On 8/28/07, Bernhard Eversberg <ev_at_biblio.tu-bs.de> wrote:
> Yes. And in this regard, you keep forgetting that humans need to
> communicate, and increasingly across borders.
Really? I think I've stated it pretty clearly that we all need to talk
the same language.
> The MARC numbering
> scheme provides a neutral and very efficient shorthand for this purpose.
No it doesn't, and no it isn't. Shorthand numbers work for something,
but certainly not for all things. Numbers carry no semantic meaning,
so every time a number you don't remember comes up you have to look it
up in the documentation. How is learning '245' any different from
learning 'title'? I can tell you the human cognitive difference and
the amazing effect language semantics has on learning idioms, even if
it is in a different language. I think this whole notion of language
neutrality in cataloging is just plain wrong.
> It has become the very language in which catalogers talk about their
> stuff. This must not be taken away and replaced by verbal labels, and
> different ones in every language.
Huh? I've never said we should translate element names. That's someone else.
> > I think you're forgetting that a) most IT fundamentals are in English,
> > even programming languages (so why mix up idioms of programming,
> > artificially separating semantics, logic and work flow through
> > language?),
> This is not the kind of language needed in the day-to-day business
> of cataloging
You have got to be kidding me if day to day cataloging needs to
include you remembering what numbers 1 to 999 and all their subfields
are, and how they all relate to the Culture of MARC. I thought we all
agreed that that was a dead end. I'm sorry, but I don't buy the deal
that we must know every corner of MARC by heart to do cataloging ;
this is where tools and software *must* assist, and believe it or not,
the semantics of an existing language does indeed help us remember
idioms. If nothing else, this notion of numbers point to why
cataloging is so slow and expensive these days. And *seriously*, no
one should need to know how meta data is recorded in a MARC record,
not even catalogers. Seriously. This is about models and semantics,
*not* about formatting.
Alex
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Received on Tue Aug 28 2007 - 03:15:50 EDT