Bernhard Eversberg wrote:
> 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.
>
The DCMI/RDA TG page referred to in my post has a number of cataloger
scenarios that do show what the resulting records will look like. We
will be adding more XML and RDF encoded records in the next few months,
and hope that others will also experiment with outputs so that we'll be
able to show more samples.
>
> 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.
>
Labels, Bernard, not names. The strategy we're looking at would share
the same URI and unique name token (in English, the original language of
the vocabulary), with standardized labels for the use of consuming
applications (e.g., catalogs, browsers). So catalogers would deal with
the English, users would see their language of choice (hopefully), but
machines wouldn't care one way or another.
Diane
Received on Mon Sep 29 2008 - 15:08:21 EDT