26.11.2012 12:17, James Weinheimer:
Let's face it: the FRBR structure is bizarre and difficult even for
trained catalogers to grasp.
... and to apply consistently end efficiently.
The FRBR user tasks are from an earlier time, and in any case, the
public hasn't been able to do them since keyword searching was
introduced--even in our library catalogs. That has been quite awhile
now and I have never seen or heard of anyone complaining. Those
original tasks have been long forgotten and have now been superceded
in a multitude of ways.
You are turning more and more radical. Honest analysis - once it
were done - might well confirm you, however.
Besides, if somebody wants to navigate WEMI,
it can be done now with the right catalog software.
Once it were proved necessary. LT and GBS have both found some
demand for it, and come up with their own solutions, not exactly along
our lines of thinking and not exactly with much success (in the case of
GBS at least).
The first steps in the new format should be to make it in the
simplest ways possible so that web creators can use our records as
soon as possible.
Wasn't that part of the motivation behind Dublin Core? I think it failed
miserably because it did not create a format but left that to
implementers. Foreseeably, each and every one of them came up with
their own schemes and their own idiosyncratic syntaxes.
The schema.org people are doing a somewhat better job in that they
do not leave much to implementers. But then, their approach is very
different from the idea of "records" as self-contained entities, and so
it is difficult to see how to apply it in a library catalog context.
Anyway, I really don't like this speculating around in this list
with no input from those who should know more and might easily resolve
errors in our wild guesses. Can this be called a discussion list? It is
rather another Speakers' Corner, inconsequential at the end of the day.
Not the first time though that I encounter this phenomenon.
B.Eversberg
