On 4/12/12 10:50 AM, Kevin M Randall wrote:
Larry Creider wrote:
While I can see how the term "Pagination Subunits" might be precise
for those producing RDA records, I fail to see how it will do
anything but produce derision on the part of our users.
I think that Thomas was suggesting this term as the name of the RDA
element, not as a label to be used for public display of the data.
In fact, even the "term" should not be a language term -- it should be
(and it is in http://rdvocab.info/) an identifier that represents a
specific meaning. What the cataloger sees, what the user sees, how it is
used by systems, are all open questions. Remember, the display terms can
be assigned in multiple languages, and there is thought being given to
how we can share different display choices beyond the natural languages
being used (e.g. different displays for children's materials even though
they may be coded identically.) It is, as Larry says below, like
displaying values for MARC tags. So throughout this discussion we should
assume that actual machine-readable values and display values are not
the same thing. We can argue all we want about what is the best display
term, but do not confuse that with how the data will be stored. That
will be a unique identifier, used uniformly across applications.
kc
Of course, we will have lots of very unimaginative and/or lazy system
developers/vendors who will do nothing more than take the name of the
data element as the display label for that element. But it is
pointless to try to come up with element names that are
public-friendly, since they are not intended for public consumption.
(It is no less reasonable to assume that an OPAC display should show
the user a term such as "Author" or "Creator" instead of the phrase
"Main Entry-Personal Name" or the tag "100". This is really the same
issue.)
Kevin M. Randall Principal Serials Cataloger Bibliographic Services
Dept. Northwestern University Library 1970 Campus Drive Evanston, IL
60208-2300 email: k...@northwestern.edu phone: (847) 491-2939 fax:
(847) 491-4345
--
Karen Coyle
kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
