Myers, John F. wrote:
(With apologies if I've wandered somewhat from the initial premise or if I've misrepresented Diane.)
From my point of view, you are "spot on" as the Brits say. I think a lot of what flusters people is that there isn't a way today to lay out a perfectly formed plan with developed standards and systems specifications. This makes it hard for us all to visualize where it is we might be going, but I maintain that every truly new technology goes through this phase. What we need today is some idea of where we might want to be in the near future, and to develop ways to experiment with those ideas. I think there is a lot of positive activity in areas like: the various experiments with FRBR, both as display and as a model for bibliographic data; the experimentation with new data models, such as the work to de-construct the bibliographic record into its components, such as the Talis semantic web platform work; the registering of RDA elements and vocabularies at http://metadataregistry.org; the work that LoC is doing to make its authority files and vocabularies available on the web (e.g. http://lcsh.info). While none of these creates a comprehensive, usable system, they each add some pieces to the puzzle. At some point, we'll hit critical mass and it will become real. To get a taste of what's going on, I suggest following the round-up of blogs at http://planet.code4lib.org. It often feels to me like I'm at a cocktail party taking place in a foreign language -- I occasionally catch a word that I understand, but meanwhile I do know that exciting things are happening and people are having fun. kc -- ----------------------------------- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234 ------------------------------------
