Re: coyle/hillman article from dlib

Hi Eric-

  For what I am sure are perfectly legitimate reasons, there still is a
need to produce a full-featured content standard like RDA.  Libraries,
and perhaps others as well, will continue to describe some resources at
that level.  Perhaps what folks are hinting at here is a parallel need
for a less robust and simpler standard to apply in cases where the time
and/or training is not there to apply an involved standard like AACR2 or
RDA.  An "RDA Lite", which would function as a core standard much as the
MARC Core level functions (or was supposed to function) in relation to
the full MARC21 standard or Dublin Core functions in relation to METS,
VRA Core, EAD, and almost any other metadata standard out there.  It
perhaps is unfortunate that it is easier to spin off a core standard
from one that is full-blown rather than the other way around, as
obviously many of us feel the need for the core more acutely than the
need for the full.  A chicken and egg problem.

    Charley

Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
> I encourage people on this list to read the the Coyle/Hillman article
> from D-Lib Magazine on the topic of Resource Description and Access
> (RDA). Some quotes from the article include:
>
>   The library's signature service, its catalog, uses rules for
>   cataloging that are remnants of a long departed technology: the
>   card catalog. Modifications to the rules, such as those proposed
>   by the Resource Description and Access (RDA) development effort,
>   can only keep us rooted firmly in the 20th, if not the 19th
>   century. A more radical change is required that will contribute
>   to the library of the future, re-imagined and integrated with the
>   chosen workflow of its users.
>
>   At first seen as amateurish, the Internet gained in bona fides to
>   the point that today some disciplines give preference to online
>   publication, taking advantage of increased speed of delivery to
>   an audience and broader geographical coverage. The library
>   catalog and its conventions, valued by libraries as both an
>   inventory of regularly published items and as the sharing
>   mechanism for catalog entries, does not have a means to respond
>   to this new, more chaotic information environment.
>
>   Too many librarians still consider themselves the only true
>   experts both in bibliographic metadata creation and in service to
>   information seekers, behaving condescendingly to others newer to
>   the information enterprise. But users have spoken with their
>   keyboards, overwhelmingly preferring non-traditional and
>   non-library sources of information and methods of information
>   discovery.
>
>   http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january07/coyle/01coyle.html
>
> In short, maybe cataloging rules need to be radically altered not
> incrementally tweaked, and the rules may need to take into greater
> consideration the almost completely changed information environment
> in which we live and work.
>
> --
> Eric Lease Morgan
> University Libraries of Notre Dame
>
> (574) 631-8604

--
__________________________________ __________________________________
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Charley Pennell                        mailto:cpennell_at_unity.ncsu.edu
Principal Cataloger for Metadata                 voice: (919)515-2743
Metadata and Cataloging Department                 fax: (919)515-7292
NCSU Libraries, Box 7111
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC  27695-7111

      Adjunct Librarian, Memorial University of Newfoundland
World Wide Web:     http://www.ibiblio.org/hillwilliam/chuckhome.html
__________________________________ __________________________________
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""