>From Bernhard Eversberg: "As was pointed out in another posting, there's the danger of a digital divide in the cataloging world. This cannot be in the intention of anyone concerned about improved access to library materials. The only way to prevent this, and prevented it must be, is to make the text of the rules open source. It is to be regarded like a law, and texts of laws are free for the good reason that people cannot be expected to abide by a law they have no access to because they cannot afford to buy it. Likewise, RDA will fail without this approach. The text must be made universally accessible to become useful."
While I agree entirely with what Bernhard says about what should be done to disseminate RDA if RDA is to be a success, it is not and never has been the intent of the co-publishers to make RDA available for free or anything like free. In fact I daresay it has been understood from the beginning of this process that RDA was intended to pay for itself. It's not a secret, though it's also not the first thing the RDA crowd mentions when touting RDA. Should cost of access and the possibility of universal access have been concerns? I think they should have been-- but they were not. To perhaps put it crassly: theoretical purity was a higher concern than access. It's hard to blame the co-publishers very much since none of them are exactly rolling in extra money, and this process has been expensive, but some of us have been complaining about the assumed cost of subscriptions to RDA for some time now. Mike Tribby Senior Cataloger Quality Books Inc. The Best of America's Independent Presses mailto:mike.tri...@quality-books.com
