On 10/25/2012 12:57 PM, Benjamin A Abrahamse wrote:
Yes, a computer game is a "computer program" but I don't think most users think of it that way.
I am not sure if that's true or not. If a library holds software, mightn't a user want to see a list of all the software the library holds, whether games or word processors or what have you?
(Whether the phrase 'computer program' or 'software' is used is an implementation issue, not a key feature of the taxonomy).
Certainly within that, you might also want to see the software by category. But nobody's shocked to find games in the 'app store' for instance, alongside all sorts of other software. ("What, that's not an app! It's a game!")
In general, dealing with form/format/genre is one of the most difficult taxonomic tasks in bibliographic metadata management. Because it ends up being so context-dependent: What the 'right' taxonomy for users is depends on the nature, size and diversity of the collection, the nature of the user community using it, and even on the individual user and her use case. There isn't some 'obvious' one true taxonomy of form/format/genre , that if only the standard would use it all would be well!
For those who find it economic to custom label all their records with GMD's customized for their environment, that's just great, and I don't see any reason they should stop just because RDA doesn't say "you are allowed to create your own local vocabulary and use it in your local records, it's just not RDA's vocabulary when you do that." RDA doesn't have to say that, it's just a fact.
But this is not economically feasible for many of us, there is a need for metadata describing form/format/carrier/genre that can be shared, and can be used in systems that span individual contexts.
So RDA attempts to at least describe the materials with rational and consistent form/format/carrier/genre vocabularies that attempt to be generalizable. This results in a system that you probably _wouldn't_ want to show to users directly -- user's own mental models of this stuff are _not_ rational and consistent, and vary incredibly from community to community to context and context. The idea is that hopefully there is enough rational and consistent information in the RDA encodings that local system-specific rules can be created to transform them into what is useful for the user community -- without un-economic individual record-by-record attention, and with the ability to change these transformation rules at a later date when needs change without having to individually re-describe record-by-record.
No doubt RDA's vocabularies are not perfect for this (indeed the nature of the endeavor is such that "perfection" is impossible, but no doubt they can be improved), but this _approach_ is the only one that seems plausible to result in useful generalized shareable metadata on form/format/carrier/genre.
= 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 *Greta de Groat *Sent:* Thursday, October 25, 2012 12:39 PM *To:* RDA-L@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca *Subject:* Re: [RDA-L] Additional work required by RDA I've been creating constant data forms for my most commonly used formats, with the 33x fields already filled in--that's even faster. I really like the 33x fields for many of the materials that i catalog, but there are some gaping holes. There isn't a content type that's appropriate for video/computer games or other interactive materials--we've been using Computer program combined with Two-dimensional moving image, which might be technically appropriate but is also misleading and doesn't really get at the nature of the material. Three-dimensional moving image is somewhat misleading in that it appears to be intended for films, but is apparently not appropriate for 3-dimensional games, which uses the term in a somewhat different fashion (the ability to move in 3 dimensions in the game space). In the media types, Computer appears to be only for the data and programs (..."designed for use with a computer..."), but not for the computer itself (i.e. if you are cataloging an iPad). We've concluded that it's Other, but that's not very useful. Similarly, the computer carriers in the carrier type appear to be the storage media but not the computer itself. It's not even clear to me from RDA whether hard drives or flash drives can be considered carrier types since they aren't on the list and it doesn't say that you are permitted to consider anything but the listed carriers under the listed type--it does say in 3.1.4.5 that you can use another term in the Extent element but it's not clear how that relates to 3.3. We also ran into problems with a book that consisted almost entirely of stereographic images, but volume isn't listed under stereographic carriers so we weren't sure we could use 337 stereographic with 338 volume. Greta de Groat Stanford University Libraries On 10/24/2012 12:54 PM, Joan Wang wrote: Very cool! Thanks for letting us know. Joan Wang Illinois Heartland Library System On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Adam L. Schiff <asch...@u.washington.edu <mailto:asch...@u.washington.edu>> wrote: Another aspect I have not seen mentioned, is that AACR2 style GMDs only had to be assigned to nonbook materials. RDA 33X must be assigned to all library resources, a major increase in effort. Not only it is three terms for one, but they must be assigned to many more records. For users of OCLC Connexion, there is a macro that makes adding these terms, along with their coded values, take about 3 seconds. This is not huge increase of effort. The macro pulls up a pulldown menu and you just select the terms you need and click add. ************************************** * Adam L. Schiff * * Principal Cataloger * * University of Washington Libraries * * Box 352900 * * Seattle, WA 98195-2900 * * (206) 543-8409 <tel:%28206%29%20543-8409> * * (206) 685-8782 <tel:%28206%29%20685-8782> fax * * asch...@u.washington.edu <mailto:asch...@u.washington.edu> * ************************************** -- Joan Wang, Ph.D. Cataloger -- CMC Illinois Heartland Library System (Edwardsville Office) 6725 Goshen Road Edwardsville, IL 62025 618.656.3216x409 618.656.9401Fax
