15.02.2011 13:36, Adger Williams:
Nice to know the skeleton of our categories. I note that this skeleton should persist through technology changes undisturbed, since it's based on things that actually don't change (human senses, number of dimensions, etc.)
What changes is language, is the actual terms being preferred over others. Therefore, I'm wondering why in the RDA test data, instead of the newly defined codes, testers had to enter the verbal terms. Will this practice persist? Codes, in addition to language independence, have the advantages of more stability AND brevity. Here are all the codes, hitherto unused in actual data: http://www.loc.gov/marc/RDAinMARC29.html Another reason why I think that not MARC is any of our troubles but the glacial reluctance against using MARC intelligently or at least in more reasonable and elegant ways. This would include abolishment of ISO2709, without which MARC wouldn't lose any of its potential. Although Jim Weinheimer seems to believe MARC can't live without it. At least, it is very safe to say that XML is not an antidote to ISO2709, nor even a viable way to escape it. But overkill it is, for the actual ecosystem we have to cope with. B.Eversberg
