If my arguments have the appearance of being weapons in a flame war, I do apologize. Thank you for clarifying your position on access point construction, Damian. Now I understand more where you're coming from, but I'm afraid that I still must disagree quite strongly. At some dreamed-for time in the future, all bibliographic data in the world will be connected in some vast network, and at that time systems may be able to make all of the connections to express relationships between all of the entities, and catalogers won't have to worry about constructing the access points.
But we don't live in that time yet, and probably won't for quite a while. RDA has instructions for choosing all of the elements that are needed to make those connections, as you have pointed out. But RDA is also being developed specifically to be able to work not only in that future time, but today as well. Yes, I DO need to have RDA tell me how to construct the access points, because I need to create metadata that will work locally and in WorldCat, and that other libraries can take and use "as is"; and I DO need to have other catalogers follow the same instructions I do, so I can take and use their records "as is". Without agreed-upon standards for access point construction, we will absolutely be going backwards, because more and more work will need to be done to get records into shape to work together with other records in local and consortial systems. I think catalogers are expecting RDA to be more than AACR2, not less, but if RDA left out instructions on constructing the access points, it would most certainly be vastly inferior to AACR2. (Okay, I know that last statement is inviting a LOT of comment unrelated to the specific issue being discussed in this thread; so be it...) There has been an awful lot of energy spent to get this international cooperative enterprise as far as it's come. Why should RDA leave out such an essential part of the cataloging process? Why should cataloging agencies, which already will be having to pay who-knows-what to be able to use RDA, have to then buy or license yet another resource not just for guidance or interpretation but for the basics? What other entity with the international scope of the JSC would take on the job of writing the instructions? And if it turns out that some coordination is needed between RDA and this external access-point-construction code, who does that and how? Kevin M. Randall Principal Serials Cataloger Bibliographic Services Dept. Northwestern University Library 1970 Campus Drive Evanston, IL 60208-2300 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: (847) 491-2939 fax: (847) 491-4345 From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Damian Iseminger Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 4:03 PM To: RDA-L@INFOSERV.NLC-BNC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] RDA comments My intention here was not to get into a flame war. I spend a good portion of my day constructing music uniform titles according to AACR2. I participate in the NACO Music Project and am a believer in cooperative cataloging. You will find no bigger advocate for well constructed access points formulated to defined standards. So yes, we need explicit instructions for constructing access points. But do they necessarily have to be those instructions in RDA? That was my only point. What I am trying to get at is that it seems the access point construction instructions (especially for music access points) probably don't need to be as specific as they are. RDA doesn't mandate how bibliographic data should be constructed or displayed. It only mandates that certain elements be recorded. I was applying this same thinking to access points. RDA should quite properly mandate that certain elements appear in the access point. But maybe it doesn't need to be specific as to how those elements are constructed. Mandate that the medium should appear in the access point. But do you need to tell me how the component parts of the medium statement need to be ordered? Or formatted? Maybe not. Damian Iseminger
