>Martha Yee wrote:
>> First, these replace a set of principles that were elegant in their
>> simplicity and conciseness and therefore easy for laymen to grasp, even
>> though the designers of current online catalogs never bothered to read them
>> so we never managed to implement them completely in existing catalogs.
Karen Coyle responded:
>Martha, I have to object to this statement which I will generously
>characterize as "unkind."
Whether or not the current designers of catalogues have read the
original set of principles I have no way of knowing. But Martha is
very correct in not finding evidence of their having been understood
or applied by those designers, or by the authors of proposed no
standards.
The elegance and simplicity of language to which Martha refers is very
much lacking in current efforts.
All professions have jargon, and librarianship is no exception.
Despite this fact, our two main standards (AACR and MARC) are
relatively jargon free. AACR2's clarity of language is largely due do
Michael Gorman. MARC21 still benefits from the clear prose of
Henriette Avram.
This can not be said of RDA, FRBR, FRAD, and associated documents. A
first year library school student enrolled in an introductory
cataloguing class can with a bit of effort understand both AACR2 and
MARC21. I would hate to be the cataloguing professor attempting to
make RDA intelligible to students.
In the real bibliographic universe in which we labour, most authors
produce one work, and most works appear in one edition. Works (when
needed to be traced as subject or added entries) may be represented by
authority records. Editions are represented by bibliographic records.
A question we often ponder is whether the item before us is a copy or
a new edition.
The discussion of cataloguing standards is becoming increaslingly
jargon laden and difficult to read.
In an earlier RDA post we were told that "One of the benefits of
declaring RDA vocabularies as namespaces will be to encourage input
and uptake by other metadata schema ...".
If I were attempting to translate that into English I might say "One
of the benefits of RDA vocabularies being treated as discrete named
vocabularies with each term in each vocabulary limited to one meaning
(termed "namespaces" in computing) is that designers of other metadata
schemes might be able to contribute to, and utilize features of, RDA."
Whether such interchange is possible or even desirable seems an open
question to me. MARC21 might find more use outside librarianship if
there were a simpler version with fewer fixed fields. AACR2 might
find more use outside librarianship if there were fewer artificially
constructed entries, e.g., those for treaties; and if it were more
consistent, e.g., place and jurisdiction given without exception.
Despite the variations in bibliographic records, the metadata we have
attempted to use is even more varied. It has been inconsistent with
inaccurate in information included. Even that produced by a single
agency varies in structure from month to month.
When one of our cataloguers gave a seminar on MARC to a group at the
World Health Organization, they were astounded that such a language
neutral tool existed, and did not have to be developed by them, I
suspect many of those developing such "schema" are ignorant of what
has been done. Their references to both ISBD and MARC are often ill
informed. As Michael Gorman said, "metadata is cataloguing for young
men".
Let us attempt to make our existing standards more user friendly, and
accessible to a larger audience. Let us return to clear English, and
limit ourselves to concepts relevant to our work.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
