It strikes me that perhaps two slightly different questions of "work required by relators" are being conflated in this discussion... which may why it is generating more heat than light. One is the work of encoding relators, the other the work of determining how contributors are related to works, which (pace Coyle) is not always easy to do unequivocally-particularly if we are talking about cataloging all materials and not just recently-published, textual monographs. Cataloger time invested in the encoding of relators can likely be minimized by better interfaces and encoding schemes; whereas I cannot see how cataloger time invested in determining what kind of contributor a given entity is going to be reduced through any improvements to encoding schemas or interfaces. In other words, the question, or at least one question would be: is, or should "relationship designation" be a core RDA element? What are the tradeoffs between having consistent, rich metadata, and making sure catalogers are investing their time effectively? I did not participate in the RDA test, but from my reading of RDA chapter 18 and the LC RDA testing documents, it seems like it isn't. (But I could be wrong-I'm far from an RDA expert.)
--b Benjamin Abrahamse Cataloging Coordinator Acquisitions, Metadata and Enterprise Systems MIT Libraries 617-253-7137 From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:RDA-L@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Billie Hackney Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2011 11:50 AM To: RDA-L@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Offlist reactions to the LC Bibliographic Framework statement Hi, Karen: I didn't realize I was mistaken about the amount of work I do for original cataloging of materials about art, where there are curators, editors and essayists, galleries that are host institutions as well as publishers, artists who also wrote some or all of the text, and all this often without a title page and in a foreign language. Thank you for enlightening me. Billie 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 >>> Karen Coyle <li...@kcoyle.net> 11/9/2011 8:33 AM >>> Quoting Billie Hackney <bhack...@getty.edu>: > But it *is* more work. Adding relator terms took a lot of extra > time while I was doing original cataloging in RDA. I know we've > been through the argument a number of times before, but I just don't > understand why the creators of RDA feel that it's necessary to make > original catalogers do *more* instead of less when nearly all of us > are supposed to get more done with fewer catalogers. I can't imagine how calling someone "artist" can be more work. It *is* more work if you have to look up a role code in order to put it into a MARC subfield, but it's only *different* work if you have: artist: [person name] illustrator: [person name] composer: [person name] conductor: [person name] rather than 100 or 700, which only tells that you're coding a name for a person, and then requires you to qualify it with a less-than-intuitive code. It must be a rare piece that doesn't tell you what role a person plays. That piece probably takes as much to catalog today, because you have to determine if the named person is worth including in the record. If the role is right there before you, using it isn't more work if we finally get beyond MARC coding and stupid input interfaces that make people look up codes. kc p.s. We really need to mock up a couple of potential new input "views" so that people can see "beyond MARC" > > > 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 >>>> "Brenndorfer, Thomas" <tbrenndor...@library.guelph.on.ca> >>>> 11/9/2011 7:49 AM >>> >> It is that precision (which carries forward the same amount of >> intellectual work in traditional >cataloging-- it's not really >> "more work") that makes the RDA element set more amenable to >> >modern encoding and data management methods. > > -- Karen Coyle kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet
