Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates
I've been reading with great interest this thread and in conjunction with what James just wrote I'd like to offer a bare bones mantra my cataloging professor taught me when I would attempt to decline a Dewey # to the 14th level: Remember, Mike: it's only an address. I love the elegance of RDA and FRBR and, as a student of the more esoteric aspects of String Theory, am intrigued with those aspects contained within the fabric of RDA. I do wonder, however, if in trying to be all things to all things, we might end up leading the Seeker not to the Forest but rather the Trees. Wishing you all the very best New Year! ~Mike Keach Tampa-Hillsborough County Library Sent via BlackBerry by ATT -Original Message- From: James Weinheimer weinheimer.ji...@gmail.com Sender: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 17:40:49 To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Reply-To: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Some comments on the Final Report of the FRBR Working Group on Aggregates On 06/01/2012 15:41, Brenndorfer, Thomas wrote: snip The entities exist whether they're brought out in the cataloging as significant or not. In RDA, many such entities and their relationships are captured in unstructured descriptions or transcribed elements, without any mechanism for identifiers (separate records, authorized access points, URIs, control numbers, etc.). /snip I beg to differ about existence of the entities. What FRBR did was to take out of the catalog an *arrangement* of the cards, which had been transferred into the computer, and then to transform this arrangement into an entity with all of those attributes. In this sense, saying that a work exists is just like proclaiming that a royal flush exists in poker, and therefore the royal flush has various attributes. The royal flush does not exist as such, it comes about only through a specified arrangement of the playing cards which in fact, *do* exist. The reason for the arrangement of cards in the catalog was for retrieval. That's all. Over many centuries, librarians discovered through trial and error that people wanted to find the books in their collections in specific ways and they used the arrangements of the cards to provide that. A library would get another version/copy/edition of the Bible and would need to include it intelligently into the catalog. (Compare this to the lack of any intellectual arrangement in that catalog of the Rev. Prince I mentioned in my previous post) It wasn't philosophical, it was totally pragmatic. The philosophical view grew out of the pragmatic basis. But the pragmatic basis should always take precedence over theory. -- *James Weinheimer* weinheimer.ji...@gmail.com *First Thus* http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/ *Cooperative Cataloging Rules* http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
Re: [RDA-L] Interesting conversations about RDA and FRBR ...
Jo, Go to the website and you'll see a link to unsubscribe. HTH ! ~Mike Sent via BlackBerry by ATT -Original Message- From: Jo Hudson hudso...@oplin.org Sender: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 08:24:16 To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Reply-To: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Interesting conversations about RDA and FRBR ... Can someone please tell me how to get off of this listserv? Thank you Jo A. Hudson Technical Assistant Logan County Libraries 220 North Main Street Bellefontaine, OH 43311 hudso...@oplin.org 937-599-4189 -Original Message- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Bernhard Eversberg Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2010 8:16 AM To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Interesting conversations about RDA and FRBR ... Weinheimer Jim wrote: snip But first of all, liberate works that are now incarcerated inside all sorts of collections or multiparts (whose workness is somewhat dubious). Here, the notion of the (physical) item is really not the best of concepts, in terms of usability of the catalog, to base a description and a record on. /snip A terrifying possibility, but one that I agree is probably necessary, Without it, the entire RDA reality will remain a half-hearted FRBR incarnation. Unless, of course, we add the concept of second-class works, and make that well understood when confronting the general public with our glittering new WEMI catalogs. although libraries do not, and will not, have the resources to do it. I remember working on single volume conference publications that could take days because each one had dozens of individual papers, and instead of one item, the single volume became 40 or 60 or more records. I think the only way it could be done practically would be through some kind of crowdsourcing. The crowd of OCLC members would be too small? Also in this regard, with the recent, and very positive, DMCA changes and the possibilities to remix, the very notion of implementing FRBR-type structures for these materials is staggering. Of course, we may have to end up admitting that FRBR proper is a pie-in-the-sky or pipedream, fine in theory but impracticable. B.Eversberg
