On 05/17/2011 10:43 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
<snip>
Yeah, if RDA _required_ all capital titles, that might be bad. I
don't think anyone thinks all capital titles are preferable.
But in the actual real world eco-system, where we're often going to be
harvesting data from other sources rather than creating it ourselves
from -- and not going to have time to individually review and fix each
record -- and that's the environment we're going to be in like it or
not (and it's got some positives, that environment) -- it does not
seem a bad choice to me to ALLOW you to take titles in the
capitalization they are provided in.
It certainly does not seem disastrous. Certainly if any catalogers do
have the time to fix those before or once the record is in a
cooperative cataloging store, that would be a service to the rest of
us. Nobody is arguing that they like all-capital titles.
</snip>
Jonathan points to the exact problem: we are supposed to be "harvesting
data" from other sources rather than creating it for ourselves, *and*
not review and edit each record individually. I agree that we absolutely
must do this, but something highly important is assumed here: that the
information in the records you are harvesting is of *sufficient
quality*. When an experienced cataloger sees a record such as have been
mentioned here--all caps, when *no standard* allows it: not ONIX, not
AACR2 or any previous library cataloging rules, no citation guides, or
anything else that I am aware of, the cataloger immediately become
suspicious. In the past, there has been a great deal of variation
allowed in these standards just as there are in in the library catalog:
I remember seeing cards that were in all lower case except for the first
word. It made German look very strange. I even found an example:
http://tinyurl.com/67vt5z6**(I don't know if this was Princeton specific
or not, but probably not, but obviously a Taylorist procedure, just as
the RDA acceptance of all caps also betrays a Taylorist mentality) Also,
using all caps for acquisitions records provided (still provides)
information in itself: BEWARE! This is an order record!). The major
variation in all of these methods is Title case, which seems to be
followed in most of the citation guides, but no bibliographic standard I
have seen allows all caps.
So, the experienced cataloger will look at a record with this kind of
absolutely elementary error and immediately think: "What else is wrong
with this stinky record?" because if the elementary part is so obviously
bad, what about the parts that really are difficult?
I agree that our records must interoperate with other metadata records
on the web, and harvesting is certainly one way to do it, although the
methods will vary. Ultimately though, the methods don't matter: the
records must work coherently with the others and the idea of data
standardization in some sense becomes unavoidable. It seems to me that a
record in all caps provides a clear indication that it *does not follow
any standards at all* and if we want our standardized records to
interoperate with these other records in a coherent way, editing will be
unavoidable if we want to provide some level of standards (which I think
is absolutely vital). Otherwise, we just throw up our hands, harvest any
kind of junk that comes our way and hang the consequences both to
ourselves and our patrons. We wouldn't stand for something like this in
our water: "Well, only have of the wells have typhoid," or that only 50%
of the rubber that goes into making the tires on our cars is reliable.
How can we try to resolve this in the real world? By trying *very hard*
to coordinate metadata creators into following some basic, minimum
levels of shared standards. Otherwise, I see the only option as chaos
and when there are no standards the only remaining choice is probably
the Google/Yahoo/Bing/etc. algorithmic solutions. The one thing, and the
one thing only, that catalogers can provide to automatically-created
metadata records is standardization. If that is not seen as important,
it seems that we might as well throw away our cataloging manuals and
look for other jobs.
Apologies for being so gloomy.
--
James L. Weinheimer weinheimer.ji...@gmail.com
First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Cooperative Cataloging Rules: http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
