Diane I. Hillmann wrote:
>> There is as of yet no accepted and widely known standard for
>> bibliographic metadata ...
>>
> This statement ignores the developing RDA element set which is poised to
> provide a FRBR-aware, Semantic Web-ready replacement for MARC within the
> next year.
From this element set to a MARC replacement will still be some way to
go. Or can you show us a sample record as it will look when it comes
over the wire? Which is what matters, at the end of the day.
> Bernard in particular might be interested to note that
> discussions about adding labels and definitions in German (and other
> languages) was discussed at last week's DC-2008 conference.
>
Definitions ok, but labels? Who needs German labels? If we cannot stick
with numeric labels (the only language-independent solution), then we
should beware of creating different label sets in so many languages.
For that purpose, English will have to do. And the briefer the better,
which is more difficult in German. We certainly do not need something
like
<RDA:erscheinungsjahr>2008</RDA:erscheinungsjahr>
which gobbles up 10 times more bytes for wrapping than for content.
But don't establish new language barriers where we had none. Of course,
record content matters much more than punctuation, but if you don't get
the latter nailed down, machine communication of the former must fail.
B.Eversberg
Received on Mon Sep 29 2008 - 07:06:56 EDT