On 10/25/2012 1:20 PM, Benjamin A Abrahamse wrote:
" 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"
I suppose. But that seems to me like a less direct, or usual user
task than, "Show me what games your library has." (Which currently
cannot be answered, for computer games or otherwise, by the RDA
content/media/carrier vocabulary.)
I'm not sure it seems to me like less direct or less usual, probably
depends on the environment (maybe in a public library it's a usual
question?). But at any rate.
You can't do that with AACR2/MARC GMDs/SMDs either, can you?
Perhaps the right place to record something to answer this question is
actually in a 6xx/LCSH $v form/genre heading?
I know LC is doing work on revising the LCSH form/genre heading
thesaurus too -- like I said, this is a difficult thing to make a
generalizable taxonomy for. Perhaps that's the right place for there to
be a 'games' heading (entered in a 655), as 'game' is really more of a
'genre' having to do with the content and the author's intentions for
it's use, than it is a form/format/carrier having to do with the
physical properties of the item, that the RDA vocabularies we're talking
about focus on.
This stuff is really tricky to encompass with standardized shareable
general and universal vocabularies, it's probably not possible to do so
completely (and nothing libraries have tried yet comes close either. For
instance, trying to display or limit by whether an item is a "DVD" (let
alone blue-ray vs standard dvd!), which seems to me to be a VERY common
user need in contemporary libraries accross communities and types
(public as well as academic) -- is a somewhat herculean task with our
legacy metadata).
