Having cataloged for nearly 22 years at two institutions, having dealt with many changes involving bibliographic utility and online cataloging software upgrades, and having conversed casually with actual participants in the RDA test, I am cautiously optimistic: if RDA is adopted, there will be a learning curve, but eventually I will get used it to it. For the profession at large, some RDA features will be an improvement, some won't be but will still be tolerable, and some features will be prove to be unworkable and will be tweaked or changed radically over the next year or five.
Stephen T. Early Cataloger Center for Research Libraries 6050 S. Kenwood Chicago, IL 60637 773-955-4545 sea...@crl.edu CRL website: www.crl.edu ________________________________________ From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA] On Behalf Of Billie Hackney Sent: Monday, April 11, 2011 10:58 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] FRBR Every time I see a discussion about how hard FRBR is to understand (which it is), how difficult the RDA Toolkit is to use (which it is), and the fact that RDA will actually increase the amount of work we have to do to each bibliographic record (which it does), I get more and more discouraged. Cataloging as a profession has been gasping for breath. It desperately needed to become simpler, more transparent, and more attractive to library school students, easier for management to understand. Instead, it seems to me that the opposite is happening, and at the worst possible time. It seems to me that our leaders are taking us over a cliff, and they keep explaining to us why what they're doing is very, very important, as we're plummeting to the ground. This is my own personal opinion as someone who has been cataloging for twenty years -- not that of my employer. Billie Hackney Senior Monograph Cataloger Getty Research Institute 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688 (310) 440-7616 bhack...@getty.edu
