Jonathan Rochkind wrote: > See, I don't think the techniques we're talking about here are really > specific to rdbms or entity-relational databases. .. > This is a pretty important fact of information systems that has direct > impact on how we record metadata. Those designing standards for > recording of metadata need to understand it. If those doing that > designing are catalogers are not programmers (as they probably should > be), then those catalogers need to understand at least a bit about > information systems. Because to live in information systems is the > destiny of the metadata created.
Very good points. I think it is clear that in such a system, some practices and even information would have to change in some ways. What do you think they would be? When I worked at FAO of the UN, where we used non-AACR2, non-MARC, and I was trying to imagine how we could fit into a VIAF/Onesac type of system. For only one example, FAO needs additional access for FAO corporate names, specifically, they need more specific access for FAO offices in each of the local offices: Bangkok, Santiago, Accra, and so on. In the NAF there is the single heading "Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations" but FAO needed to have separate headings for each sub-agency. Many times this was impossible for a non-FAO cataloger to know since there were little points to look for. My idea was to include a "relations" field, where the relationship of the headings for bodies/entities would be delineated. These relationships could take all types of forms, e.g. 1:1, 1:3, 3:5, °probably the same,° or even unclear relationships. Naturally, there could be added language form (necessary for FAO but not for AACR2) and even time frame (for corporate bodies). Finally, cataloging/encoding rules and even specific "database where heading is used" could be added. A colleague and I published an article on this but--I blame myself on this--we gave the examples in MARC21 format when we should have provided examples in XML. (We realized it could be done in MARC format, which was amazing to me!) In any case, I think that if we had given everything in an XML format, people would have understood it better. In such a system, the procedures would have to change significantly, although not completely. I thought that the main change would be in the "worldview" of the cataloger. I wonder what else would have to be done? Jim Weinheimer
