Today is my last day in the QBI Cataloging Bunker. As perceptive readers may have inferred from my postings here and on Autocat, I'm not exactly the most enthusiastic backer of RDA, but before drawing the conclusion that I'm quitting to avoid having to implement RDA, please consider that QBI has already begun to implement it with no real problems so far. In fact, Bryan and the rest of the cataloging staff here will be updating QBI's name authority capabilities and authorization to RDA standards in the near future, and converting the PCIP program to RDA is under consideration. I'm facing imminent knee replacement surgery and at my advance age and crappy physical condition the extensive re-hab I'll be undertaking is not a good fit with my 170-mile per day round trip commute. Besides, I have a 7-month-old puppy who desperately needs to have one of his owners at home everyday so that he doesn't spend most of his puppyhood in his kennel.
We still haven't heard from any customers one way or another about preferring RDA records, and I only recently discovered that QBI is hardly the last vendor in OCLC to accommodate RDA, which surprises me a little, but probably shouldn't. I think that for a lot of libraries RDA is a matter of overkill, introducing complications into the process of cataloging titles that may never have more than one manifestation, expression, etc. That being said, and to address James Weinheimer's frequently asked question about a business case for RDA, I don't think there is a business case for it for smaller libraries other than the perceived need to be in step with the national libraries. But for LC (and likely the British Library, LAC, the Australian National Library, etc.), it seems to me the business case is that it will allow them to focus more on important endeavors like classification and subject access rather than the housekeeping aspects of descriptive cataloging. For instance, being allowed to accept inputs like ONIX "as is" means their professional staffs need not concern themselves with converting ALL CAPS fields and similar matters. The national libraries have as much right as any other institutions to set their own policies, and I don't see how they can go forward in a time of diminishing funding and staffing without making major changes. If cataloging is truly a cooperative effort, records with nonsensical machine-generated contents notes and all caps title fields can be upgraded by other members of the bibliographic utilities that house records. If I were working in an end-user situation (like the persistent dream job of a small liberal arts college library located in a picturesque setting), I would likely make use of Mac and Michael Gorman's creation and resist RDA implementation until faced with a situation where RDA's purported benefits would come to the fore. If the MARC replacement and infrastructure that will magically make RDA fully realizable come to fruition, that might change my outlook, but frankly I don't have much faith in the certainty of that happening anytime soon. How long did it take cataloging software vendors to start utilizing non-filing characters rather than using stopwords, and when will they introduce autofil into most cataloging software packages? Probably about the time the paperless society we've been preparing for since the 1970s arrives. My last helpful suggestion to the list (which I realize might constitute my first helpful suggestion to many list members) is this: your discussions might be more fruitful if you managed to keep in mind that just because other list members disagree with you it doesn't mean they are drooling incompetents or arbitrary obstructionists. They might simply disagree with you. Mike Tribby Senior Cataloger Quality Books Inc. The Best of America's Independent Presses mailto:mike.tri...@quality-books.com Wearing the sensible shoes for one more day, then it's back to Spanish boots, Roman sandals, and brogans (thanks to Jeff Beck, Merle Haggard, and Bo Diddley)
