Stephens, Owen wrote:
Thanks Karen - some further comments (cross posted to the DC-RDA list as
it feels like I'm encroaching on this territory - original postings are
below):
Two of the issues I raised I think relate to the question of what should
be in the 'usage guidelines':
1. Are AACR2/RDA 'usage guidelines' or a mixture of stuff that should be
in DSP and usage guidelines?
In a sense they are a mixture, but only in a human-readable way. The
difference is that the DSP is a formal language, and readable by
machines. So some of what is now in RDA will need to be re-interpreted
and coded into a DSP, and some of what is now in MARC will also probably
need to be added to such a DSP to make it complete. (Because MARC
includes restrictions that apply to machine-readable records that are
not included in RDA.) (BTW, the whole MARC/RDA thing is a huge issue
which is not being discussed, IMO -- that is, what belongs in RDA, and
what will actually be allowed when you create a record.) Which leads to
your next question:
2. Would you encode a restriction like 'books may have no more than 20
authors' in the DSP, and also state it in the usage guidelines?
You could. Somewhere you need to tell the person who is actually
creating the catalog record what the rules are so that they can make the
decisions they have to make. Undoubtedly, a user interface could perform
some of that by using a pull-down list for vocabularies and not allowing
you to create two instances of a data element that is not repeatable.
Ideally, the usage guidelines would explain *why* this is the case in a
way that makes sense to the cataloger. I think different communities
will do this differently, but I suspect that the library community will
continue to want very detailed, human-readable rules.
I feel like I'm getting a bit picky here, but I wonder if it gets to the
heart of why one should adopt the DCAP approach rather than the approach
we currently have for RDA/AACR2 + MARC
Ah! as per my note above regarding MARC -- people do tend to forget that
it's part of the mix, even though we know that catalogers today catalog
"to MARC" as much or more than they catalog "to AACR2".
RDA at least (and I think AACR2 but don't have my copy to hand) make
statements about elements. To take an example para 1.4 of the RDA draft
lists 'mandatory elements'. Clearly if we did a DCAP for RDA, this would
be first listed in the DSP. From what you say, it would still be valid
for the statement to appear in the Usage Guidelines.
However, this raises the possibility of inconsistencies, and thus
disagreements, about how you use elements etc. It also adds redundant
effort of course in keeping two things up to date.
On the otherhand, you clearly do need a human readable version of the
standard - if we talk about library cataloguing, you don't want to give
a cataloguer a copy of the DSP to refer to, but something a bit more
(human) usable, which I'll call the 'manual'. It seems to me that
ideally this 'manual' combines information from the DSP (in a human
readable format) with the usage guidelines, and that the usage
guidelines should not repeat information already encoded in the DSP. I
suppose what I'm thinking of is establishing something like 'good
practice' for the usage guidelines, and that these would say 'do not
repeat information that is already encoded in the DSP'
There is some discussion about figuring out a way to embed the DSP in
the guidelines document (or vice versa) in a way that the two are really
one document with some machine-actionable code and some human-readable
guidelines. The SWAP document heads in this direction, I believe:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Scholarly_Works_Application_Profile
See the link "note about DC-text format" near the top of that document.
f(http://dublincore.org/architecturewiki/DCText)
I'm not convinced you could do the same with RDA because of the
complexity of the instructions, but it would be interesting to try.
However, given that the usage guidelines currently can/do repeat
information from the DSP, then I think the example you give on usage
guidelines containing advice on the maximum number of authors is fine -
and should stay in, although perhaps with a note highlighting the fact
that this limitation may or may not also be encoded in the DSP.
Does this make sense?
Yes, but I still think I'll change the example, since it has caused at
least one person (;-)) to be confused. I think using 'order' rules will
be clearer, and, heaven help me, I do want the document to be clear.
kc
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
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