J. McRee Elrod wrote:
Karen quoted:
"This study has been briefed to investigate ...
A difficulty I have in reading the new writing on metadata is
formulations like the above, which makes it difficult to focus on the
substance of what is being said.
I think that's more of an issue of British English vs. American English,
as well as a little bit of bureaucracy-speak that unfortunately infects
any bureaucratically-initiated report, but, hey, if you want to blame
"new writing on metadata" for it, I guess you're going to.
I'm pretty sure that everyone in this forum is smart enough to figure
out what they're talking about despite differences in British and
American English and bureaucracy-speak.
Or, you can just continue to find some reason to dismiss anything that
says something you don't want to hear.
Jonathan
Different metadata describing the same item must at least be
consistent enough that (1) by automated means one may determine when
multiple metadata descriptions describe the same resource,
This is in fact an important 'feature', that anyone who has actually
tried to write software to do this has discovered with our existing
corpus of theoretically AACR2-compliant MARC records does not
sufficiently fulfill. And that's even assuming "the same resource"
means a particular edition or manifestation, let alone expanding "the
same resource" to mean various editions and manifestations of the same
work, as our bibliographic systems are increasingly being called upon to
do to serve user needs in our ever expanding bibliographic universe.
These two objectives are best achieved, it seems to me, by an agreed
upon selection and order of elements, with elements clearly
identified. In other words, the ISBD :-{)}.
And, yet, not even those objectives, let alone other objectives our
metadata descriptions must achieve to meet current patron needs, are
being sufficiently achieved. A number of people have tried to explain,
show, and provide evidence for the ways it is not working, but if you
haven't seen even an inch of sense in any of that, nothing more is going
to show you. Maybe there were too many grammatical mistakes in the
arguments. Those who do believe it is not working sufficiently well will
continue trying to fix it without your help, and despite your obstruction.
Jonathan
