedite retrospective cleanup is the use of batch change tools, and good advanced search (at the SQL level ideally) tools for catalogers. Controlled terms and codes are much easier to work with than free-text data. (Not every database is SQL, there are some who have even better tools.) But search at such levels and global replacement/manipulation functionality, highly efficient and comfortable, should be the prime requirement when undertaking a major transition. However, this should be at the utility level (OCLC), not the local level, for it is a task not every library should do for themselves, it needs to be a cooperative issue. Then, of course, the updating mechanisms in the local databases become crucial - or you make OCLC your OPAC. In actual fact, it might become ever more doubtful an undertaking to run a local OPAC. If your utility has a level of availability as high as Google's, then why not give up the local search in favor of the utility's union catalog, and run just the inventory functions at home. The more we get data in this form, the ***EASIER*** it will become. The more we move to what is in RDA, with its database-friendly (and therefore ultimately user-friendly) approach, the ***EASIER*** it will become. At the outset, and for some years to come, new search functions like those for role indicators, will indeed be questionable, and here I agree with Jim Weinheimer. As long as it is only a few percent of records that are coded that way, it would be less than useless indeed. Would even 50% be agreeable? As Jim said, we have to do research of user needs and expectations before venturing into unfathomable depths or heights. RDA may be the most marvelous theory, but one for the wrong century. Perpetuating bad practice for some false premise of “less access” based upon functionality that is entirely optional until one is ready is incredibly bad advice. Did Jim advise to stick with bad practice? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Cataloging Matters No. 16
Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 10:22 AM, James Weinheimer: Finally, the less access is not a false premise but an indisputable fact. That must be acknowledged. To maintain that it is not less access is to ignore reality. Perhaps some may claim that it is a sad, necessary step toward the radiant heights of FRBR, but the immediate effects, lasting into an unknown number of years, will be less access. Certainly. One may think of a moderating measure: Lets say, abstracting a bit, we are after person XYZ with a qualifier of Q. A search algorithm may then present exact matches first and those lacking Q thereafter. More logic along this line is feasible and is probably being used in some catalogs. But please, don't call this kind of searching relevance ranking. True relevance is something very different, it is something only persons themselves can judge. I mean, not even a skilled reference librarian can easily know what the client really means when given just two words and not a real question. Of course, relevance is just a convenient metaphor and may thus be excused? No, it may not. It is intellectual dishonesty, not proper for libraries, to use language clients may and will interpret in a wrong way and then build up wrong expectations that are bound to be disappointed. And critically thinking readers can be expected to turn it back, and then their backs, on the catalog and the library. Bernhard Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Cataloging Matters No. 16
24.09.2012 09:47, James Weinheimer: I am a little confused. Are you saying that if people search for John Huston *as a film director* in our catalogs, they should *not* expect to find the films in which he was a director? Because it is a fact that the public will not find them after RDA is implemented and a library allows for searches by film directors. Or that catalogers don't need to be concerned about it? I'm afraid much of what's been said in this thread is mere speculation. We have to keep in mind RDA is full of options and alternatives. So what can be done with RDA data will all depend on which options and alternatives have been chosen for a body of data, and if these choices have been consistently encoded accordingly. LC output will of course become the industry standard. As of now, there's only the test data to look at, and presumably, these plus policy statements represent the standard LC is going to use once they go into production. But the test data, as was noticed soon after it came out, is but a very low level RDA interpretation, strictly based on what can be done with MARC21, but not even exploiting MARC's real potential, for example, with regard to multiparts and authority linking. I fail to see how this is promising, and for what. About the new BIBFRAME/Zepheira encoding standard there's nothing right now but cloudiness. Theoretically, it should have the potential for revolutionary changes, if starting from scratch. But practically? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Cataloging Matters No. 16
Am 20.09.2012 09:57, schrieb James Weinheimer: All of these considerations show more and more that RDA and FRBR are intellectual/academic constructs and divorced from the world of reality. Yes, but it is one thing to create new rules and another to get those who are supposed to comply with them to actually do so. And as long as you need to shell out considerable sums to even read those rules, and get no glimpse of the pleasingly reworded text, what chance do they stand? But maybe more important: Practice is, I think, to a large extent ruled by pragmatic reasoning. Money issues aside, catalogers will be quite aware they'll be doing a disservice if they break away from sensible legacy practice without being able to change (and upgrade!) legacy data accordingly. And they are aware of what and how much they can actually do and what they can ill afford. The makers of the rules should have focused more than they did on the questions of how we can improve existing data - our capital in fact - and the ways we are putting it to work. This has to be done with down-to-earth and nuts-and-bolt reasoning as well as with clever use of new technology. And read down-to-earth as opposed to up-in-the-clouds, though it seems to appeal to some to wrestle data away and out of local control so as to make supposedly vastly better use of it up there and then rain it down in fertilizing showers on the flourishing knowledge economy. Just don't forget to provide robust 24/7 infrastructure plus local options to fall back on in cases of serious crisis. (Does anyone know facts about the cost of running OCLC and its services and then, for comparison, the same for Google? Broken down to, lets say, one hour of service to one customer. Or how much for one query. Not that it would actually mean much, all things considered, but it might be interesting. Maybe OCLC turns out much more economical, maybe not.) B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] JSC web site: Sept. 14 additions
18.09.2012 15:55, Jack Wu: Thanks Mac, hope you're right about the rewrite. Somehow I wonder how revision and rewrite are coordinated, or are they on different tracks where they would endlessly chase each other. Jack It is, as far as we got to know, just one person doing the rewrite. Coordination shouldn't therefore be a big issue. Time, of course, is. So much so that we - up until now - don't get to know anything about the state of things. So far, the last that transpired was, in June, The Coordinating Committee has received and reviewed reworded Chapters 9, 10, and 11. The Committee is currently reviewing reworded Chapter 6 and expects to submit its review of that chapter in July. The Coordinating Committee is pleased with the rewording in these initial reworded chapters. Its comments on Chapter 9 have served for the rewording of the other chapters that followed. After completing its review of Chapter 6, the Committee will determine if it will be necessary to review a fifth chapter before the Committee removes itself from the rewording review process. (from http://www.loc.gov/aba/rda/pdf/RDA_updates_20jun12.pdf ) It is fine to hear the Coordinating Committee was pleased with the results. Might the text not therefore be fit for reviewing by the community now? I mean by those who will be expected to use it in their daily work. And for September, as far 's I remember, a progress report from Zepheira is expected on the MARC replacement. There's time yet. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Describing parts
13.09.2012 18:58, J. McRee Elrod: Bernhard said: Right, but it is one very little aspect of the deficient way multipart entities are still treated in MARC21 practice ... It is particularly frustrating in view of UKMARC's handling it so well with 248, which could have been so easily adopted when the various MARCs were combined. Even more frustration arose from the lack of information about the reasoning that led to the decision to not include 248 into MARC21. But maybe I missed it. In these last days of MARC, I suppose that will never happen. But the capability should certainly be part of any MARC replacement schema. again, or as far as I see, there's no evidence suggesting that this might indeed be under consideration. The part-whole relationship seems to be a blind spot in the U.S. cataloging mindset. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Regarding copyright dates for multivolume publications
12.09.2012 18:43, Jonathan Rochkind: There are a whole bunch of problems with machine actionability in these data elements -- but seperate element for copyright date isnt' actually one of them at all! Right, but it is one very little aspect of the deficient way multipart entities are still treated in MARC21 practice: Making one record for the entire set and listing the parts in a 505 contents note that is next to useless when it comes to machine action. This practice totally disregards the titles, access points and bibliographic details of parts and there's no way to indicate the part-whole relationships since parts are not treated as entities. In theory, MARC21 can handle it well, and DNB Frankfurt is routinely demonstrating it in practice. Not noticed by the MARC community at large, as it seems. By now, I have serious doubts if even Bibframe will ever change this obliviousness. Maybe in theory... B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Location of Conference and MARC Authority 370 (fwd)
10.09.2012 21:31, Adam L. Schiff: ... It does concern me that sometimes an associated place will go in $e and other times in $f. Without clear definitions of these subfields, I don't see how a machine would know how to create an access point on the fly for display. But perhaps that isn't a real future goal of these data, since maybe some day we won't need access points at all. With an authoritative, worldwide registry in place for conferences and all sorts of other publishable events, indeed, why shouldn't we have software figuring out for us whereabouts this or that meeting took place, on what dates this exhibition or Olympic games were on, what Shakespeare-related conferences were held in Australia after 1999, and a whole lot more, including organizers and sponsors. Link that up with the catalog and be done then. Meanwhile, since any event can have more than one location and date (think of exhibitions), we need a repeateable and comprehensive field for all information regarding place and date and responsibilities pertaining to the event. And everything needs to be software actionable for retrieval and collocation and navigation and linking. These are the real issues, or a few of them, and BibFrame can certainly be counted on to solve them. MARC21, I'm afraid, not. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Naming works question
28.08.2012 19:29, Brenndorfer, Thomas: RDA has four conventions for conveying relationships between works and between expressions (relationships between manifestations and between items use all of these conventions except authorized access points): 1. identifier 2. authorized access point 3. structured description 4. unstructured description. ... The conventions we use (identifiers, authorized access points, structured descriptions, unstructured descriptions) will largely be determined by the application we are using, but all conventions should convey the same elementary information about a relationship between specified entities. The big question is: To whom can those conventions convey their meaning? Only 1. and 2. can convey it to a program in order to elicit any action from it, beyond merely displaying it. And that's what we want, more often than not: to make relationship information actionable. Then however, the desired actions may vary according to the nature of the relationship: whether we have a translation, a summary, an updated edition, or whatever. All of this mandates machine-actionable linking, and qualifiers to determine the semantics of a link. And since there may be more than one such link per record, the identifier or access point has to be combined with the qualifier in one field. And not, for example, the preferred title in a 730 and a vernacular qualifier in a 370. Is there a vocabulary of standardized qualifier terms anywhere, for this purpose? If not, make one and make its use mandatory, make it a core subelement for relationships to work and expression. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] JSC, ISBD, and ISSN: harmonization discussions
20.08.2012 21:59, J. McRee Elrod: Heidrun wisely said: The ISBD has been a common core of many cataloguing codes for decades. This common ground shouldn't be casually abandoned. VERY true. While not taking issue with the importance of ISBD as such, it can, I think, not be called a common core of cataloging codes in general, but of those of their parts relating to description. While the D in RDA is for Description, the focus is really all on the A for Access, and that's a lot more relevant these days for most people using catalogs. So, I think it is appropriate that RDA doesn't go to all the lengths, as older codes did, of painstakingly describing every bit of descriptive information and how it should all be stitched together for a readable display. The latter can and must be left to software, and I think it is true that ISBD had not been formulated with an eye on how well the rules lent themselves to being algorithmically representable. Where there is still a demand for ISBD display, and I'm not arguing with this, one will have to live with minor flaws. What's more important is that much more detail than before should be actionable for algorithms. This, of course and among other things, speaks for standardized codes and acronyms rather than vernacular verbiage. The focus in cataloging must be on access points and their standardization and international harmonization by way of vehicles like VIAF. Thus, RAD would be a more appropriate name for a contemporary code. Another focus should be on the question of *what* we catalog, and here in particular, how to treat parts of larger entities. As of now, the woefully inadequate contents note for multipart publications seems still very much alive. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] [BIBFRAME] RDA, DBMS and RDF
13.05.2012 19:49, Karen Coyle: After struggling for a long time with my frustration with the difficulties of dealing with MARC, FRBR and RDA concepts in the context of data management, I have done a blog post that explains some of my thinking on the topic: http://kcoyle.blogspot.com/2012/05/rda-dbms-rdf.html The short summary is that RDA is not really suitable for storage and use in a relational database system, and therefore is even further from being suitable for RDF. I use headings (access points in RDA, I believe) as my example, but there are numerous other aspects of RDA that belie its intention to support scenario one. You've done a very concise and elucidating description of the calamity, and there certainly needs to be discussion about it. It raises two questions, although you may not be in a position to answer the second: 1. Would you advocate a restructuring of RDA to the effect that it conforms with the relational model, or seamlessly lend itself to implementations under that concept? Or i.o.w., that RDA come with a relational table database design ready for implementation? (For otherwise, as practice has shown, different and incompatible designs will evolve.) 2. Is there credible progress by now in the efforts to create a successor to MARC? (After all, LC had made that e condition for implementation, and they did meanwhile decide for it to take place in 2013. Or are they taking the good intention for the deed?) And if yes, what kind of approach will it be? Relational tables? If your answer to question 1 is YES, wouldn't that amount to favoring the relational technology over others, potentially or probably more suitable ones? For there's that NoSQL movement gaining momentum right now. But even disregarding that, AACR was, I think, always taking pains to avoid getting involved with the fads and fashions of data structures, even MARC itself was never mentioned. Now, RDA test data have been published in nothing but MARC, only marginally embellished, thereby foregoing the opportunity to unfold much of its potential. Sticking as it does to a low-level scenario 3. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Card catalogue lessons
28.03.2012 21:30, Kevin M Randall: ... (I'm assuming, of course, that we'll have sensible cataloging interfaces. But that's probably a really stupid assumption to make, given how we haven't yet been able to get unstuck from a cataloging interface concept that was born in the 1960s and never grew up.) This has been mentioned often enough, and not just in this forum. What are the reasons for this deplorable state of things, and are there any ideas how it might be overcome? Is the BIBFRAME initiative, among everything else, also targeting this? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Card catalogue lessons
Am 16.03.2012 09:35, schrieb James Weinheimer: Once again, if there were evidence that it does make such a major difference to the public, that would be one thing, but there has been nothing. We are all just supposed to simply believe it. Yet, I can't believe this will make a difference to anyone--especially when we will not be going back and adding relator codes to the millions of records we have now. The latter is a very general issue that will make many potential RDA search scenarios problematic because of the absence or inconsistence of data elements, or their lack of machine actionability, in the legacy stuff. AND within the future body of RDA data as well, unless all the agencies agree to one specific application profile. Foreseeably, they are not going to. LC's profile, if the test data are anything to go by, will be a particularly frugal one. Surely, BIBFRAME is gonna change everything. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] RDA Implementation Date Set
08.03.2012 22:06, J. McRee Elrod: In case you missed it: Implementation Day One Set for March 31, 2013! Here's there official announcement: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/news_rda_implementation_date.html They also published a Long Range Training Plan: http://www.loc.gov/aba/rda/pdf/RDA_Long-Range_Training_Plan.pdf What I don't find is a report on credible progress toward a replacement for MARC. In their June 2011 report http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/rda/source/rdatesting-finalreport-20june2011.pdf, the US RDA Test Coordinating Committee of LC, NAL, and NLM specified credible progress toward a replacement for MARC as one of the necessary conditions for implementing RDA. Or are we to presume that the formulation of the Bibliographic Framework Initiative plan http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/news/minutes-alamw-2012.html is to be considered that progress? Just how credible, how tangible is it right now? Has funding for the Initiative been secured meanwhile? Maybe I've missed another, more recent progress report. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Cataloging Matters Podcast, no. 14: Musings on the Linked Data Diagram
Am 02.03.2012 09:18, schrieb James Weinheimer: I would like to announce that I just made a new Cataloging Matters Podcast, no. 14: Musings on the Linked Data Diagram. http://blog.jweinheimer.net/2012/03/cataloging-matters-podcast-no-14.html Now this piece is highly welcome and really deserves all the attention it can get, given the high esteem currently placed on Linked Data, plus the fact that it has been prominently placed in the Bibliographic Framework arena. Linked data originating from libraries have been made available some time ago, from several projects. Are there any reports as to their utility, their actual usage, and the quality and advantages of using them? After reading your statement, Do I believe that the problems of libraries will be solved by making our metadata/catalog records available through linked data? No, one can't help thinking that it is another case of unfounded promises and expectations. Surely there have been a few attempts to make use of those data. Where are the reports on the results and experience gained? Or is the big killer app just about to be released, kept top secret up until now? If so, it might be more appropriate to quote Julius Caesar than Hamlet: There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, omitted, all the voyage of your life is bound in shallows and in miseries. and our particular flood now, to take or omit, is Linked Data. And what is the present opinion in the BibFrame context? Is there now some kind of experimentation stage or not yet? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Revolution in our Minds: Seeing the World Anew
23.02.2012 01:31, Thomas Krichel: ... The poor utilization of the data in systems comes from the fact that the data is not written for the purpose of usage by systems. It is always composed with the idea that a human will read it. That's something the new Bibliographic Framework will hopefully change once and for all. (Making MARC data look poor and old, but that cannot be helped.) Cheers, Why? We're not there yet, nor do we know when... B.E.
Re: [RDA-L] Revolution in our Minds: Seeing the World Anew
20.02.2012 20:04, Kevin M Randall: I really liked it when you said So, perhaps the way the catalog record of the future will look to the public will be that the records won't appear at all and only the metadata creators will know that the records even exist! I think that's exactly the same thing most people looking toward RDA Scenario 1 have had in mind all along. Since this is very likely so, it implies a high priority for achieving credible progress towards a replacement for MARC, to better bring out RDA's potential. Can't wait to see it ... Although, even existing MARC records, containing properly managed authoritative headings, might serve as the basis for new ways of displaying results: A result set might be pre-processed in new ways that extract the access related elements and assemble them, drawing additional information from the authority files (or from triple stores, for that matter) to make up new display constructs that do more than listing the solitary records in more fanciful ways. One has to find out what more is needed to get even beyond this, and what this beyond may or should comprise. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] RDA as the collaboratively created way forward[?]; was Is RDA the Only Way? An Alternative Option Through International Cooperation
On 15 Feb., Jim Weinheimer sighed: ... really tough to reach any kind of agreement, ... Well, what are the items then that we can now regard as agreed upon? Some candidates seem to be these: 1. We have, I think, a consensus that FRBR is a refinement of ideas that have existed for a long time and have been part of catalog concepts ever since Cutter but in essence even longer. These ideas are not obsolete because of that long history, but should be preserved. A key ingredient is authority control, extendable in coverage and effect by new technology. In due course, RDA have made its application more explicit. 2. There will also be agreement that online catalogs already do a lot more than Cutter catalogs could ever hope to achieve, FRBR or not, thanks to keyword searching and many other options. Much of this added value, however, is not created by the rules but by software doing new things with the data, plus enrichments not thought of by the rulemakers. Added value also arises out of MARC21 containing fields not dealt with in AACR or RDA. Much of the new functionality is, however, not in any way standardized. 3. But thirdly, there is also the widely shared opinion that catalogs should do yet more than what they are currently doing, and more doesn't just mean better performance in what they've always done, but new and different functions to make them useful in more ways than before, and in ways that meet current and future demands as these keep emerging in the wider world of knowledge. Libraries now finding themselves as players among many others in that brave new world. 4. Rules for the future, and that must be another important agreement, should therefore be tightly integrated with a new data model, and one with a potentiai to answer issues arising out of 2. and 3. Not loosely coupled like AACR was with MARC, references to which were carefully avoided in the rules. 5. Agreement, OTOH, has been building up for a long time that MARC is obsolete. (That was one reason why DC came into being.) There seems, however, to be a school that regards MARC to be still up to the task, with some minor advancements like the use of authority identifiers instead of or in addition to textual elements. And apart from this, a new data model is nowhere in sight. Right now, it is barely more than a promise of the Bibliographic Framework Initiative. From all I've seen and read about the matter, I don't believe that BiBframe will come up with something delightfully elegant and practicable. If *something* will come out of BibFrame, and that's not a small if, then I'm really afraid it will be declared elegant but turn out impracticable. But ok, this is no consensus at all, but at present, I'm likely in a minority of one. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] RDA as the collaboratively created way forward[?]; was Is RDA the Only Way? An Alternative Option Through International Cooperation
Am 14.02.2012 09:58, schrieb James Weinheimer: ... and above all, free the data so that we can all discover what people really want. And free the rules as well! If we want an open standard, it needs to be open access. Besides, it must be even more difficult to make a business case for rules that are avaiable by subscription only that costs much more than the old code in book form. (OK, there's a looseleaf stack of paper as well, less expensive than online but still 3 times as much as the old rulebook.) ALA Publishing is of course welcome to provide added value for money with their software. But to monopolize the text, including translations? I think this shouldn't have been allowed to happen, and it may well be the main reason RDA will fail, and fail for the worst reason: because it might split the library community into the haves and the have-nots. On the other hand, free rules would not change their substance, i.e., it would not automatically mean better rules which would remove Jim's objections concerning FRBR. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] RDA as the collaboratively created way forward; was Is RDA the Only Way? An Alternative Option Through International Cooperation
Am 13.02.2012 15:33, schrieb Tillett, Barbara: Readers of this list may be interested in the various publications describing how RDA will keep us relevant in the Web environment and remind us of what is wrong with AACR2 (as repeatedly pointed out during the 1990's and since then). Relevant RDA presentations are posted on the JSC Web site at: http://www.rda-jsc.org/rdapresentations.html Certainly an impressive list. Which of the presenations, if I may ask, do elaborate on the question of the business case for RDA? In the recent Implemenation updates: http://www.loc.gov/aba/rda/pdf/RDA_updates_16jan12.pdf every item is marked as either On track or Completed. Only just the business case didn't even make it on that list. But as Jim rightly pointed out, the June 2011 test report should have been incentive enough to make it a high priority. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] RDA as the collaboratively created way forward; was Is RDA the Only Way? An Alternative Option Through International Cooperation
Am 13.02.2012 15:57, schrieb Tillett, Barbara: The US RDA Test Coordinating Committee's report of 9May2011 has a section of Findings: Costs and Benefits, p. 105-111. You will find that report on their Web site:http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/rda/ That will be this paper then: http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/rda/source/rdatesting-finalreport-20june2011.pdf It has a section on Costs and benefits, starting page 105, and benefits listed on page 111. It is of course in the nature of things that it would be very hard to make it more specific in terms of money to spend or save, respectively. Yet, this is what a business case would be expected to do. Esp. by administrators and decision makers, I'm afraid. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Considerations on Linked Data (Was: Showing birth and death dates)
28.01.2012 18:03, James Weinheimer: When I look at the famous diagram http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/, with dbpedia in the center of the linked data universe, it has occurred to me: what if dbpedia disappeared or started demanding money to continue operations? If it were only that. When I look at the data behind the famous diagram, I find that most of the files are incomplete, experimental, or outdated. If they are dated at all - which most are not! Esp. those provided by libraries or related agencies. Some time ago, I sent an inquiry about that to the maintainers of thedatahub.org, suggesting to provide dates with the resources. Great idea, they said. I've stayed tuned but up until now got no news about it. Sept. 2011 seems to be the latest addition to the diagram, but one cannot find what that was. Maybe the SPARQL endpoints provide more current material, but that's not readily apparent either. But probably I'm looking in all the wrong places or through the wrong glasses. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] MARC records in a bilingual catalogue
Am 27.01.2012 22:11, schrieb J. McRee Elrod: Do the bibliographic records that SLC produces contain only internationally acceptable abbreviations or words? I should have added that for French items going to a French or French/English bilingual catalogue, we will change map to carte. The ISBD abbreviations p., v., ill., col. present no problem, and need not be changed. RDA will create *much* more work. But Barbara Tillett had written: Even better will be when we can move beyond MARC and use linked data with URLs to identify entities and then display whatever language/script the user wants. We have seen the proof of that concept with VIAF-the Virtual International Authority File. In a full-fledged Linked Data implementation, we might have, for example (as long as we are stuck with MARC, but this kind of thing wouldn't change, or would it?) 336 $1 http://rdvocab.info/termList/RDAContentType/1020 337 $1 http://rdvocab.info/termList/RDAMediaType/1007 338 $1 http://rdvocab.info/termList/RDACarrierType/1049 instead of 336 $a text 337 $a unmediated 338 $a volume if the resource is a book. So, instead of those textual terms we'd have those stable URI's, and these would resolve to the current language terms actually needed by the catalog or wanted by the user. The German ones are already there. Are we going, then, to create another set of URIs like those for p., v., ill. and so on? But then, Jim Weinheimer wrote, although for another reason: I am just saying that a simple belief that going to linked data will be the solution, could actually lead to nightmares. This, I think, deserves consideration. We need to come to terms about how we are actually going to encode our data in our real-world environments. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates
11.01.2012 21:14, Gene Fieg: Somewhere in this thread, there was statement FRBR and RDA, whose English was muddy, to say the least. One of the most important things that can be done to RDA is to rewrite it--in the understanding that a sentence should be subject, verb, object. As it stands now, who knows what anything means and we end up with constant interpretations of muddy language. The rewriting will be an interesting exercise. Chris Oliver should be on it right now, and will hopefully report on the experience afterwards. The language is strongly influenced by database technicians' manners of speaking. One must of course get those people to better understand the nuts and bolts of our craft, so it might be no bad idea to keep the current version as one of eventually several (or as the publishers will hope, many) language versions. On paper, the RDA text suffers from reduncancy which results from the attempt to make every paragraph understandable when displayed alone, outside its context. The term they are using is, I think, rewording, not rewriting, and that will mean that the arrangement of chapter and verse will remain exactly as it is. Thinking of said redundancy, the task will not become easier because of that, but without that restriction, the whole thing might spin out of control and into utter confusion. No matter, however, how excellent Ms Oliver's product will turn out, the major roadblock on RDA's way to success will remain its closedness as a subscription product. So, under the circumstances given, how big is the chance of RDA succeeding anyway? I think the MRI business of Mac and Michal Gorman, together with the Open Cataloging Rules approach of Jim Weinheimer, have all the potential to lead into a future for cataloging that is both affordable and sustainable, open for more, inviting for collaboration across borders, and down to earth. The circumstances given will not change significantly, I think, before there is a new data model plus codification in a manageable, learnable, implementable, and efficient MARC replacement. Under the present circumstances, RDA implementation - if not going way beyond the test data! - could hardly justify the expense. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates
Am 10.01.2012 09:52, schrieb Heidrun Wiesenmüller: I think the last part of this sentence is ample proof that there cannot be a whole/part relationship between the aggregating work (in the glue sense of the Working Group) and the individual works. So if we now turn our attention to the item level: An item of a glued-together collection of articles is one bound volume, i.e. one physical item. It has thus to be recorded in some sort of record or array of rdf triples (together forming one virtual item record). Is this item (record) at the same time an item (record) of/for each of the manifestations that are glued together in the volume? So that these will not need their own, separate item records - for there may well be item-level characteristics for the consituent parts? (And think what that would mean for circulation since they cannot circulate separately. There will have to be only one barcode.) Up until now, item data have often resided in separate circulation databases or tables, not being part of the bib database but containing data elements now to be considered catalog data elements under FRBR. There's usually an n:1 relationship with the bib records. Can this go unchanged? Or will the FRBR item level perhaps be optional for the local level, leaving things as they are with, some FRBR bib elements still part of the circ data? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates
09.01.2012 23:25, Karen Coyle: And it also seems that in your scenario, aggregates link whole/part between expressions but not between works? Is there a reason why they would not link at the work? I did a very ugly diagram of this... http://kcoyle.net/temp/frbragg.pdf If it's too ugly I can try a do-over. It is nice enough to convince me (but maybe just me) that chances to get this implemented AND working well, and then chances to get catalogers/agencies to produce decent data following this model, on a grand scale, are not any fraction above zero. Not even talking of the legacy. But the job all this is supposed to do, or most of it and as much as will be needed, can be done (again, maybe no one else but me is convinced here) by some minor extensions of the 7xx and 6xx fields, based on LCSH work records, to turn them into work headings and work+expression headings, then index these cleverly enough to assist some helpful display arrangements. Any record then might carry this kind of 6xx and 7xx fields to allow for all conceivable linkings to works and expressions and manifestations, whether covered by the theory or, in exceptions, not. Legacy data might be upgraded, where need is felt, gradually, with no big effort. It may be felt as utterly pedestrian, it would fall short of the sublime FRBR theory, but let's explore what users may need and expect, and what they get already from other sources that are not based on any comparably sophisticated theory. And what we can afford. But OK, go ahead, implement it, demonstrate it, prove its viablity and value and you win me over. Surely I'm not bold enough, after quite some time in this business... B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates
08.01.2012 15:24, Heidrun Wiesenmüller: Here are some more issues with the model of the Working Group, now centering on the concept of an aggregating expression. The more I think about this, the less I understand what this entity is supposed to be in the first place, and what might be the point of having it at all. ... ... The bottom line is: These things are far from obvious, and should have been addressed in the Final Report. Holy cow, what a productive weekend and thread this has become! Considering that the issues as such are not new at all, for example look at this 1998 paper for the Part-Whole relationship: http://www.allegro-c.de/formate/reusep.htm But back then, the impact of this was negligible. One must by now be very brave indeed to expect a workable and satisfying and timely result from the Framework Initiative, and a practicable post-MARC, fully FRBR-compliant data model in particular. On the other hand, work records need not be invented, modeled, specified, programmed, and then painstakingly inputted from scratch. They exist right now, and in large numbers. Here are two of them: Text work http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no97079452.html Motion picture work http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no97080965.html After all this to and fro, I tend to look at the authorized work title as much like a subject term. After all, names of persons and bodies are being used for creators and subject headings alike, why not work titles in the same way? In a 700, the name is augmented with numerous subfields that - potentially - allow for a strucured citation listing displayed under the person's name. And there are all those 700 $a $t entries already. Create a new indicator for the 700, saying this is a reference to a work, add $0 for the identifier, add a few new subfields (use capital letters if running out of small ones) for language, edition, type of expression, genre, and whatever necessary for meaningful groupings of entries under the work title. And all of that will cover a lot, if not everything, that may be expected from work records, like linkings with editions and versions (if you want, expressions and manifestation). This method is all you need, I believe, to bring together what belongs together and display it in meaningful ways as well as allowing for meaningful navigation in online catalogs. AND it wouldn't be a lot of work to upgrade existing 700s and turn them into work headings. We might also have new fields 605 and 705 instead of a new indicator for the 600 and 700. Therein, use $a *and* $0 or just one of these, depending on whether or not an authority record is available. And the aggregations? Simply use its authorized title as work title, after cataloging the thing itself like any monographic publication as it's being done now. You may contemplate any number of models that go beyond this, as this thread amply testifies, but I seriously doubt any such approach will be an economic use of resources. Economy dictates that we use what we have more extensively and in better ways. Sure, it is nice to have a complete theory, as it is fine to have a Theory of Everything for the elementary particles, but that's largely for the textbooks! A few particles are so elusive and hard to nail down that they are of no practical use as in electronic devices, for instance, Furthermore, others have already passed us by, inventing devices that do the job we expect work records to do, and not in very complicated ways either: http://www.librarything.com/work/1386651 note their canonical title, original title, ... B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Computer as media type redux
Am 15.11.2011 00:32, schrieb J. McRee Elrod: I'm told that Media type is a categorization reflecting the general type of intermediation device required to view, play, run, etc., the content of a resource. But ... microscopic [not microscope] projected [not projector] stereographic [not stereoscope] etc. Why the exception for electronic? Not to mention that many use devices they do not think of as computers to access electronic resources these days. We wouldn't need to discuss these terms at all if the terms themselves would not be used in MARC records but the codes. LC did define codes for the terms but didn't use them in the test records: http://www.loc.gov/standards/valuelist/rdamedia.html In actual applications, like OPAC displays, codes can easily be replaced by terms, and these may be changed anytime and anywhere. Only codes are language independent and do not fall into obsolescence or political incorrectness in which cases one would have to do millions of textual replacements. A modern design can and must avoid this sort of flaw. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Offlist reactions to the LC Bibliographic Framework statement
08.11.2011 07:01, Hal Cain: However, once I began to see how competent systems handled MARC, it became plain that what they were doing was basically to create a matrix and populate it with the tag values, the indicator values, and the subfield data prefixed by the subfield code. This is only one possible way. There are other ways; I programmed one that is not decidedly MARC specific but handles MARC/ISO anyway. It is scriptable, not hard- wired to do just this job and nothing else. The ISO7209 structure (later renamed Z39.2) was an incredibly fussy concoction that presumedly allowed for some efficiency in the days of magnetic tape based processing. (To know in advance, inside the program, how long a field would be, was an advantage then.) Today, fussing around like that is ridiculous, it would be full well possible and economical to use something like the MarcEdit external structure: =LDR 01234cam a22002771a 45e0 =001 438554701 =008 100412s1975n\\\eng\d =020 \\$a0913896039 =050 \0$aPN3377.5.S3 =082 00$a808.3876 =090 \\$aQ2'Fdg-150 =100 1\$aDe Camp , Lyon Sprague =245 00$aScience fiction handbook /$cL. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp =250 \\$aRevised ed. =260 \\$aPhiladelphia :$bOwlswick Press,$c1975 =300 \\$aVIII, 220 S. ; 8 =500 \\$aLiteraturverz. S. 203 - 212 =650 \0$aScience fiction Authorship =650 \0$aScience fiction History and criticism =700 12$aDe Camp , Catherine Crook =700 12$aCamp, Catherine Crook de It can be editied as a simple text file, sent by e-mail or ftp, or magnetic tape. It can use UTF-8 or any other encodings. For those few systems that still can ingest only ISO data, there's MarcEdit to convert it back and forth. It is therefore beside the point to talk about ISO2709 when discussing whether MARC must die or not. From a programmer's POV, this matter can be considered closed. MARC has other flaws that are much more serious and not all of them solvable algorithmically. Maybe the problem is that there's no universal bibliographic database that isn't MARC-based? There certainly are such databases. One of them is Pica, widely used in Europe, and now owned by OCLC. Another one is the system programmed by myself, also widely used. Both can handle MARC, in whichever ways it comes. But internally, they go their own ways. If needed, they deliver MARC records or whatever, via web services or as simple files. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Offlist reactions to the LC Bibliographic Framework statement
Jim, my point is, in nuce: Yes, MARC is horrible, but ISO is not the reason. You wrote: I wish that were true. ISO2709 is the standard way libraries exchange their records, and this means that anybody who wants library information must work with ISO2709. ISO2709 was designed to make catalog cards, No, even worse: MARC itself was designed for that as its primary function. ISO, for all its vices, does not enforce that kind of restriction. With ISO2709, it is designed to transfer a complete catalog record from one catalog into another catalog. Yes, but Web services on any MARC based catalog need not suffer from that, Web services can be constructed without paying any attention to the ISO structure. I said that much in my post. It is regrettable that up until now we still have not many useful web services as part of library OPACs. But the reason for this is certainly not ISO2709. Can someone with more MARC insight than me please confirm this so we can finally put this matter to rest? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Offlist reactions to the LC Bibliographic Framework statement
07.11.2011 10:55, Jim Weinheimer: With ISO2709, it is designed to transfer a complete catalog record from one catalog into another catalog. Yes, but Web services on any MARC based catalog need not suffer from that, Web services can be constructed without paying any attention to the ISO structure. I said that much in my post. It is regrettable that up until now we still have not many useful web services as part of library OPACs. But the reason for this is certainly not ISO2709. Have you ever seen or heard of a web service based on ISO2709? No, but there is, logically, no need to deal with ISO in order to construct web services. Any technical needs can be eliminated and should have been long ago. What then will be the purpose of ISO2709 except one: to transfer a catalog record from one library catalog to another? I know of no other purpose. But be that as it may, my point is that even for this function, it is no longer technically necessary. For all intents and purposes, MARC may live on forever without the need to deal with ISO2709. It is technically obsolete, but we need not care. Can anyone please prove me fundamentally wrong, or confirm what I say? B.E.
Re: [RDA-L] Offlist reactions to the LC Bibliographic Framework statement
04.11.2011 21:12, James Weinheimer: Concerning A Bibliographic Framework for the Digital Age http://www.loc.gov/marc/transition/news/framework-103111.html Also, in deference to Bernhard and his statement snip (ISO2709, BTW, is *not* among the flaws and issues. It is a very marginal issue of a purely internal nature and is in no way related to MARC as a content standard. ... /snip I must disagree 100%. Maintaining that ISO2709 is not a problem is like saying that the water in the local stream is fine. While you can't drink it immediately, all you have to do is take a few buckets of that water, let them sit for 5 or 6 hours to settle, then skim off what's on top. Boil the water you skimmed off for 10 minutes or so and then throw in a couple of chlorine tablets at the end. Shake it all up and voila! You can drink it. Therefore, the water is safe to drink! Jim, ISO2709 is a nuisance, agreed. And I dislike it no less than you do because I'm a real programmer and know what it feels like. But don't let's get carried away and rush to premature conclusions with inappropriate metaphors. Rather, consider this: Would you tear down your house and rebuild it from the ground up if the old wallpaper gives you the creeps? For that's what ISO2709 is: mere wallpaper. Easily replaced or painted over. Nothing serious, nothing that affects any qualities of the building. And in all those many OPACs that have a MARC display option: Does one of them show ISO data? Whether or not this option is anything an OPAC should have, this observation easily falsifies the hypothesis that MARC should be dumped or even sneered at because of ISO. And data communication, ISO's real and only intention, can be carried out just as well with MarcEdit's external text based format, with no end-user noticing any change. And while we are at this: What about the triplestore format LC has used to make their authority data available for download, esp. the LCNAF stuff with RDF/XML wallpapering: http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names.html Would that be a promising alternative to MARC (ISO or not)? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Offlist reactions to the LC Bibliographic Framework statement
After the new master plan had been publicized, I've had exchanges with various people about it. Mac referred to parts of this. Enthusiasm seems to be buildung up only very slowly, if at all... A plan of this caliber ought to make a real splash in the community. This is not just any old paper but a highly important one of potentially far-reaching ramifications and a high impact on the quality of the stuff we are working with, and thus the quality of our work, from now on into an indefinite future. We all expect this quality to improve, of course. Is this expectation justified by the Framework? For one thing: that plan puts all eggs into one basket in committing itself to Web standards like XML and RDF when, far and wide, there is no large-scale bibliographic database that serves real-life library work while being based on those. Correct me if I'm wrong. What with Linked Data and RDF, those are offsprings of the Semantic Web movement. In that arena, it is taken for granted that everything comes for free. Content standards that are not openly available will meet zero acceptance, may they use RDF or not. Of course, as was discussed yesterday, the maintenance of an open standard takes a long-term commitment. And for the data itself, what is OCLC's view on the matter of liberal access via triplestores? Now XML and RDF are not brand-new, and there certainly have been lots of attempts to employ them in a grand way, even some at very prestigeous places. Where are the success stories and the smoothly running new-age engines based on the results? I'm asking this not for the first time, but up until now got no answers in the forums. Certainly, library systems need to be able to export and import XML and RDF structures, side by side with many others. With the appropriate tools and interfaces, library catalogs need never show anybody, except those working on their upkeep, what their data looks like internally or how they communicate among each other. Even today, not every library system uses MARC internally. They just all of them are able to swallow it and spew it out. (No mean feat, I think, even today. Even something like VuFind takes in MARC and nothing else.) RDF triples in huge depositories called triplestores are static copies, they need to be frequently refreshed. Is that realistic? Will it really be useful and attractive for end-users if every library rig up their own triplestores - or should OCLC do that for all of them? Even now, OCLC could already be doing a *much* better job of letting end-users access structured data in many useful ways, XML structured and otherwise, out of the live database, not a stale copy. So: RDF is welcome as an addition, a special export product, but not suitable for internal purposes and much too clumsy for bulk communication. (JSON seems to be gaining ground now) Secondly, there is no need for there to be one and *only* one exchange standard. If some community needs some peculiar different format XYZ, there may be tools that take in MARC and serve up XYZ. On a per record or result set basis, web services can do that nicely, with no one caring what the original was looking like. If we create more and flexible standards for web services, these might solve or support most of the requirements our catalogs of the future are expected to fulfil for end-users and exchange, even with MARC inside. Web services are flexible, easily extended and modified, with no need to tinker with internal or communication structures. And the plan itself says that MARC21 should be retained as an exchange format for as long as necessary. So why not first create an alternative format, test it up and down any number of years, improve it or add yet another better design, and so on. And creating and enhancing web services standards all the while, as the *primary means* of access to library data from any outside agents. This can begin right now and it has begun in many places, so one should look at ways to coordinate and standardize some of this work. Eventually, let the market decide, let the better concept win or let it take over step by step as it gains acceptance. MARC may or may not fade away in the process, sine ira et studio. Anyway, two years to achieve credible progress, in this field? How's that defined, BTW, how will it be determined? And what does it mean to Demonstrate credible progress? Which of the many aspects of format features and uses will that include? (About involvement of NISO, there's another thread in this forum) And thirdly, data input and editing may use any modern techniques available today, hiding all the ghastly stuff involved with MARC under layers and subwindows of pulldowns and radio buttons and plain language labeled input fields. No playground for RDF and XML here. Ask the vendors why they don't provide that. But don't forget to evaluate the economy of a new catalogers' interface - and what it means to have different ones on sytems A, B and C - in comparison with the
Re: [RDA-L] NISO offers itself as the standards body for future format
02.11.2011 22:06, James Weinheimer: The process for moving MARC into today's information environment is important, as noted above. Wouldn't the process be better served by utilizing the existing and open standards development processes already in place that have served our community so well in so many areas? /snip The simple fact is that libraries need help. They need help for the actual task of creating metadata; they need help to figure out what types of metadata is needed today both by our patrons and for collection management; and they need help to come up with formats. Help with the creation of a new format would be great. What the library world needs here is, of course, an indefinite term commitment. And what we also need is a free and open standard, or else we can forget everything about opening up to other communities and freeing our data in the web for everybody to use. Libraries are there to make recorded knowledge universally available and useful. To assist this, today, they have to make their data universally available and useful, and with that huge body of data, the conventions that constitute its foundation. What we have instead is one not universally open entity in control of the data and another one in possession of the rules. Now, the format is to go into custody of a third? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Radical proposal for RDA inclusions
28.10.2011 11:00, Jim Weinheimer: Even catalogers don't work with the raw data format of MARC (don't worry. I won't begin my ISO2709 diatribe again!) but they are looking at a formatted display. Right, but the formal arrangement of the tags and elements takes nothing away from the accuracy and lucidity, it only enhances the latter, and the precise and quick communicability in the necessary interactions between catalogers. Raw data is if course not an accurate term here, I should have spoken of undisguised tagging and field contents. LC seems to be serious now, as they ought to be, about the matter of a new format. We have to keep in mind that 2013 was not called a deadline, but I wonder if anything is in the works now. Or will they outsource it, like they do with the RDA rewording task? The format issue is, however, a far more complex and momentous one. It is hardly likely that, all of a sudden in early 2013, the apostles of St. MARC will hand it down from the Hill, engraved on stone tablets. Some prior disclosures and discussions would be appreciated. As an aside: MARC has long since been open source. Will the new format eventually, like RDA, be readable and usable only under a paid subscription? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Radical proposal for RDA inclusions
27.10.2011 19:09, James Weinheimer: On 27/10/2011 17:42, J. McRee Elrod wrote: snip Why not enter, for example, [s.n] as a code in 260$b, and have systems display [publisher not identified], [editeur non identified], [Verlag nicht identifiziert], [chuban shang meiyou queding], etc., based on 040$b? ... The main requirement for this kind of scripting is that the information is consistent. In these cases, 260$b[s.n.], 245$c ... [et al.] and other terms have been entered very consistently for a very long time, so scripting would be pretty easy. Even I could do it. This is one tiny aspect of the much wider issue of what our future format is going to be like. LC have made it clear that RDA implementation will come not before 2013 AND only after these conditions have been met (among others): A. Demonstrate credible progress towards a replacement for MARC. B. Solicit demonstrations of prototype input and discovery systems (!) that use the RDA element set (including relationships). MARC, up until now, has been a storage and communication standard *as well as* a data input format. So this will have to change, finally. A. being a stiff one, B. might be even harder to meet. Right now, if I'm not mistaken, there is not even a requirements list for those tasks. I see two big issues here (among many more lesser ones) that should not be taken too lightly: 1. MARC as input standard has made sure that it was (more or less) the same everywhere. Someone trained at X could go to work at Y immediately without a lot of retraining. 2. Dealing with raw data at the person-machine interface of data input has at least two advantages: -- Directness: What you see is what you get, no layers of transformation and interpretation between you and the data. -- Ease of human communication: The format became the very language of catalogers' talk about the data; precise, succinct, unambiguous, international (numbers, not words!). Just listen in on any AUTOCAT discussion. For all the flaws of MARC, these are great advantages. Considering what modern systems can do, there could be any number of highly convenient but widely different input systems. As soon as two different ones are adopted at X and Y, points 1. and 2. are both lost. And then, modern input systems will evolve, they will change over time, get refined, modified, replaced by new designs. What will that mean for the productivity of the cataloging workforce? And how are they going to talk on AUTOCAT, for instance? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Presentations added to the JSC website
Am 05.09.2011 10:21, schrieb jscsecretary: Please find enclosed a link to the presentations page on the JSC website which has been updated with details of recent events and presentations forwarded by Laura May of Library and Archives Canada. ... The most recent item is this: http://www.rda-jsc.org/rdacop.html However, the most interesting points in that August 24 meeting report are those not touched upon: - The Co-publishers are going on financing RDA related work. This will mean there'll be no revision of the business model of RDA product marketing a.k.a. the Toolkit. IOW, no open access RDA text for the foreseeable future. Maybe the JSC felt unable to do anything about this, but is it not about time to make a clear statement on the matter? All the more because it is a crucial point if there is still hoping of getting other communities on board. They are not going to buy access to a globally monopolized text. - Nothing about MARC. The LC test report makes it a strong condition to meet before any RDA implementation that a migration path away from MARC be clearly initiated. And has it not been consensus for quite a while that developments of rules and formats should be co-ordinated much better than they used to? This moment in time should be a splendid opportunity for the JSC to at least make a statement and formulate some forward looking guidance on this matter. - The subject of the scenarios was not touched either. And this despite the test data having been much criticized on the grounds of their being a much too timid interpretation of RDA with no indication of any options towards anything beyond Scenario 3. Even considering no more than what MARC21 as it is now would make possible, this is a great disappointment. One might be tempted to ask, and I'm not sure if I'm not beginning to understand those who sympathize with such thinking, disrespectful though it is, if the RDA development is still in touch with reality. In any event, it will be interesting to see what a copy editor will be able to make of the RDA text. Bernhard Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Justification of added entries
30.08.2011 23:04, Heidrun Wiesenmueller: Actually, it's been puzzling me for some time why American librarians seem to be simply putting up with the fact that an essential tool of our trade does not work with keyword searching in their systems. Shouldn't there be crowds of librarians demonstrating in front of the offices of ILS suppliers, demanding that a technical solution be found for this problem? Those vendors understand the Greenback language much better, or in fact, barely any other. But to be fair, there *is* commercial software that does what you describe. It only requires 1. Local installation of the authority files or their relevant portions 2. Replacing or augmenting the textual authority strings in the bib records with the identifiers. This also needs to be done in a timely manner for incoming new records. 3. Frequent updates of authority data and cleanups of bib data. All of that comes at a price. Among the eligible vendors are ExLibris and OCLC. The latter own the Pica LBS that does what you referred to in many German places. (Why they apparently do not market this in the US, or with little success, I don't know.) It would help a great deal if LC and OCLC could add identifiers to the 1XX, 6XX and 7XX fields. Which is what DNB is going to do, only their identifiers are theirs, not LC's. So, it might be more to the point to put up demos on Capitol Hill and in Columbus, Ohio. It wouldn't even take a migration away from MARC. They do have all the necessary elements, no extra data entry labor required. Alternatively, the VIAF might be expanded into a versatile web service that can be queried from outside to deliver to local systems the auhtority form of names as requested in opac queries and then the opac would use those instead of what the user entered. But this is pie in the sky and not easy to implement at all. Not to speak of the funding... B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Wording of RDA
08.08.2011 16:38, J. McRee Elrod: Since one of the conditions set by the US national libraries for implementation of RDA was rewording in simple English, why are constituent cataloguing committees still working on rule wording revisions, revisions which are often not amplifications? The community has an interest in, if not a right to, knowing what's happening now and who's doing what to meet the criteria set forth by the LC report. Esp. those criteria talking about the RDA text and the intended MARC replacement. Too early to ask? Well, how far are we away from early 2013, on the timescale of library history. We are again reduced to waiting for things that should have happened yesteryear. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Completeness of records
08.08.2011 23:42, Kevin M Randall: I know the validity of the FRBR user tasks from my own personal experience over a lifetime, plus interactions with other people who have apparently had the same kinds of experiences over their respective lifetimes. The FRBR user tasks are: FIND - ... IDENTIFY - ... SELECT - ... OBTAIN - ... In all of my life, through primary and secondary school, college, and graduate school, and in my general day-to-day life, whenever I approach a library catalog (or any catalog or web site for that matter), I have been doing these things. Yes, whenever seeking out books or, more generally, recorded knowledge, these steps - as by our experience - are what it takes to get there: let's call it the FISO technique. Now, for information seeking on the web, those 4 steps many times happen all in one fell swoop, or so is the experience, and certainly the expectation, of search engine users. That means those steps are not, as such, perceived as separate stages of a search activity. Ask anyone entering a library what tasks they are hoping to get done there. Will FISO be their reply? Most often, I'm fairly sure, they have questions and need answers. How and from whence these come is secondary. Only after it turns out the answer will be somewhat complex and maybe only in this or that book, or any book, do they go about aforementioned tasks in one way or other, stepwise, as guided by a clever system or intermediate. While their expectation, based on experience, makes them believe it ought to be lots easier, quicker, directer. How large is the subset of questions that should end up in a catalog search as the best or only way of searching? Esp. if the FRBR entities of class 1 and 2 is all we are dealing with in a catalog - and it is all RDA is up to right now - this fraction of questions is presumably not very big. And fewer still are those that could use a WEMI model. There was a time when it was necessary for most any question to first ponder in what book or category of literature the answer might be hidden. And then of course, i.e. almost always, the procedure was FISO. Today, it is what one has to follow less and less frequently. The practical relevance of catalogs, and their rules, with regard to the body of questions people are out to solve is going down ever further, I'm afraid. The decline may possibly be protracted but not reversed, if we enrich catalogs and endow them with new functions and features, most of which not figuring in the current RDA or FRBR. B.Eversberg As an aside: To insist on FISO and FRBR reminds of a scene in Goethe's Faust I, where Mephisto tells the student about what to expect from Collegium logicum: ... Then many a day they'll teach you how The mind's spontaneous acts, till now As eating and as drinking free, Require a process;---one! two! three! In truth the subtle web of thought Is like the weaver's fabric wrought: ... http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3023/pg3023.html
Re: [RDA-L] Completeness of records
08.08.2011 10:01, James Weinheimer: The Worldcat example that I gave before for searching the work of Cicero's Pro Archia http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3Acicero+ti%3Apro+archia, allowing the searcher to limit by format, by other authors (editors), by date of publication, language, etc. overfulfills those 19th century FRBR user tasks without the need for redoing, retraining, reconceptualizing, re-everything. It can be done today, right now for *no extra money*--just let your systems people devise some queries. ... If this bit of reality could be accepted, perhaps we could claim success: FRBR is now implemented! And at no real costs! Wouldn't THAT be nice to claim?!. Then we could move on to other discussions that would be more relevant to the genuine needs of the vast majority of our patrons. Right, AND don't we forget we need consistent data, esp. with the uniform titles. Add to this the AACR2 updates done by M. Gorman and Mac, and there is indeed, and I think this bears repeating, no urgent need to venture on a big migration of both code and format. The results of that herculean act would just not go far enough beyond what can already be done without it. (Furthermore, cataloging codes that are not under open access cannot succeed anyway.) I think VIAF could be extended to include uniform titles. Better integration of VIAF into cataloging interfaces would then go a long way towards improved consistency. For countries, such as Germany, hitherto not under the star-spangled banner of AACR2, the need for migration can also be obviated by intensified and clever use of VIAF. [Though this is not an open access tool either, but there's nothing to replace it, whatever code and format we use.] B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Browse and search BNB open data
05.08.2011 00:36, Karen Coyle: John Attig: Access points are treated rather strangely in RDA. The access point is not itself an element, but is a construct made up of other elements, which contains instructions about what and when to include various elements in an access point. That actually makes sense from a data design point of view. It means that compound things can be built up of simple things, and that means that you have flexibility in what you can build. (read: tinker-toys, or, for the younger set, Legos) Very important indeed, but elementary for any data technician. Not quite so for those who have been raised on AACR+MARC. They find it strange, as John seems to indicate. Why is that so? Starting out from the mental image of MARC, one may find it natural that everything that can be accessed in a search must be recorded in some data field, and exactly in the way it is needed for the access. This notion needs to be shattered. It has led to such extremes that, for instance, in authority records you have 53 variant names, each and every one of them carrying the same dates for that person. The access points for the variant names can, however, easily be contructed out of a name field plus a date field - the latter always the same. MARC derives from the requirements of card printing. There, each heading (access point in the card catalog) had to be complete and correctly formed as part of the record. This is no longer true, and has never been true in data processing systems: 1. Headings can be constructed out of arbitrary elements, they need not be stored as monolithic strings inside the record 2. New access points can be constructed that had never been possible in card catalogs. All kinds of combinations and reformattings of field contents can be programmed, no need to have every access point prepared in advance and stored in its own field. For example, extract the publisher's name out of the 260 and remove certain particles from it, and then get the date out of the fixed fields to make a useful index entry (access point) like name:date This is easy to understand, but as a consequence, the rules, and thus the data model, will become more abstract and more difficult to understand. But maybe only for someone who has been brought up on the notions of the card catalog and later those of MARC. For someone with a background in abstract data structures, John Attig's clarifications are no surprise at all. One more reason, one might think, to get rid of MARC ASAP. Not really, though. Firstly, because it is utterly unrealistic, and second. because MARC is flexible enough to be used in new software applications that do new tricks with the old stuff AND are able to deal with some new data elements in novel ways. It is not the worst of ideas to look at the additions Germans and Austrians have thought up for their MARC dialect. It will allow us to continue with our scenario 2 applications as they are long since in operation, and the further step to scenario 1, if at all necessary and useful, would not be very difficult either. We are not using MARC internally, and are not going to, but our internal formats are no less complex. They are only not rooted in the mental image of the card. B.Eversberg
[RDA-L] Get galvanized now!
If you don't feel decently galvanized yet, find stimulating stuff on the JSC website, now updated with loads of presentations, by Barbara Tillett and Judy Kuhagen. http://www.rda-jsc.org/rdapresentations.html The latest one by Judy Kuhagen should do the trick. On slides 116/116, she says *Implementing RDA?* . If yes to that question, need to get ready . If no to that question, still need to get ready --RDA bibliographic and authority records in shared databases local catalogs --RDA access points in non-RDA records . If you don't know the answer yet, *still need* to get ready *Who needs to get ready?* . You . Your library colleagues . Your library's ILS . Your library's users Have a thrilling weekend, B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Article on RDA implementation
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891482-264/cataloging_community_galvanized_as_u.s..csp The community is galvanized? Well, well. This article aims at a quite comprehensive summing-up and makes a good read for anybody who wants to get in the picture or hasn't followed events over the last several years. One might, however, find a few points missing or neglected. Among which: 1. The fact is not mentioned that the RDA text is under the global monopoly of ALA Publishing instead of in the open domain where this sort of resources belong. Esp. if one intention is to get other communities on board and to make a splash not just in the library ecosystem but in the Web. 2. There's no reference to the three scenarios discussed for implementation. More generally: RDA is not a monolithic code but a vast assortment of options and alternatives. Specifically: The report fails to tell that what was tested is only a very basic and restricted interpretation of RDA: Scenario 3. Therefore, test results can tell little if anything about the potential of or the problems with 1 and 2. 3. The report says, The elements in RDA have been registered as an element set at the Open Metadata Registry, which should facilitate its integration with the Semantic Web once it has been developed. First: What is this it: The Semantic Web? The Registry? RDA? Second: It ought to be made clear that the Registry started as a more or less private initiative, not supported and not funded by the RDA developers, and officially recognized only recently. The names of those who did the work thus deserve to be mentioned. Third: Will the Registry become part of the toolkit and thus of the monopoly? 4. The British Library and other national libraries have done considerable work in the course of RDA development, and are interested in implementation as well, and this would add greatly to the relevance of the new code. The report is silent on all of this. But ok, the publication is a U.S. journal. (International, as we've come to realize, mostly includes Canada and Australia, sometimes the UK. Language is not a subject in the report either. Others may sometimes wonder, does working together mean working for them?) [I know there has been consultation between JSC and other national librries, but what are the results?] 5. No reference to VIAF as the most promising component to improve the global metadata infrastructure, with RDA being precisely no prerequisite. No reference to open data and linked data concepts either. 6. Beacher Wiggins is quoted as stating Moving away from MARC to be one of the most important conditions necessary to address if the implementation of RDA was to move forward. This leaves the reader puzzling over who will be doing what to meet this condition. It may well be the least realistic of said conditions. 7. There's no reference in the report to discussions and concerns as voiced, for example, in this forum. Though, what can we expect when even the JSC is not listening most of the time to what's being said outside their ivory tower. Or so it seems. They are maybe lurking here, but maybe not. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Browse and search BNB open data
03.08.2011 17:42, McRee Elrod: How anyone comparing the XML and MARC versions could prefer the XML is beyond me. We find it simple to crosswalk from MARC to XML for anyone who wants it, but not back again. The latter is what we had to do in order to construct our database. Sure you can't get full MARC21 out of the stuff, but as BL has said, the current version is only a beginning. (Notwithstanding, I think you *can* find a thing or two in the database as it is.) The broader issue of whether or not XML will indeed have to be looked at. XML has been around for quite a while, and it has been showered with much enthusiasm. Not only that, but many an ambitious attempt has been made at doing metadata in a big way in XML, by more than a few good fellows eager to prove something. Well, we are all set to applaud the first compelling success. Why not take our solidly non-XML BNB database as a benchmark to surpass in a big way with an XML implementation? Doing new tricks not otherwise doable. But seriously, XML is certainly inadequate as a medium for data input and editing. A software interface will have to shield the raw XML entirely from the view of catalogers. And that's rather curious because XML is praised for being able to use human-readable tagging. But as not only Mac has found, how readable actually is an XML record when compared with a MARC record? The verbal tags only make the clueless think they understand what they read, but tag numbers, besides being language independent, can convey much more meaning and, as we all know, become a shorthand language that is more precise and faster for actual communication than cumbersome verbal tags as we see them in any attempts of XML metadata. XML may be many things, but it is not economical, in more than one way. This may be old-school views. Just prove me wrong. Only in practice, not in theory. Okay then, what now? What's going to be the medium and paradigm for the MARC successor? This question needs an answer, and soon, if RDA is to have a future and if this future is to begin in early 2013. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Browse and search BNB open data
Karen Coyle wrote, ... recent Code4Lib journal: http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/5468 One of the difficulties of deciding what we do and do not want to keep in MARC, or what we want to move over to the RDA environment, is that we have no dictionary of everything that MARC covers. For example, what standard identifiers are available in MARC? They are scattered all over the format,... Yours is a worthwhile endeavor, no doubt. You may try a database which, although as good as current current, has been in existence for a long time and under a somewhat old-fashioned interface. And it covers not just MARC but several other formats as well, even Unimarc and the old BNBMARC and a few more obscure ones. You get into the alphabetical list of field and subfield names directly like this, (add your keyword to the end of it) http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/formate/page.php?urG=KWDurA=24urS= There's also a MARC tag index: http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/formate/page.php?urG=MRCurA=24urS=... The alphabetical listing contains all sorts of words, even German ones, but all the MARC terms are marked M21 plus the actual MARC tag. May it help, B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Browse and search BNB open data
02.08.2011 18:34, J. McRee Elrod: http://www.allegro-c.de/db/a30/bl.htm Am I correct that there is no MARC display available? OK, for what it's worth and for good measure, I've added that in; no big deal since we've got what it takes. Now, MARC appears directly underneath the regular display. But only as complete and as correct as the stuff that was released. The format made available by BL is an XML schema of their own design, documented here: http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html (under Data model draft schema) A sample XML record: rdf:Description dcterms:titleThe elves and the emperor/dcterms:title dcterms:creator rdf:Description rdfs:labelRobinson, Hilary, 1962-/rdfs:label /rdf:Description /dcterms:creator dcterms:contributor rdf:Description rdfs:labelSanfilippo, Simona./rdfs:label /rdf:Description /dcterms:contributor dcterms:type rdf:Description rdfs:labeltext/rdfs:label /rdf:Description /dcterms:type dcterms:type rdf:Description rdfs:labelmonographic/rdfs:label /rdf:Description /dcterms:type isbd:P1016 rdf:Description rdfs:labelLondon/rdfs:label /rdf:Description /isbd:P1016 dcterms:publisher rdf:Description rdfs:labelWayland/rdfs:label /rdf:Description /dcterms:publisher dcterms:issued2009/dcterms:issued dcterms:language rdf:Description rdf:value rdf:datatype=http://purl.org/dc/terms/ISO639-2;eng/rdf:value /rdf:Description /dcterms:language dcterms:extent rdf:Description rdfs:label31 p/rdfs:label /rdf:Description /dcterms:extent dcterms:descriptionOriginally published: 2008./dcterms:description dcterms:subject skos:Concept skos:notation rdf:datatype=ddc:Notation428.6/skos:notation skos:inScheme rdf:resource=http://dewey.info/scheme/e22; / /skos:Concept /dcterms:subject dcterms:isPartOf rdf:Description rdfs:labelFairytale jumbles/rdfs:label /rdf:Description /dcterms:isPartOf dcterms:isPartOf rdf:Description rdfs:labelStart reading. Purple band 8/rdfs:label /rdf:Description /dcterms:isPartOf dcterms:identifier(Uk)015346892/dcterms:identifier dcterms:identifierGBA979108/dcterms:identifier bibo:isbn9780750255233/bibo:isbn bibo:isbn0750255234/bibo:isbn dcterms:identifierURN:ISBN:9780750255233/dcterms:identifier dcterms:identifierURN:ISBN:0750255234/dcterms:identifier /rdf:Description which translates like this: =LDR 01234cam a22002771i 45e0 =001 015346892 =007 ta =008 \\991231s2009n\\\eng\d =020 \\$a9780750255233 =040 $ea =082 00$a428.6 =100 1\$aRobinson, Hilary (1962-) =245 04$aThe elves and the emperor /$cHilary Robinson =260 \\$aLondon :$bWayland,$c2009 =300 \\$a31 p =440 \0$aFairytale jumbles =440 \0$aStart reading. Purple band 8 =500 \\$aOriginally published: 2008. =700 12$aSanfilippo, Simona B.E.
Re: [RDA-L] Browse and search BNB open data
Am 03.08.2011 10:55, schrieb James Weinheimer: There are definite advantages with this level of coding but on the negative side, it is more work, prone to many more errors, and is more difficult to train new people, especially as there will be the push to simplify. I think these questions will begin to be asked (finally!), and answered too. This project from the British Library may be a great catalyst for the discussion. The BL has teamed up with Talis to develop and improve their open data activities. Here's more about that, together with a nice diagram any cataloger might love to mount on their office wall: http://consulting.talis.com/2011/07/british-library-data-model-overview/ I understand that the current release is only a first step, and together with Talis they will produce an improved version in the near future. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] RDA in XML - Question
Am 28.07.2011 18:50, schrieb J. McRee Elrod: I find RDA terminology far less precise that AACR2, which extends to the HTML markup terms above. Basic distinctions are lacking. That's not your fault Karen, considering the muddy text you had to work with. Any word on who is given the task of rewriting in simple English? And much more important, even if RDA will go to the dustbin: Who's working on the MARC alternative which LC has made a prerequisite for RDA adoption? What suggestions are on the table? B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Progress on tasks?
Am 24.07.2011 19:01, schrieb James Weinheimer: On 21/07/2011 17:18, Beacom, Matthew wrote: The MARC pilot project report is available in PDF here http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED029663.pdf Of course, what we see in the report reflects the limited technology and world view of the 1960s. In a pre-internet world, it was far more difficult to communicate with large, disparate groups compared with what can be done today. Today, the technology has made it possible for people with much less knowledge and experience to participate in highly technical tasks. Today, everyone who wants to participate *can* be included, and the fact that this sort of all-inclusive organizational model can succeed has been proven through the development of open source software. Keeping matters secret among a restricted set of all-knowing gurus, who allow limited information dribble out and then presenting everyone with what is in essence a fait accompli that can be rejected only by admitting a huge waste, is a thing of the past, or at least it should be. -- This includes the necessity of openness of the code textbase, in the sense that, at least, 1. Everyone can read it and search it for free 2. Deep linking, down to every single rule, is possible from any source. 3. Web services can be constructed that deliver rule text in well- defined formats. This mechanism could then be integrated into any cataloging or metadata editing interface. 4. Drafts and discussion material must be freely accessible in the widest possible way. We have seen that in RDA development already. 5. Those in charge of creating and managing the textbase have to participate in open discussions on all aspects of it. They may transfer the charge of communication with the public to an impartial liaison officer, to prevent chaos and information overload. One-way or no communication are no options. Not all of this needs to be provided by an agency that has everything under control. For a start, just liberate the text and see what happens. On the other hand, fee-based, commercial services are not to be excluded and may provide all sorts of added value, obtainable only by subscription or purchase, pricing entirely left to their discretion. They would, however, receive the same level and scope of access to the text as everybody else: No monopolized access to the textbase. Now that RDA has to be rewritten anyway, the chance is within the scope of possibilities. I am aware that this excludes the familiar ways of commercial funding of code development and the subsequent monopolized, copyrighted access to the text. This is a thing of the past, definitely, budget crunch or not, and any scheme still based on it can no longer succeed. At least not in a good enough way to result in mentionable, communicable improvements. And not in a big enough way to overcome the AACR2+MARC21 octopus. Just look at the test data if you don't believe this. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Progress on tasks?
20.07.2011 18:13, Damian Iseminger: It seems a tad unrealistic to expect progress on any of these goals since ALA just concluded less than a month ago and the next meeting of the JSC is not until mid-August in Scotland. Agreed. Mac's questions are, however, valid in that they reflect concerns many or most libraries will now be sharing: Who's going to do what now, and what can we expect to happen when? How will it affect operations? How can we prepare? Will the Toolkit content be revamped entirely so it is no use to get involved with it now? Will costs skyrocket if MARC gets trashed? And so on and so further. Right now, everything seems open again, and that's a bit too much to believe in a turning point in early 2013. The size of this affair and its potential ramifications is such that what we need now is timely and complete information on all steps that are being taken. No more secrecy or much-delayed supply of too little information. We need to become part of open environments, and everywhere else such environments have open standards for global communities, not managed by tight-lipped steering committees or advisory panels in semi-annual, invitation only meetings, and accessible only on a subscription basis. There will have to be a whole new spirit of collaboration and information sharing that welcomes everybody who is willing to contribute. As a minimum, there would have to be some kind of liaison officer who would communicate ASAP all relevant information discussed in the closed circles. And who would provide convincing answers to questions we can now all too often only speculate about although we can be sure that those who could answer them are among the readership of this forum, for instance. How else can one expect the whole undertaking to become a success? Success on the scale envisioned takes enthusiasm, active engagement on all levels, participation in decision processes wherever possible, and all this cannot be ordered but only generated in open environments. If RDA cannot catch up to these models, then indeed there's room for a sceptic view of its potential for success. This is not to criticize the LC. They have certainly done a very good job conducting the test and communicating the results forthwith. It is only that the test was ill conceived from the start and did no more than scratch the surface of what FRBR is all about, for instance. But they've noticed that this is due to limitations of MARC... B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Progress on tasks?
21.07.2011 13:33, Hal Cain ... pausing for feedback and consideration by others may make the task impossible. In her invention of MARC, I don't recall that Henriette Avram paused to consult stakeholders... At that time, if I'm not entirely wrong, the stakeholders all sat on Capitol Hill. (And MARC was explicitly designed so that customers wouldn't notice much of a change in the cards they received.) So, you suggest they close their doors and shield themselves from outside noise, to re-emerge on Jan. 1, 2013, and present us with a new Septuaginta? B.E.
Re: [RDA-L] SLC cheat sheets
On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 8:24 PM, J. McRee Elrod wrote: The SLC cheat sheets have undergone extensive revision, and new ones have been added. Any who have downloaded them, or received copies from me, should replace them. If RDA is finally not implemented, I will regret all the work incorporating RDA alternatives. But the relief will be greater than the regret! Perfect timing Mac, congratulations! Your MRI business with Michael Gorman is a stroke of genius, your down-to-earth pragmatism and resourcefulness combined with his immense knowledge and theoretical insight can mean nothing but success. You are certainly right that AACR2 + MRIs can achieve practically the same results that RDA implementation might achieve, at a fraction of the cost and disruption. However, and I'm not sure how big an 'however' this is, your approach is an updating of AACR2 whereas RDA is a new approach with more theoretical potential than AACR2. Only the test data do not exploit it in that they do not go beyond Scenario 3. Anyway, to build a convincing business case for RDA has just become a bit harder. It would take at least a Scenario 2 commitment and a successor to MARC. Before they have all of that in place, your new deal might be extended further to cover as much of WEMI as the world may need. Cheers! B.Eversberg
[RDA-L] Triumvirate of giants committed to scheming
Some of us have anticipated that one day Google would enter the metadata arena with an approach entirely their own. Now, this seems to have happened. But not just Google alone is making the move, they have forged an unprecedented triumvirate with their two biggest competitors, Microsoft and Yahoo: http://schema.org Didn't we also expect that their design would bear scant resemblance with anything the library world has ever come up with? And it is true. There's also no similarity with the Dublin Core, for that matter. OTOH, their vision is far removed from anything like catalog cards, just what we've been dreaming of, is it not? Even better, it is a record-free concept. The word metadata, not to speak of catalog, has obviously been carefully circumvented, for whatever reason. There is also no pondering of functional requirements or user tasks, and a closer look reveals, in particular, that the FRBR user tasks can have been of no concern in their reasoning. There is, however, something akin to an authority concept for persons. The whole scheme addressesprimarilythe tasks of the SEO, the Search Engine Optimizer, and these do not necessarily coincide with the interests of the search engine user in every search situation, AGWS. Structured markup, instead of metadata, is a much-used term in the documentation. It is based on w3.org's Microdata (http://dev.w3.org/html5/md-LC/), and the gist of it all appears to be this: By adding additional tags to the HTML of your web pages -- tags that say, Hey search engine, this information describes this specific movie, or place, or person, or video -- you can help search engines and other applications better understand your content and display it in a useful, relevant way. Microdata is a set of tags, introduced with HTML5, that allows you to do this. For now, it is only HTML documents that microdata can be applied to. Different from DC, microdata tags can be spread out all over the file, just in those places it applies to. That means the metadata for a Web page is tightly integrated with the content, it does not form a record for the page as a whole but it can describe any and many parts of it, but it is useless if ripped out of context. It could thus not become an easy successor to MARC in which records stand in as surrogates for resources. All of that sounds pretty remote from what we need and what we are doing, and why not indeed. But if this thing picks up speed (not totally unlikely, considering who's involved), we better take a look. If it won't, one may still learn a bit from the way it fails. Reproduced here, for the record (no pun intended), is the list of attributes for their Book schema. Note what they regard important and what not. Book is on the third level of an object hierarchy: Thing / CreativeWork / Book http://schema.org/Book (contains example, as of now, draft version 0.9) PROPERTY TYPEDESCRIPTION Properties from Thing - description TextA short description of the item. image URL URL of an image of the item. name TextThe name of the item. url TextURL of the item. Properties from CreativeWork about Thing The subject matter of the content. aggregateRating AggregateRating The overall rating, based on a collection of reviews or ratings, of the item. audio AudioObject An embeded audio object or URL assoc. w. the content author Person or Organization The author of this content. Please note that author is special in that HTML 5 provides a special mechanism for indicating authorship via the rel tag. That is equivalent to this and may be used interchangabely. awards TextAwards won by this person or for this creative work. contentLocation Place The location of the content. contentRating TextOfficial rating of a piece of content for example,'MPAA PG-13'. datePublished DateDate of first broadcast/publication. editor Person Editor for this content. encodings MediaObject The media objects that encode this creative work genre TextGenre of the creative work headline TextHeadline of the article inLanguage TextThe language of the content. please use one of the language codes from the IETF BCP 47 standard. interactionCount TextA count of a specific user interactions with this item - for example, 20 UserLikes, 5 UserComments, or 300 UserDownloads. The user interaction type should be one of the sub types of UserInteraction. isFamilyFriendly Boolean Indicates whether this content is family friendly (!) keywords TextThe
[RDA-L] RDA Test Final Report: What about the scenarios?
After the final report was released: http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/rda/rdatesting-finalreport-20june2011.pdf it might be interesting to see what was said about the scenario issue, as presented by Tom Delsey in 2009: http://www.rda-jsc.org/docs/5editor2rev.pdf For convenience, let us call these RDA/1, /2, and /3. The final report - if I didn't overlook something - says nothing about scenarios. (Appendix J speaks of 6 scenarios, but these are about Use of Existing Authority and Bibliographic Records, something quite different) Unsurprisingly, the test records confirm they are strictly RDA/3 only: there are no linked authority records, and there are no separate work and expression records. RDA/3 is the least worthwhile to consider. Its benefits over AACR2 are marginal, not by far enough to make a convincing business case in RDA's favor. To make a decision about RDA implementation based on the results of the test and the quality of the test records, will do RDA and FRBR a great injustice and will discredit both. That would be most unfortunate, but we need to be aware that what LC is going to do will then be taken for The Standard. Right now, we can only hope that the envisioned modifications will be very substantial ones. DeutschMARC, if that is of any interest here, will be strictly RDA/1 oriented, for otherwise it could not accommodate our legacy data. There will also be full provisions for the part-whole relationship, not considered in the test data either. All of this will ensure that German data and LC-OCLC-MARC21 data will continue to be as poorly interoperable as they are now, at least for a good many publications. The only device that achieves some interoperability is VIAF. But VIAF was constructed and operates without regard to RDA, nor MARC21 for that matter. It might benefit from RDA, but not if things go on like it appears now. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] RDA Test Final Report
20.06.2011 14:46, James Weinheimer: One of the most remarkable findings I have found in the report is on p. 103: RDA testers in comments noted several benefits of moving to RDA paraphrased as follows: ... o using language of users rather than Latin abbreviations, o seeing more relationships, o having more information about responsible parties with the rule of 3 now just an option, o finding more identifying data in authority records o having the potential for increased international sharing -- by following the IFLA International Cataloguing Principles and the IFLA models FRBR and FRAD. and Jim goes ahead and tears all of it to pieces. Indeed, I can't think any of this will make a splash with decision makers and win them over. What testers are disguising here is, in effect, no more than their feeling to be beyond the point of no return, having poured that much effort into the project. Or, as was said before, it's become too big to fail. What, however, will success actually mean, and cost? It will have to be realized, I think, that the test data are a much too timid attempt, based on a much too watered-down version of RDA. As this is due to attempting, at the same time, to do everything within MARC21 with very little modification, there is now just some hope the search for format alternatives will be much bolder and will lead to a new attempt that does RDA's concepts some justice. (Although it will remain a mere embellishment of 19th century ideas, not a forward-looking architectural vision.) B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Announcing the LC/NAL/NLM RDA Implementation decision
15.06.2011 11:14, James Weinheimer: Work on RDA had been underway for several years, so a decision to suspend it could not be made lightly. Therefore, if work had not been going on, it would have been easier to suspend it. Or, is RDA already too big to fail? The subtext to this report is also the lack of any alternatives mentioned, therefore the library community is seen as being left with the choice of accepting RDA, no matter what the outcomes may be, or staying still, spinning our wheels in the mud of the past. Not only are no alternatives mentioned, but other open issues as well: 1. What about the scenarios? Test data are clearly covering the most basic scenario 3 only, with the part-whole relationship not even touched. Will it be the only realistic one, and will that be worth the effort? 2. Is the worldwide business monopoly model the only alterntive, for an indefinite future? Libraries labor to make their resources universally accessible and useful on the Web, but what about the RDA text? What other communities are actually going to buy it, and how many libraries will not be able to? How easy will it be to facilitate community involvement if everyone has to pay entrance fees? 3. Is it not the grim reality that more needs to be achievable with fewer resources, for a long time to come? The business case cannot be one that calls for a little more investment to get a larger return but one that must achieve definitely more with considerably less. But also new and different things, not just more of the same. The report seems to be aware of this but only in very vague terms. 4. Is RDA truly and really the name to stay? In order to be successful in this time and age, a name for a bold new project needs to be inventive, aesthetically appealing, and unique. It need *not* be any literal expression of what it is, but the name can be entirely fanciful, to make people stop and capture their curiousness. OK, it is not meant for the general public. But then you still need something new for them as well for you also don't want to talk about the catalog any more. That means, a naming contest needs to be part of the agenda. On the positive side, the metadata registry, long ignored by some of the powers that be, is now part of the agenda. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Proposed new 34X fields
10.06.2011 14:30, J. McRee Elrod: A colleague suggests that the secret agenda is to complicate MARC to the point that it collapses. Only that MARC is incollapsible. The software base that understands and handles MARC and nothing beside is just too large, to replace it and to migrate into new environments globally is an intractable task logistically and financially. More and more systems will of course be left behind and not be able to make full use of all new or changed fields and features. Something new can emerge and grow only alongside MARC, which will then slowly (but very slowly) fade away into oblivion some time next century. For a considerable period, there will thus be an uneasy divide in librarydom, and this will leave the bibliographic universe in disarray for even longer. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Announcing the LC/NAL/NLM RDA Implementation decision
15.06.2011 00:43, Kevin M. Randall: I don't believe the records still coming out of the University of Chicago, Stanford, and others are test records--they're the real deal. So much the worse. For the test records, by a very wide margin, do not reflect the full RDA potential. Just as there is and always was a wide gap between MARC potential and MARC reality. What's perceived as being the standard is always the real data, not what the documents say. For one thing: The relationship between the part and the whole, as specified in RDA, is nowhere to be seen in the test records. Also, they do not contain machine actionable relationships of any kind, just plain old textual strings of what used to be called headings and now authorized access points with no difference in substance and potential. The report does indeed answer the question if the test records are a worthwhile improvement over AACR2 records: Business case--- [on page 4] The test revealed that there is little discernible immediate benefit in implementing RDA alone. The adoption of RDA will not result in significant cost savings in metadata creation. There will be inevitable and significant costs in training. Immediate economic benefit, however, cannot be the sole determining factor in the RDA business case. It must be determined if there are significant future enhancements to the metadata environment made possible by RDA and if those benefits, long term, outweigh implementation costs. The recommendations are framed to make this determination prior to implementation. And this, I think, is maybe the most important section in the report. RDA *might* provide significant enhancements over AACR2, but the test records don't show that. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] RDA MARC coding question
Am 30.04.2011 12:20, schrieb James Weinheimer: Concerning MARC coding, as far as I am concerned, the changes toward FRBR started from the wrong point. (For the moment, I will assume that FRBR would be a good thing to implement) Changes started with the data (RDA) and not with the format. The first step in changes should have been the communications format ... into something more modern, more flexible and more useful to the general metadata community. It would make no sense to try to exchange true FRBR types of records using MARC/ISO2709, so the changes should have started there. Let's not forget that the test data is currently all we can go by: http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/a30/rdatest.htm And further, let's keep in mind that RDA is a huge grab bag of options to choose from. For the test, alas, the choices they actually made are far from what it would take to demonstrate RDA's theoretical potential, esp. with regard to FRBR's bibliographically structured object orientation. I'm almost inclined to say this test is a disservice to the very intentions of FRBR; these data just *cannot* prove it to be a superior concept. Apart from that, a new code cannot succeed if you have to pay for a subscription in order to read it. In this time and age, and for our profession anyway, a fatally wrong approach. B.Eversberg
Re: [RDA-L] Latin, the dead language
Am 02.05.2011 14:21, schrieb Will Evans: Your faith in the authors of RDA is touching, but it seems to me they assume users live in a vacuum and are incapable of acquiring a modicum of cultural literacy. And anyway, Latin is not dead as long as English lives. English is, of all non-Romance languages, the one with the most numerous latin roots in its vocabulary. Let's also not forget that in ancient Rome Latin was not the language of the (largely illiterate) general public. Even Cicero, in private letters, did not write high Latin throughout. Nonetheless, the general public understood as much Latin as they needed to understand, and just as well we ought not dismiss our clientele for a confederacy of dunces. B.Eversberg
