I would like to think that Mac's definition of "quality cataloging" is one that all catalogers share. We do not adhere to rules just for the sake of adhering to rules; we adhere to rules in order to provide accurate and thorough description of resources that facilitates access to materials.
"Traditional" cataloging is not the root of all evil. Deb Deborah DeGeorge Rare- and Non-Book Cataloger University of Michigan Libraries 319 Hatcher Library North Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1205 734-936-7983 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 4:11 PM To: RDA-L@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA Subject: [RDA-L] Measuring quality of cataloguing Jenn Riley said: .The fairly substantial body of literature on cataloging quality tends >to define "quality" as "conforming to cataloging rules." I'd like to >see much more work in this area that defines quality as something >closer to "allows user x to do y ... Here we define quality as adherence to the item being described, both in terms of accurate transcription and in terms of truthful subject analysis in class number and heading(s). This is one reason I am so opposed to substituting uninverted prime entry for statement of responsibility. The prime entry may bear no obvious relationship to anything on the item, getting in the way of item identification. It seems to me accurate identification must be at the root of whatever user x might want to do. Given accurate records, there are all sorts of things which could be done with them. __ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) {__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/ ___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
