Jonathan Rochkind said:
>and some people seem actively resistant to the idea, for reasons that
>are somewhat mysterious to me.
Legacy data? Reinvention of a wheel which rolls along already?
>The argument is vociferously made that spelling out "edition" instead of
>writing "ed." (saving 4 characters) is extra time that catalogers can't
>afford -- at the same time as many of the same people advocate always
>adding one-three sentence notes in addition to coded materials, for
>somewhat unclear user benefit.
For the benefit of users of systems which do not produce display from
codes?
The statement that data should not be influenced by inadequate systems
is not much help to libraries which can not afford changes to their
systems, or substitute ones.
Had the energy and expense which has gone into RDA gone into
developing better open source OPACs, we might be further along. But
that would be stepping on the toes of commercial ILS providers.
We are monkeying with the building blocks (i.e. bibliographic
records), when the structure itself needs renovation (i.e. library
catalogues). Present building blocks are not being fully utilized.
__ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod (m...@slc.bc.ca)
{__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
